#writing memoirs

[carolinemillerbooks]

New Post has been published on Books by Caroline Miller

New Post has been published on https://www.booksbycarolinemiller.com/musings/everyone-has-a-story-to-tell-2/

Everyone Has A Story To Tell

My essay below first appeared in the ebook magazine Women Writers, Women’s Books on July 27, 2020.  This is a reprint of that article.   EVERYONE HAS A STORY TO TELL “Everyone has a story to tell,” said the woman seated opposite me at my retirement center. Somewhere in her 80s, she had the beauty of a Gibson Girl.  A cloud of silver hair framed her pale complexion, and her eyes were the size of blue pebbles, though the color had faded.  As she told me her story, her eyes strayed into the distance, as if images of her past were being thrown upon a far wall.   I drained my coffee cup, not daring to make a sound, while she recounted stories of her youth–a period during World War II when, as a dancer, she entertained American troops on the Western front. Though well into my 70s, I sat like a child before her, open-mouthed, dazzled by her adventures. She was proving her truth. Everyone has a story to tell. The question for most of us is how to begin and whom to address.  Are the memoirs we write meant for friends and family?  Or should the public be included? That decision is crucial from the start. Friends and family are a willing audience. Relatives are curious about their predecessors. Why did Uncle Herman stop speaking to his brother? When did Cousin Ella become fearful of ponds?  Grandchildren will turn the pages of a memoir salaciously, wondering if their grandparents ever kissed. A family memoir is often linear in structure.  The course of events unfold as they were lived–first this, then this, and then this.  The vignettes march across the pages like a troop of well-rehearsed drummers. Introspection isn’t deep, though we may learn that Grandpa Rutherford favored eggs for breakfast because his mother served him porridge as a child. Family members who hunger for tidbits about their heritage will tolerate a linear construction. The general public is likely to yawn. For them, a memoir must venture into a wider sea. No longer a teller of family secrets, the author sets a course for human understanding. What makes us laugh or cry? What dreams do we hold in common? Organizing insights like these invite a structure more varied than a linear one.  Book lovers who attempt a public memoir will have an easier time organizing their thoughts than the occasional reader. Bookworms make good writers. Call it transmigration or the process of osmosis, but those of us with well-worn library cards have been inhaling the writer’s skill simply by observing it—the way an infant learns to stand by mimicking its parents For those of us less well-read, organizing material according to themes is a good plan: humorous stories, stories of disappointment, or those about overcoming difficulties.  James Harriot’s format in All Creatures Great and Small also works.  He salts sad stories between several happy ones. Celebrities can ignore my advice and suffer no consequences. People will buy a famous person’s book out of curiosity or because they admire the individual.  If the piece is boring, they will pass it along as a form of revenge to a neighbor–the guy whose dog likes to pee on your zinnias. Most importantly, a memoir writer must be honest. Too many self-congratulatory remarks smack of narcissism. Expose your mistakes so your audience learns from you.  If they do, they will love you for it.  “We’re all mad here,” said the Cheshire Cat. Everyone has a story to tell.  If yours helps someone to reflect, laugh or shed a tear, you will have mastered the art of memoir. My upcoming memoir, to be published on November 1, 2023, makes a stab at all of the above.  The narrative begins with an incident at my retirement center which provokes memories of a time in my earlier twenties when I spent four years abroad. In 1959, the ink was barely dry on my college diploma when I followed my fiancé to England. After two years spent struggling to adapt to life in a new country, the man I adored broke our engagement. Rudderless and far from home, I joined an English acquaintance to teach in East Africa. I knew nothing about the political turbulence in that part of the world, an era when white colonial empires struggled to maintain their grip on indigenous populations.  By the time I stepped off the boat in Cape Town, UHURU’s freedom cry had ignited the land. Even so, I little realized my coming-of-age story would mirror the joy, suffering, and danger of the birth of new nations.  By the time I returned to the United States, I was a  stranger in my country. I’d been transformed by my experiences yet well knew the value of making human connections. Now, with my hair turned silver, I’ve chosen to retrace the journey that became a pilgrimage.  Will readers connect with my story? Like every artist, I stand with my heart in my mouth awaiting their decision.

