Writing Memoir: Avoid These Common Mistakes

Oh dear! Such a mess.

You’d like to write a memoir. You’ve been thinking about it for a year or more. You’ve been journaling for years or just writing down family stories as you remember them. You’ve been through trauma or pain and come out on the other side. And now you desire to turn these memories and experiences into a memoir.

Great! Let's do this! But when the memoir writing process begins, it often comes as a surprise that this creative nonfiction genre is more akin to fiction than nonfiction. Think about it. There’s a main character—you. And supporting characters—friends, family, co-workers, doctors, ministers. There’s a plot—something you’ve learned after something you’ve been through. And suddenly, turning your personal journey into an engaging book seems a little trickier.

Four mistakes that often throw first-time memoir writers for a loop:

1. Trying to cover too much

2. Struggling with tense

3. Faking your voice

4. Striking the wrong tone

1. Trying to cover too much

Without question, this is the most common mistake first-time memoir writers make. Notice I did not say “writing too much.” This problem is not too many words or too many pages. I said “trying to cover too much.” The remedy is not to “write less.” What is?

To combat this mistake, I first want to remind you that a memoir is not an autobiography. An autobiography is intended to cover the whole of the author’s life from birth up to the time of the writing, with the primary purpose to tell you everything about the author.

A memoir serves a different purpose. Odd as it might sound, a memoir isn’t about the author. A memoir is about something and the author is its illustration—an episode or series of related episodes in the author’s life that results in personal growth, self-revelation, knowledge, or wisdom.

How does a memoir writer end up writing too much? Face it, some writers are just plain verbose. Why say in two words what you could say in twenty? But, truthfully, that’s not the most common reason, this is: not having a clear, focused theme for their memoir.

What is the theme of a memoir? To put it as simply as possible, it is the answer to the question, “What is it about?” I know what you’re thinking—that sounds like the plot or storyline. No, that’s why this is tricky. Here’s an example of a storyline:

Growing up in a home with an overworked, single mom and as the sister of four, rambunctious, older brothers, who all led lives of crime and did time in prison.

That’s the story. So, what’s the theme?

How watching each of my four brothers make bad choices with their lives emboldened me to become a social worker and help others avoid that path.

Can you see the distinction? If you don’t have a clearly defined theme, which serves as signposts on your memoir journey, you can find yourself wandering aimlessly throughout the entirety of your life. With a clearly defined theme—the lesson you learned from the experiences of your life—your writing stays on track and will impart your life lessons to your readers.

2. Struggling With Tense

An issue that new memoir writers often ask about is tense. The three basic tenses are past, present, and future—I wrote, I write, I will write—and I’ll leave it at that so this doesn’t become a grammar lesson.

Remember, a memoir is not an autobiography. The most boring memoirs are those that are 100% chronological. Moving elegantly backward and forward through time is the hallmark of an interesting memoir, but it’s also where newbie memoir writers get tripped up. Here is a rule: there must always be a now. Your now tells your readers where and when you are in your life, the place and time of your life from which you are writing the memoir. No matter how you time travel, you must always return to your now.

When you write about what has already happened in your life, use the past tense. Writing about the past in the past tense makes obvious sense and is the way people would naturally talk when sharing a memory. And you can share a memory within a memory. You can share a related story from 1973 as a memory within a story from 1994.

Use the present tense to comment on the past. Come back to your now to reflect, analyze, ponder, and discuss the feelings you have now about these memories. This, too, is how people would talk in every-day conversation.

One more word of advice: Don’t interject present-tense comments into the recollection of an event; it breaks the flow of the storytelling. Finish your reminiscence then return to the now and reflect.

3. Faking Your Voice

Voice and tone are intrinsically connected in memoir. They are different but they must work in unison for your writing to resonate with your readers. Let’s discuss voice first.

Voice is like your fingerprint. Each of us has a voice when we speak aloud. It is our style of speaking—our own unique vocabulary, our own way of ordering our words, and our unique inflections (the rhythm of our speech).

