LIFE STORY WRITING 4: the littlest life stories of all

My brother recently sent me a book created by the editors of the online magazine SMITH, a home for all sorts of lively story-related projects. Called Not Quite What I Was Planning, the book is a collection of six-word memoirs. Yes, that's right, six words, as in the book title itself. This might be a bit too succinct for most of us writing life story, but it's interesting to see what folks come up with in this very limited form.


Some of the results are suprisingly poignant: "Learned to live with great loss"..."WASP wants to be soul man"..."I fell far from the tree"...Painful nerd kid, happy nerd adult"..."Wasted time regretted so life reinvented"..."Almost a victim of my family"..."Started small, grew, peaked, shrunk, vanished" and "Act Two curtain brought dramatic improvements." In some ways these little "bites"  tell us little; in other senses they suggest so much. For example, the editors point out that the moving mini-memoir "Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends" was written not by a mature survivor but a nine year old. I'm sure many of the others have similar surprises behind them.

There is social commentary here and there, as in Dean Haspiel's "Tombstone won't say 'had health insurance'" and Johan Baumeister's "Joined Army. Came out. Got booted." There's disagreement: one six-word memoir says "I'm my mother and I'm fine," while another begs "Became my mother. Please shoot me." There's some poetry: "The light that night was perfect." And, of course, there's lots of playfulness and humor.

In that latter vein I particularly liked "Speaks mind especially when losing it," "Awkward girl takes chances. Fun ensues," "Occasionally wrong but never in doubt," "Never really finished anything, except cake," "Sold belongings. Became Itinerant Poetry Librarian," "A crush on Susan Sarandon. Unrequited" and "The psychic said I'd be richer" (Elizabeth Bernstein). Because a college professor once said that I had an "unfortunate passion for semicolons," I of course felt like a soul sister of Iris Page, who wrote "Semicolons; I use them to excess," yet as a teacher now myself I laughed at the rueful "All of my students hate me."

Though many of the writers are people not in the public eye, some are well known. It's interesting to see how they explain lives that are well documented elsewhere. "Me see world! Me write stories!" is Elizabeth Gilbert's apt offering, while another writer, Po Bronson, wrote slyly, "Stole wife. Lost friends. Now happy." Journalist and disabilities activist John Hockenberry wrote "IBM brat broke back; twins, Mac," a surprisingly detailed literal account of a complex life," while comic Stephen Colbert noted only, "Well, I thought it was funny."

Could you write your life story in six words? What would they be?

SMITH has lots of similar story starters. If you need some fun prompts, visit the site and check them out.

LIFE STORY WRITING 2: bigger is not necessarily better

In my last post, I spoke about the trust—in ourselves and others—that we need to write and preserve our life stories. Today, just a brief practical note on that same topic.

Self-doubt is especially likely when we make a life story writing project too big or too complex. When we bite off more than we can chew, so to speak, we can end up getting mired in the details, losing momentum over time, or feeling unable to meet our own expectations. That's why I link this suggestion to the issue of trust. When we don't trust our potential readers to "get" us or our story, we may feel we need to over-research, over-explain, or over-complicate. We may not even be conscious that we're feeling uncertain or distrustful. Assuming that our kids, grandkids or other readers need lots and lots of information just feels natural...and so does assuming that our life stories won't be meaningful unless they are long or detailed.

I don't mean to prevent you from going into detail or writing at length if those modes feel right for you. Some life story writers genuinely enjoy sinking their teeth into ambitious projects. My point is just that you don't have to produce long or detailed writing to offer a meaningful written legacy.

To prove this point, picture an older relative that has passed on—a grandmother, perhaps. Now imagine that you have just discovered a diary you never knew existed—a journal in which that relative noted down her thoughts. Would you be less grateful for, and fascinated by, that diary if its entries were brief? Would you find it any less valuable if its "author" did not write at length or provide lots of background information? I'm confident that the answers to both questions would be "no." It might inspire you to find out more or even do some research. It might even make you wish its owner had written more. But the diary would be a treasure whether it was short or long, expansive or succinct. And what you would remember about it over the years wouldn't be its length or detail or historical accuracy, but rather the glimpse it gave you of your relative's heart.