[fascinationstreetmp3]

ALICE

[myjetpack]

My cartoon for today’s Guardian Books

[feral-ballad]

Camonghne Felix, from Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation

[Text ID: “I loved him, and it gave me a fever.”]

[playypause]

[inbabylontheywept]

The Condom Bomber

The crux of the story is Brother Dean. Brother Dean was…is…a hate preacher. Red or blue, everyone agreed on that. His origins and his motivations, those were a little more mysterious. Different groups had their own legends. I had a class with a guy that was part of the campus pro-life movement, and the tale he gave me is the one that I give the most credence to. According to him, Brother Dean had started out as a “normal” pro-life preacher. He’d gone around campus, led parades, given speeches… And then he’d gotten punched in the face.

This led to a lawsuit against the school. Something about failing to provide adequate protection? The main result was that he got something like half a mil. Half a mil is an incredible amount if you’re still working, but he’d tried to use the money to fund a sort of pro-life career, and it had just… trickled down. Ten years later he was running dead low on funds, and had taken to the particularly dumb strategy of trying to get punched in the face again. You know. For economic reasons. It had become kind of a vicious cycle: He’d started off saying some objectionable shit to try and goad someone into taking the punch. The worse the shit he said was, the harder it became for him to find work doing anything else, and the harder it became for him to find work doing anything else, the less he had to lose by saying really objectionable shit. Throw in two years of living on ramen, and he was so desperate to get punched that he was quoting the Westboro Baptists. If you know, you know. The pro-life group, to their credit, hated him the most out of anyone. They viewed him as the ultimate sellout, someone who was actively making their positions and beliefs look worse by the day, solely for his own enrichment. The other conservative groups held him in the same regard. The rest of the campus hated him for simpler reasons. It would be difficult to find anyone more detested anywhere else on site. Brother Dean’s antithesis was the Trojan Warrior. TW was a normal student by day, but maybe once a month or so he’d don his hoplite armor and roam around, handing out free condoms. Trojan condoms. It was kind of his shtick. Between the costume, and the whole character that he had going on, most people didn’t really recognize his alter ego. I myself am pretty good with faces, so one day I noticed he was behind me in the foodcourt and decided to thank him by paying for his smoothie. Small tangent, but if you’re looking to get good stories, buying lunches for interesting people works like magic. TW decided that he was going to thank me for thanking him by giving me something like 10 feet of condom roll. I was mortified, aggressively single, and on SSRI’s. He was not sure how many of those were permanent. I wasn’t either. He wound up giving me just a handful, and said that if nothing else, they could probably be used as water balloons. I accepted. Who doesn’t like water balloons?

I finished my lunch with the warrior and left, considering targets for the "balloons". I passed by Brother Dean near the main commons and had my lightbulb moment. I spent a few minutes watching him from a distance, trying to find the optimal angle to get him without getting caught on camera (he always had someone filing in the background, it was a necessary thing for his hopeful future lawsuit). The time delay was useful for helping me realize that it really wasn't worth it. The sun had been bearing down so hard that the glue in my shoes had melted, and getting him wet would be a favor that day. 

So, mildly disappointed, I shelved my dream and left. 

A week later the monsoons hit. I left one class and ran to a campus computer commons to try and get some shelter and study between classes. Just before I got through the door, I saw Brother Dean, umbrella in hand, setting up his speaker and mic. He wasn't technically allowed this far into campus (the commons were owned by the city) but he'd gone to where his audience was and security was probably holed up somewhere cozy. I could hardly blame them. 

I made it up to the second floor and started studying when the mic picked up. All glass buildings are not very soundproof. He was loud, and he was annoying, and he was outside a library, under a balcony, and-

And I had condoms. Water balloon condoms. 

And he was under a balcony. 

