Writing any kind book can be a daunting task, but writing a memoir comes with its own set of specific hurdles that fiction, self-help, and academic writers don’t necessarily have face. In helping our coaching clients and Memoir Method group, we have seen these memoir mistakes come up time and time again, so we are going to address some of the major missteps memoirs writers can easily take that may weaken their book or even have them give up on the project altogether.
Unfinished books are a tragedy. For this week’s video and blog topic, Amanda and I are talking 5 of these important memoir mistakes that can derail projects and how to shift your mindset to avoid them.
Sometimes when you don’t know how to start, it can stall your dreams for months, even years. We have helped so many writers not only get started but see the project through the very end! We have created a great free resource to help you make a plan to finally tell the story that lives in your heart. Download the free Memoir Method Checklist today to get started.
Why some memoir mistakes make it too easy to give up
Everyone makes mistakes—that is part of life and it very much part of the writing process. There has never been a published author who didn’t make mistakes along the way. But there are many, many would-be authors that have put aside their projects, even though their story meant so much to them and could have meant so much to readers as well.
This week, we’re focusing on the kind of memoir mistakes that might make your book one of those unfinished ones, but that can be avoided with some deliberate mindset shifts throughout the process. What all these kinds of memoir mistakes have in common is that they take your eyes off the real reason why you wanted to write your story in the first place, and get bogged down by secondary concerns that overwhelm the process—but don’t actually serve your story.
#1 Focusing on chronology rather than story
When you are thinking about all the things in your life that have led you to the reason why you want to write your book, you can likely trace things back all the way to some pretty memories. It’s tempting to start in those earliest memories, but your readers are not going to be attracted to your memoir because they want to know your whole life story from beginning to end. (That’s an autobiography, and people only read biographies of people who they already know the names of and want to learn the real reason they broke up with Sean Penn.) Readers will be attracted to your story because of your core topic and the relatable message you want to share, so starting in time as close to that core topic makes for a stronger structure. We have also discussed in previous blogs of where to end your memoir, and the same philosophy applies.
That is not to say you aren’t going to include those important childhood memories, but that they are mostly likely going to be in flashback. For example, Wendy Davis’s memoir, The Fight You Don’t See, tells the story of her underdog run for a state senate seat in Utah. There are many scenes throughout the book of her young memories: seeing the challenger explode, hearing Bill Clinton speak as a young girl in Arkansas, and traveling through missionary work. But where her story starts is with filing her intent to run, because that is moment where the action of her core topic begins.
#2 Getting stuck in fact-checking
In a previous post, we have discussed why truth matters more than facts in memoir in terms of that finished project, but fact-checking concerns can also get trip you up in the process of developing and drafting your story, too.
That is not to say we are encourage you to lie or make things up; memoir is after all nonfiction. Rather, when drafting—whether you’re outlining or writing a chapter—your primary concern should be what your own truth is that you are trying to convey first. Exact dates, lines of dialogue, the song that was playing, the color of the walls—all of these are provable facts, but they are also details. You can spend hours digging into your pictures, your memories, and google images searches trying to nail down all these little details.
While these explorations can be great for jogging your memory and reliving the experience, they can also get you caught up in the weeds and become a procrastination technique.
Imagine spending a whole writing session fact-checking a scene and then realizing that scene doesn’t actually contribute to the theme of the chapter as much as you thought it would. Then the matter of cutting that scene isn’t just a matter of doing what’s best for the book, it’s admitting that all that work was wasted. That can be so demoralizing, that it stops people from making progress.
Focus on the real, personal truth you want to convey and make that your guidance. You can always fact-check in revision.
#3 Using the book to get revenge
Many writers come to writing a book because they have come through something very difficult or traumatic, and those stories often come with their own real- life villains. The villains in our story can put up two traps, 1) we worry about burning bridges as we’ve covered in a previous blog, or 2) we become focused on getting back at them.
Your book is about you and your journey. If you get lost in focusing on what someone did to you, how you want to be vindicated by showing how terrible they are, then you’re focusing on the wrong place and putting your energy into the wrong thing.
When that person did that horrible thing, how did you feel? What did it do to you? How did it change the way you understood the world? What was the truth behind that encounter? The truth is always much larger, more complex, and frankly, more interesting than that person doing something to you. There always is something that’s more interesting and it should be heart of the memoir. Your audience will still understand who the bad guy of the interaction is, but the whole book will have a more honest and nuanced feel to it.
If every time you sit down to write, all you can feel is anger to that person and the accumulative effect is making it hard to work on the book at all, it might be time to take a step back from it. It doesn’t have to mean you’ll never write it, but you might need give yourself space and time to heal before diving into that creative work.
#4 Trying to please everyone
The flip side of problem number 3 is getting bogged down by people pleasing. No book can have an audience of everyone. Part of what can be very mentally tricky about memoir is your audience may include people who were also there at the time. One of the easiest ways to get stalled is trying to make sure everyone sees and remembers things exactly the way you do and felt about it the same way as you did. If you try to get everyone’s input on every memory you have, you will lose your own voice and perspective in the fray. Remember—your memoir is about your story and your truth. The same objective experience can have different meanings for everyone in the room. The purpose of story telling it to share yours.
The second way this can crop up is a bit more practical. As many villains there may have been in your story, there will also be people who have helped and guided you. You might feel obligated to ensure every single one is given due space and named specifically in your story—but just because they helped you doesn’t mean their presence as a character figure will help the story. If you think of people you want to include in your story for the primary purpose of thanking them, keep a running list of those names and reasons, and put it in your acknowledgements. That’s what it’s there for.
#5 Trying to go it alone
We have written before about the myth of the solitary author, but it bears repeating. Finding a community of support is so important to help keep you going. Where you are now may not be where you are in 8-10 months, and it takes at least that long to develop a full-length book project. When no one really knows you’re working on it, and you feel alone in caring about it, it can be so, so easy to lose momentum over that span of time.
So often when writers come to us for coaching or join our Memoir Method group, they describe a very similar cycle they have been going through, sometimes for years. They get excited about the idea, they get started in a somewhat haphazard way, and then something gets in the way and they put it aside for 2, 4 months or even a year. Then they dug it out again, remembered with renewed passion why they wanted to share that story, and start again, maybe this time with a bit more organization and method. But then—something comes up and it falls off the weekly to do list, and then before you know it, it’s been another six months, and there’s no new progress.
Does this cycle familiar? This cycle is so easy to fall into when you don’t have a community of support and connection to others who share your investment in your book. Finding someone to encourage you and hold you (gently) accountable is a game-changer for so many writers.
Happy writing!
