Seven Years of Memoir Writing

Seven years ago, I started work on something like a memoir. I wasn’t sure quite what I wanted to write, or for what eventual audience, so I followed some advice from William Zinsser that I found online: 

“Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that’s still vivid in your memory. What you write doesn’t have to be long—three pages, five pages—but it should have a beginning and an end. Put that episode in a folder and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning, do the same thing. Tuesday’s episode doesn’t have to be related to Monday’s episode. Take whatever memory comes calling; your subconscious mind, having been put to work, will start delivering your past.” 

As I followed this advice, I thought about the distinction between autobiography and memoir and the importance of that distinction. Autobiographies tend to be chronological and heavy on facts, more like history than story. Memoirs, on the other hand, seem to be more thematic, and focus more on ideas, stories, and feelings. While autobiographies tell a whole life story, memoirs focus on specific times or experiences or ideas. 

Then there’s the question of audience: my daughters? my extended family? the world at large? or maybe just me? 

I’ve wrestled with issues of privacy and telling my own stories without hurting other people who were/are part of those stories. I’ve spent dozens of hours rereading fat files of old letters typed on onionskin paper and dozens of journals that alternate between fascinating and cringe-worthy. 

Now I have hundreds of stories and well over 100,000 words of memoir-in-progress. I began to organize some of it as “Letters to My Daughters.”  I proposed to myself a less-personal theme of “Rural Route 3.” I arranged smaller pieces in more-or-less chronological, sort-of-autobiographical sections. “The clouds are blue” is one of my earliest memories, along with “Learning to read upside down.” Life on the farm includes “Boxelder tree,” “Silage,” and “The day Dad had his heart attack.” Those, and many more, are filed in the “Growing Up” section,. Later sections include “Leaving home,” “The Law Years,” “Getting to Children” and “Winding Down.” I have worked, reworked, and rewritten some material into several 4-7,000 word essays: “Ask Not,” “One in Three,” “Rural Route 3,” “Faith Journey,” “Aunties and Archetypes,” and “Ninety in the Shade.” 

Seven years into the project, I still do not know whether anyone (other than myself) will find value in all of this or want to read it. That matters less to me now than it did in the beginning. If I have written all of this for myself alone, that is a project well worth my time and energy.