I put my laptop away, pulled out my condom roll, and went to the bathroom. I wasn’t sure how big a condom could actually stretch, so I just kept filling it until it was about the size of basketball. Maybe a smaller watermelon? And thus armed, I waddled my way out into the halls. I cannot emphasize enough just how unsubtle this was. I was cradling this big, overfilled condom like some sort of phallic ghost baby, and it was so heavy that I sort of had to squat as I went. People saw me. Lots of people saw me. I passed by one room full of computer science students, all learning C++, and three of them waved at me. And I waved back in that my-arms-are-full-but-I’m-excited-to-see-you-too way, where you jut your wrist up a little bit and flap your hand around excitedly. I did, eventually, make it to the balcony. The building’s high ceilings made the second-floor thing kind of a misnomer: I was easily forty feet up. I scooched my way to the edge, and the view I had… it was perfect. Brother Dean was directly underneath, thank God. If he’d been even seven or eight feet out, I’m not sure if I could’ve shotput the condom-bomb far enough to hit him directly. Better yet his cameraman was only a few feet away from him, far too close to catch any action going up 40 feet above. I managed to wrestle the payload onto the balcony, and with a gentle push, I sent it and Dean to destiny. I realized that I’d made a mistake almost as soon as the condom began to fall. You know that sound that bombs make in cartoons, that long drawn out whistle? The condom made that sound. I had a second education in the seriousness of my mistake when the condom hit Dean’s umbrella. It did not pop. Of course it didn’t pop. I had no experience with condoms, I swear to you, I promise, I did not know how much they could stretch. You can fit your whole leg into them. You can fit them over whole park benches. A gallon and a half of water was nothing compared to that. It broke Dean’s umbrella. It hit the top, and it snapped the stem like a twig, and then-

Violence. Unspeakable violence. It clipped Dean’s shoulder and stretched down to his knees before recoiling back to its original shoulder height. It did not bounce. It floated in space, no wasted energy in the collision. One hundred percent of the kinetic energy, all 3300 Joules of it, were discharged into this sad wretch of a man. He did not collapse. There was no time for that. He rotated on his axis. It was as if the hand of God had reached down and grabbed him about his waist, only to twist. In a fraction of a second, his head filled the space where his ass had been and his ass filled the space where his head had been, and then his cheek, carried by the shuriken motion of his body, slammed into the pavement with a noise like Shaq slam dunking a porkchop. Maybe wetter.

He did not move.

I panicked.

I want to make it clear: I did not mean to assault this man. I meant to get him wet and embarrassed. But I also have to confess that this was a beating. Mike Tyson himself can only put about 1600 Joules into one of his punches, and if he hit me I would bounce off five walls before I fell. I would not wish 3300 Joules upon anyone.

I walked into the building and sat myself in the back of the C++ class. The people next to, to my immense and eternal gratitude, did not question why I was wet.

A minute later, Brother Dean stormed into the building with his microphone.

He yelled. He screamed. He hollered. He informed the entire world that he had been assaulted, with a condom, by someone on the second floor. I was ecstatic that he was alive. 

Every person in that class knew who had brought this hell upon them. Every single one of them knew it was me. And if I’d done this to someone else, some Steven Crowder, some Ben Shapiro, someone would’ve thrown me to the wolves. It would have only taken one person in that room of sixty. But Brother Dean was hated by everyone, literally everyone, and so the entire class sat in silence.

Some of that silence was gleeful, and some of it was bored, and some of it, a very small amount, was directly disapproving, but even the disapproving silence carried an understanding. A note of, “Yes, yes, that was very irresponsible, and you should not do that again, but who could blame you? Something needed to happen. Not that something, but…something.”

Security could be given grace to ignore the man when it was raining, and he was just outside the building, but they were not given such grace when he was inside with a microphone. Just a few short minutes later, a golfcart pulled up, and he was summarily marched out. There was maybe a minute of silence after that before the professor announced that his class was not open to visitors.

I left. He’d made his point.

It was a few weeks before I saw Brother Dean again, and his black eye still hadn’t healed all the way when I did. He was, however, still preaching the same old things as always. Percussive maintenance works better on vacuum tubes than human brains. I will say that he definitely made a point to stay away from balconies after that. And the next time it rained, I actually went out to watch him put his speaker and his mic into the back of a wagon and wheel it off the campus.

It appeared that he’d developed some opinions about the kind of weather he was willing to preach hate in.

