What's got me so ponderous is, I'm creating a class on memoir for Perelandra College, and at the same time beginning to pull together a collection of articles, hoping they can become the rough draft or the outline for a memoir.
My question isn't some James Frey issue about whether I should include a blockbuster scene that never happened. And it's not about distrusting memory. I'm comfortable writing scenes and thoughts from the long past as best I can recall them. If I later discovered it was really Gretl who said something I attributed to Harry, I would lose no sleep over the error.
What's got me stumped is bigger than detail, and more thematic.
My life is rocky at best these days. For now, at least, I don't intend to tell what happened to land me here. I'll just confess to struggling with depression and ask, because our past is the story of what got us to where we are, can I honestly conclude the memoir in the uplifting way I would prefer to, by ending the story at a time when I felt on top of the world?
Suppose I were a tycoon, and the theme of my life was that diligence pays off. Suppose I made a billion dollars, then lost it all. Is the truth that diligence made me a billion dollars or that it made me lose a billion dollars? It all depends when I end the story, right? Suppose I go all the way and end with losing a billion, then publish the book and make millions on royalties. Does that make my story a lie?
What I'm asking is, how can we honestly know the theme of our life story or stories until after we die?
I can think of a half-dozen pat answers for this dilemma, but none of them seem to work.
4 comments:
HI Ken, I'm just returning from a weeklong writing workshop on "THe Uses of Memory" for memoir taught by Honor Moore, and this very question came up...with no pat answers. Good Luck!
In other news, I'm setting up the second year of the Wine n Writers series at Tango Wine Company (this year we had David Brin, Susan Vreeland, Caitlin Rother, Laurel Carona, among others)...It's the last Wednesday of each month, from 6-8pm, author speaks for 15-20 minutes, the rest is fine wine, conversation and book sales. I'm now booking April through October 2010. Let me know! Kdiamant@kpbs.org.
Thanks!
Kathi Diamant
Sort of like a diet writer who writes a book about losing weight . . . then gains it back. Does it undo the validity of the weight-loss book?
Or maybe that's not it at all, but that's what your post brought to mind.
Ken, I enjoyed your posts.
One thing I learned from one of the marketing classes I took under Randy Ingermanson is nobody cares about you or your book. I think that is particularly true of memoir. The Christian world won't publish them unless you are famous. An agent will hardly look at it.
But my feeling is if the memoirs of all the people in the Bible had not been recorded, we wouldn't have the story of what God has done for us. If we didn't have the memoirs of people like George Muller and Corrie Tin Boom, what a loss it would to Christendom.
I am sure Corrie Tin Boom did not write her books to make lots of money. When she first came to America, she couldn't even get a speaking engagement. And while I don't know that George Muller ever wrote a memoir, he kept extremely detailed financial records of all the money given to him and died almost penniless, even though he had received an incredible sum of money in donations. But his passion came through in his record keeping, just as Corrie's passion came through in her memoir. And that's the secret. Passion.
The point is, I think as Christians, we need to tell the story, focus on process, and let God be in charge of the outcome.
My memoir Children of Dreams did not set the world on fire in book sales, but the feedback I have received from people that did read it, whom I did not know, were enough of a confirmation that I had touched lives and made a difference.
One couple had decided to begin the international adoption process from reading my book. So one more orphan will find a home and have a chance at life -- and to know the Savior.
I am reminded that Jesus died for each one of us, and He would have died for just one person if God had only created one person.
If what we write is recognized by just one person as good, or beauty, can we be content with that? Is that success? It's a tough question.
Even if the life we change is only our own, but it brings us into a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, I think it's worth every ounce of sweat we put into it. But that's just me.
Lori,
I'll add to your thoughtful comments that while we write our memoir, if we devote ourselves to honest appraisal of our lives, we begin to see patterns and new angles that teach us about ourselves and about human nature, and perhaps about how God works in and with us.
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