Where most first-time memoirists fail is in their choice of voice. This is due, in large part, to the idea that our writing must sound somehow more academic or flowery or complex than our every-day speech. Nothing could be further from the truth with most forms of writing but especially with memoir. Authenticity, truthfulness, and honesty should reign supreme in the telling of a life’s story. Use your own unique voice. Be present as yourself in your memoir!

The voice of your memoir must correspond with the tone.

4. Striking the Wrong Tone

The tone of a piece of writing is the mood the writing creates—lighthearted, somber, triumphant, grateful, aggrieved, and so on. The tone is the pervasive feeling your audience will have while reading your memoir. Your story might be one of painful, dark, or frightening experiences. But that does not mean your tone must be dark nor your voice heavy.

Tone can change within a memoir; fearful and uncertain in memories, brave and resolute in the now.

As you think about your voice, consider your audience. If you have been through adversity, pain, or trauma—and who hasn’t—is darkness the tone you wish to present throughout? If you have matured, become wiser, gained self-knowledge and self-confidence through your experiences, adopt a tone of triumph and empowerment when you return to the now. Present yourself, the author of this memoir, to your audience from the point of view of the person who have become, not the person you were.

Be Genuine, Be Kind

Readers know when they’re being deceived. Don’t adopt a tone of self-congratulation or self-aggrandizement. Don’t rant and rave, and never, ever, seek revenge through a memoir. Step forth as mature, empathetic, and wiser. These are the elements of an enjoyable memoir.

Is It Time to Write Your Memoir?

Having her AHA moment!

By mingling on social media with potential memoirists, I often hear it said that they need to get their stories out to the world; they’ve been through pain, trauma, and loss and they want to share their journeys. Things have been difficult. Life has sucked. Time to write a memoir.

But I want you to ask yourself, why? Why do you want to share your story? If this question seems flippant or insulting, I apologize. Let me explain.

The main point of this article is to help you determine if you are ready—mentally and emotionally—to write a memoir. I have touched on this briefly in two of my blog posts, Writing About Trauma: What Memoir Is and Isn’t and Heal and Grow: The Power of Journaling.

As I said in Writing About Trauma, memoir gets a bad rap as the Trauma Olympics. Death and grief. Physical or sexual abuse. Addiction. Mental illness. Incarceration. These are topics commonly identified as memoir themes. The publishing market is saturated with these kinds of memoir and publishers don’t want anymore.

Every adult has experienced some kind of loss, pain, grief, heartache, or disease. I personally can put a check mark in front of each of these. Having had pain or trauma in your life does not automatically demand that you produce a memoir about it.

Memoir is about transcendence. It’s not about what you went through but what you learned as a result of what you went through.

I can't emphasize this enough! If you are still in the midst of a traumatic experience (an ugly divorce, child custody battle, rehab, disease treatment) or if you are still processing and coming to terms with what you experienced, I contend you are not ready to write this story. Good memoir requires time and distance so you can be as objective and honest as possible about yourself and what you experienced.

I will repeat this quote from my article Writing About Trauma:

The now perspective is what makes memoir different from fiction; you explain how the story shaped you by weaving together the then and now. ~~Cindi Michael, December 2016, Writer’s Digest. Cindi is the author of The Sportscaster’s Daughter: A Memoir.

Memoir writing is not therapy. A memoir is not a therapeutic journal. If you can’t produce a “then and now” perspective, if you are not at a point from which you can reflect on your experience and impart a lesson of growth and revelation for your readers, it’s not time for a memoir. Your readers deserve a payoff—they should read your story and come away with a moral, lesson, revelation, answers to questions, a strategy for them to mirror. If not, what was the point?

Continue to write because writing is a fantastically healing endeavor. Journal. Blog. See a therapist who employs writing as part of the healing regimen. Join a support group and share your writings with group members.

But a memoir? Only when you have your aha moment—a moment of sudden realization, inspiration, insight, recognition, or comprehension—are you finally ready.

Don't Get Mired Down in Your Memoir

Mired down in your writing? Get unstuck.