[vaperarmand]

i’m literally soo addicted to the idea that armand continues to visit daniel and make him forget for decades after they first get together. armand needs to read everything daniel’s ever written and needs to own signed copies of all of his books and needs to be there in the background from all his major life events. he’s there as a shoulder to cry on at the end of his first marriage, and again at the second. he’s the stranger at the bar who daniel tells about his daughters even though his relationship with them is crumbling. i need armand to be obsessed with daniel in every way he can manage and daniel to reciprocate every time. i need daniel to start aging and armand to be more excited every time he sees signs of it, and daniel — before he remembers — is confused and flattered and fond of the beautiful young man who curiously combs through his gray hairs and prods at his new wrinkles. and every time daniel remembers he's more angry, more hurt, more willing to beg (or demand) for armand not to do it again. and it gets more difficult for armand to do it every time, but that doesn't stop him. why should daniel remember how much he loves him?

[itsmedrawpower]

When do we start?

[dailydccomics]

the adventures of Robin and Superman Batman/Superman: World's Finest #30 by Mark Waid and Gleb Melnikov

[krabbu]

[williamverse]

There was a storm during my first journey to Dunwall. Thick dark clouds covering the skies, waves crushing into ship's sides. Standing on the ship's deck, I've witnessed something I'll never forget: a Leviathan, rising from the water's surface. It felt like for that spare moment the time had stopped. A giant whale-like creature cut through the water with his fins, glistening against the cloudy sky with his dark skin. Seagulls looked like nothing but countless specks floating around him. His powerful body was covered in countless scars with the sight of which I wondered: how many of them were left by other animals and how many - by humans? Beneath his skin - fat, powering his huge body. Hundreds of other whales were killed for that precious fat, later to be turned into whale oil, that would soon power one of the ships like the one I was boarding. But he was still alive, with his power still flowing through his body, only for him to use. How many nets has he torn? How many hooks had grappled his flesh and than torn out of it with a mighty tail's swing? How will he die: in whalers' hands, getting his flesh turned into food and his fat turned into fuel, or will he die of age, turning his body into a home for a new ecosystem? I saw his eyes, full of pain and hatred, but also of intelligence.

He had enough power to turn over the ship and drown everyone boarding it. But he didn't do that, diving back into the water and swimming away instead. Maybe, if he was trying to avenge himself and other whales, driven by hatred, he wouldn't be any better than humans? I didn't think about that back then, not how I think about it now, after all those years of trial my fate has set for me. In this realm I inherited Leviathan's philosophy.

[Excerpt from Lord-Protector's memoirs - by Corvo Attano]

[watchoutforintellect]

easily becoming, through an open eye, monstrous and beautiful.

Patti Smith, from Woolgathering

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Memoir

You don’t have to be famous or infamous to write a memoir that engages an audience and shares a powerful truth about life.

You simply need to be willing. The rest is all technique.

Memoir 

Usually revolves around one or maybe even a series of memories.

It is rarely ever all-encompassing.

It focuses on one seminal event that changes the course of that person’s life.

It’s heavily thematic, meaning that there’s usually one subject.

Often this is the moral, i.e. the lesson learned.

Can be about an ordinary existence told with profound insight.

Examples: Lesson you learned from living this part of your life’s story

Never compare yourself to others.

Be kind whenever possible.

Never take no for an answer.

Intuition can save your life.

You create your own destiny.

There’s humor in the small things.

It’s never too late to live the life you’ve always wanted.

Using Real Names

Write your first draft exactly as it happened, using all real names and places.

Wait until you're ready to sit down to your second draft (or third, fourth...) to decide what you're going to do about the name issue.

Before publishing your memoir, get feedback from others and, if necessary, consult an attorney. It's advisable to get signed permissions if you use real names.

Advice from Noel Diem at Law Street:

Disguise as much personal information as you can.

Try not to describe physical appearances; or change physical appearances.

Do not use biographical information to describe why a person did something.

Use a pseudonym if at all possible.

Talk to a lawyer before you publish the book.