Have I convinced you? I hope so. Check out my next post for some "life story starters" that can help you record memory or family material effectively and easily.

LIFE STORY WRITING 1: begin with trust

I recently wrapped up a class called "Life Story Starters" for the LifeLong Learning Institute at the Indian River State College. (I'm giving a one-day variant on this same class, this time called Effortless Memoir, at the Vero Beach Museum of Art in late February; it's alphabetized under W for Workshops here). This series of posts is inspired by those classes, the peer students it's my privilege to serve within them, and the idea of leaving one's life stories as part of a personal legacy.


All of the lively and intelligent participants in the class wanted to write memory material. As always in such classes, many admitted to doubts about the value of their memories or the quality of their writing. I have complete empathy for anyone with these concerns. After many years as a professional writer, I still often doubt that what I am writing will be of interest to readers, even those in my own family. Especially in the middle of the process, the text I'm creating always feels like a formless mess with no redeeming value.

Yet I also know that when we let such doubts silence us, we withhold a genuine gift from the world. Every life story has value, whether one person reads it or one million. Every personal history witnesses the human condition, and the life of joy and struggle that all of us share in a myriad of different ways.

A funny thing happens in my life story classes after the participants share their self-doubt. The same folks who question their own pieces are rapt in listening to others. Always, without exception, the assignments we read aloud get nods of recognition. Always, the only pieces anyone doubts are their own.

Let’s remember that all of us doubt the value of our thoughts and the skill of our writing. Let’s laugh at our fears and write our reflections down anyway. Let's trust ourselves, and others, enough to share our life legacies generously.

There are enough times in our lives when we need to keep silent, even situations when we need not to speak our truth. This, happily, is not one of them.

KAY JAMISON'S JOURNEY THROUGH GRIEF

I first discovered doctor and author Kay Redfield Jamison when I read her first book, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. The memoir, told from the unique perspective of someone who both suffers from bipolar disorder and acts as a doctor treating those who suffer from it as well, impressed me deeply. Fiercely honest and fiercely intelligent, beautifully written and above all courageous, it is the kind of experience a good memoir should be, the kind that deepens our understanding of what it is to be human.

I just finished Nothing Was the Same, her latest book, and it has many of those same strengths. The story begins with the death of her husband, Richard Wyatt, before flashing back to their lives, their meeting, their courtship, and their marriage. They met in mid-life, and built the kind of marriage that can only come, perhaps, from that age. It is quirky and yet tender, romantic yet profoundly realistic as well. As I read, I felt the sadness of the passing of this exceptional man, yet I also felt buoyed by my meeting with him.

There were many passages in the book that I loved, but two stood out so much that I want to share them with you. The first comes from the beginning, and spoke to me in part because it uses the same metaphor, of grief as a landscape, that inspired my own Grief Country. Jamison writes:

Grief, given to all, is a generative and human thing. It provides a path, albeit a broken one, by which those who grieve can find their way. Still, it is grief’s fugitive nature that one does not know at the start that such a path exists. I knew madness well, but I understood little of grief, and I was not always certain which was grief and which was madness. Grief, as it transpires, has its own territory.

At the very close of the book, she observes:

It is in our nature to want to hold on to love; it is grief’s blessing that we come to know that there are limits to our ability to do so. To hold on to love, I had to find a way to capture and transform it. The only way I knew to do this was to write a book, this book, about Richard. It would be about love and what love had brought, about death and what death had taken. I would write that love continues, and grief teaches.

Thank you, Kay Jamison; you are truly not only a doctor but a healer--sometimes a different, and often a more profound, thing.