I want to begin this post with a heartfelt congratulations to anyone who is not a writer by training or profession but who is attempting to write a book—any kind of book. Writing is hard. That’s not an original thought; it is a well-known fact that writing is a difficult process, even for those who have an education that focused on writing or who have written throughout their career. Simply being comfortable with good grammar and having excelled in school with book reports and the infamous five-paragraph essay are just the most basic building blocks for creating book-length prose.

Fortunately, I had a knack for stringing together interesting sentences and compelling paragraphs at a relatively young age. Math and science? Meh. My university majors of Mass Communications and English were the only two tracks that made any sense to me, at least at that time.

But for the last three months or so, I have been tasked with ghostwriting a memoir for a man with whom I have nothing in common; a middle-aged man of color, a retired Army veteran with twenty-one years of service, three deployments to Iraq, a traumatic brain injury and severe PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). I cannot personally relate to any aspect of who he is or what he’s been through. But I’m determined to do his service and sacrifice justice, tell his story with empathy, and let his experiences produce a survival guide for others in similar circumstances. That is my promise to him and to myself.

I have a habit of starting my blog posts with a personal story that in my mind is connected to the true topic of the post. I’m doing it here again. I am struggling with this ghostwriting in a way I’m unfamiliar with. I spend an hour at a time staring at pages of notes I’ve transcribed from this man’s audio recordings, trying to make sense of his war experiences, timelines, injuries, and challenges in retirement so I can organize them in a way that will make an inspiring read.

Recently, I asked a social media memoir-writing group why it has taken some of them years to write their memoirs. I will add, the way in which I worded the question put some of them on the defensive, because they felt I was implying that a memoir is something they should be able to crank out in a few months. Even though it was a misreading of my intent, I apologized. But I do believe that if all aspects of the writing process are perfectly in place, they could produce a good first draft in a matter of months, not years. In other words, in a perfect world, they could. But few of them are writing in a perfect world.

My post garnered about eighty original comments plus comments about comments. From these, I identified four issues at play for those who say they have been writing their memoirs for anywhere from two to ten years. These are the recurring obstacles:

• The writers are creating book-length prose for the first time and have no formal training or career experience with extensive writing projects, so they are learning how to write as they go. And the struggle is taking time.

• The memoir is dealing with traumatic events in their lives, such as disease, abuse (physical and sexual), addiction, suicide attempts, and mental illness, causing the writer to unpack this baggage slowly and painfully.

• Other aspects of life are interfering with their writing: full-time jobs, children, school, or family issues such as caring for elderly parents.

• They have no support or are facing active resistance (including threats) from ex-partners, spouses, family members, or others who might appear in the memoir.

The other issue that emerged is that some of them are frustrated and unhappy about how long it’s taking to finish, while others don’t care and have an “it takes as long as it takes” attitude. I’m trying to formulate a process that will help the ones who really want to get their memoirs finished, either because they just want to be done with it or because, more importantly I think, they have a story to tell that they know will be helpful to others in similar situations. They desire to “do good” for others with their memoirs. I want to produce a formula that will guide those who are already writing as well as those who are still thinking about it.

Looking at the list of challenges for these folks, I plan to write a series of blog articles that will address each one, with the hope of helping writers make progress and get off the fence about starting their personal stories. My agenda looks like this:

• Resources to provide training and guidance with writing skills. I can’t teach talent, but a collection of books, websites, and online courses to improve your writing are achievable tasks.

• Determining if you are ready to write your memoir. This might sound contrary to helping someone produce a memoir, but I feel strongly that the writer must be able to determine if they are truly ready to write about trauma. Or if it’s just too soon.

• Learning to manage your time to make writing a habit in your life. Many authors have documented their techniques for making the writing process part of their daily routine. I’ll share them.

• Dealing with the ramifications of resistance to your writing. I cannot fix personal problems and I will not disregard your fears, but I’ll collect some personal and basic legal advice that might give you comfort.

Like many of you, I will write these blog articles as I can after my work and personal obligations are complete. Let’s see how I do.