Source ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References Crime ⚜ Horror ⚜ Fantasy ⚜ Mystery ⚜ Speculative Biology

[feral-ballad]

Camonghne Felix, from Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation

[Text ID: “I’m nearly inside out with the blue light of grief. I feel like I’ve been blown through, some invisible glow casting my shadow on the wall. I can’t wait think, I can’t see, I can’t breathe.”]

[reverie-quotes]

Pacifism has perhaps never existed as a real thing. What exists is the ability, or not, to distinguish between forms of violence.

— Andreas Malm, How to Blow Up a Pipeline

[inbabylontheywept]

Kevin vs. Quantum Mechanics

This is an autobiographical piece. Names have been changed for anonymity, but it's otherwise left be. ---

The class's first suspicion of Kevin was that he had, somehow, cheated his way up to this course. He just seemed perpetually confused, and strangely antagonistic of the professor. The weirdest example of this was when he asked what an ion was (in a third year EE class?), and was informed that it referred to any positively or negatively charged particle. It would have been strange enough to ask, but his reply of "Either? That doesn't sound right" sealed him in as a well known character in the class of 19 people.

The real tipping point in our perception of him during a lecture where the professor mentioned practical uses for a neutron beam, and Kevin asked if a beam could be made out of some other neutral material. When asked "Like what?", he replied "An atom with all of its electrons removed." When we pointed out that the protons would make that abomination extremely positively charged, he just replied with "So what if we removed those too?" and then was baffled when we informed him that would just be neutrons.

That's high school level chemistry. Not knowing it was so incredibly strange that I felt like something was off, so I asked him if he'd like to grab lunch. He accepted, we chatted, and I finally began to get a sense of his origin story.

See, Kevin wasn't a junior/senior electrical engineer like the rest of us. Kevin was, in fact, three notable things: A business major, a sophomore, and a hardcore Catholic. All three of those are essential to understanding his scenario.

What had begun all of this was actually a conflict with Kevin and his roommate. Kevin frequently had his fundamental belief in Absolute Good, Absolute Bad, and Absolute Anything pushed back on by his roommate, who was in STEM. Said roommate kept invoking quantum mechanics as his proof against Absolute Knowledge. Kevin was tired of having something that he didn't understand thrown at his convictions, so he decided to take a quantum course to settle things once and for all.

Despite not having any of the pre-reqs.

He'd actually tried to take quantum for physicists first, but the school's physics department wouldn't let him. It's actually pretty strictly regulated, because it is a mandatory class for physics majors. However, because quantum is not mandatory for electrical engineers, there aren't really any built in requirements for the class. It's just assumed that nobody would actually try to take it until their third year because doing so would the be the mental equivalent to slamming your nuts in the car door. Just, pure suffering for no good reason.

Apparently, the counselors had tried to talk him out of it, but if Kevin was one thing, it was stubborn. He'd actually had to sign some papers basically saying "I was warned that this is incredibly stupid, but I refused to listen" in order to take the class.

He was actually pretty nice, if currently unaware of how bad he'd just fucked up. I paid for the lunch, wished him the best, and reported back to the class discord. We'd all been curious about this guy's story, but now that I had the truth, I could share it with the world.

Feelings were mixed. Some people thought he was going to drop out any minute now. Others thought that he wouldn't, be also that convincing him to drop now, while he still could, was the only ethical thing. Others figured that a policy of non-interference was best: The counselors couldn't dissuade him, and if we tried to do the same, he'd probably just think it was STEM elitism trying to guard its little clubhouse. He'd figure out how hard things were, or he'd fail. Either way, it would help him learn more about the world.

We wound up taking the approach of non-interference. If nothing else, understanding his origins gave us more patience when he asked bizarre questions. He wasn't trying to waste our time, he was just trying to cram three years of pre-reqs into a one semester course. He did get a little bit combative sometimes, and we could tell that he was really wracking his brain to try and find some sort of contradiction or error that he could use to bring the whole thing down, but he never could.

First test came by, and he bombed it. Completely unprepared. He'd taken Calc I, but he didn't know how to do integrals yet (that was Calc II). Worse, he was far past the drop date. I imagine most people in his shoes would've stopped struggling. They'd realize they were fucked and just let themselves fail, at least salvaging their other classes grades in the process. Why waste resources on an unwinnable battle?

Kevin never asked questions like that. If he was stupid enough to try it, he was stupid enough to finish it. God bless him.

He invited me to lunch after the test and said that the class was more fascinating than he'd ever imagined, but he didn't know if he'd be able to pass it. He asked if I could help, and I said...maybe. I brought the request to the discord, and from the eight people there I got three volunteers who admired this dork's tenacity. He was in over his head, miles beneath the surface, but his fighting spirit was fucking glorious. If he was willing to go down swinging, we were willing to bust our asses trying to get him caught up.

Some of the stuff was just extra homework we gave to the guy. We told him he needed to learn integrals, stat. We sent him some copies of basic software that can be used to teach the basics of linear circuit equations, and he practiced that game like it was HALO. Just, hours sunk into it. Absolutely godlike.

He was still scrabbling for air at just the surface level of the class, but he'd gone from abysmal failure to lingering on the boundary between life and death. Other people in the class started to learn about Kevin's origin story, and our little circle of four volunteer tutors grew to six. Every day, he had someone trying to help him either catch up in some way, or finish that week's homework. He'd gone from being seen as a nuisance that wasted class time to the underdog mascot.

He was getting twelve hours of personal tutoring a week, on top of three hours of classes, on top of six hours of office hours, on top of the coursework. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this kid was doing 40 hours a week just trying to pass this one single class.

Second test comes around and he gets a 60. He's ecstatic. We're ecstatic. Kid's too young to take out drinking so we just order a pizza and cheer like he just won gold at the Olympics.

After that second test, things hit another tipping point. With so much catch-up under his belt, he was able to focus a lot more on the actual material for the class. A borderline cinematic moment happened when I was trying to get ahead on the homework so that I could put more hours in on my senior project. Nobody else had finished it yet because it wasn't due for another week, so the specifics of the problem I was working on were still a mystery. I went to the professor's office hours and get some pointers, but he wasn't willing to give good hints when the HW wasn't due for another week or so. He said I still had time to think about it, which was true, but I wanted to be able to think about other things. Kevin had watched the whole conversation, waiting for his turn to ask the professor more simple questions, but when I left I got a text from him telling me to hop on zoom.

Kevin had finished it earlier, because Kevin started all of his homework the moment it was assigned. He needed to, in order to make sure that he could get it done on time. He'd finished it the day before, and was able to walk me through it.

From student, to teacher. I'm not exaggerating when I say that he probably saved me eight hours on that assignment. I could've kissed him.

A month or two later, we took the final. As soon as we were done, we six asked Kevin how he did. He was nervous, there was so much new material for him in this class that his retention hadn't been great. Us six were also a little stressed: We were going to pass the class, but the final was hard.

We waited for the results.

And waited. And waited.

Finally, the scores were posted as a table, curve included. From our class of 19 people, 4 withdrew within the deadline, 4 failed, 1 got a C, 8 got B's, and 2 got A's. We could see that the curve for a C was set at 59.2% overall.

We called Kevin. He was crying. End score, 59.2%. Teacher curved the C exactly to his score.

It was a week into winter break so we couldn't gather the forces around for a party like last time, but we were all losing our shit. Kevin was losing his shit. He couldn't believe how stupid he was to try this course, he couldn't believe that six people busted their ass just to make sure he didn't die, and he couldn't believe that the professor basically just passed him out of sheer effort alone.

He said it was the stupidest thing he'd ever done, and while I doubt that, it was outrageously stupid. And yet, I've never been so invested in a fellow student before. I'm prouder of Kevin's C than I am of my own B. I was walking on sunshine for weeks after that. In theory, my senior project was building a functioning washing machine, but in practice, in my heart, it was helping Kevin pass Intro to Quantum for Electrical Engineers.

(And as an epilogue: No, he did not renounce Catholicism and become an atheist like his roommate had hoped. He did walk out changed. I think that being that wrong about something, and realizing it, was a pivotal moment for him. It's hard to be dogmatic once you realize that a lifetime of being wrong feels exactly like a lifetime of being right, right up until the last two seconds of it.)