Getting to know your tools

My father was a skilled carpenter, able to take a piece of wood and mold it into a hand, or an ornate bed end, or other delights that made me proud and envious at once.

I wanted to be like Dad, so I’d pick up the chisels and take them to a practice piece of wood. When my results didn’t equal his, I’d get frustrated and give up.

Launching into things without taking the time to learn my tools is something I still do today. When I got Dramatica Pro (or UK readers here), I followed the quick start option. It’s only now, as I take the time to read the manual as part of my goal of five things a day, that I’m realising how powerful it is.

If you have Dramatica Pro, or plan to get it, one thing I want to point out: in the StoryGuide button, when you click it you’re given the option of Level 1, 2, or 3. I mistook this to mean that when you’ve completed Level 1 it will carry you into Level 2, etc. That’s not how it works. Level 1 asks fewer questions, so it’s quicker to complete. Level 3 asks the most. Just depends on how much detail you need for what you’re working on.

My Dad paid a price of years of learning his tools to create beautiful things. I think I’m finally learning.

Characterizing the too-familiar

In your memoir, how do you render characters you know too well? In the drafts so far, I’ve struggled with two key characters: my step-mum and my beloved uncle. Though I could recall how they made me feel, I couldn’t recall the details to tell stories of specific incidents revealing their character traits.

Sandy Blackburn-Wright’s Holding Up the Sky comes to the rescue. Shortly after introducing a love interest, she takes this path to describe him:

I also noticed that he did not change his behaviour around white people as many black people did, becoming more withdrawn and less likely to say what they were really thinking. He seemed to stand up for what he believed in regardless of the power or influence of those he addressed.

No specific stories. Yet, he seems fully developed. It’s almost like she gives commentary on his traits.

This approach allows me to tell the stories that reveal the character of the key people in my life when I recall the details to do so, and the freedom to describe those traits independent of any specific incidents.

Telling the story only you can tell

As I study memoirs to master my craft, I’m finding the most powerful are those where the authors tell the stories only they can tell.

Anyone could list Robert Mugabe’s atrocities to show he’s evil, but Sandy Blackburn-Wright’s Holding Up the Sky offers fresh insight. Her parents came to visit her in South Africa via Zimbabwe. They weren’t able to get their Air Zimbabwe flight because of Mugabe’s practice of commandeering one of their jets because he feared a private plane would be shot down.

As this applies to my memoir: I can tell of a dad who seemed not to notice what was in front of his face, and the difficulties this has caused because of my love for him. I can tell of a step-mum who deals with her brother perpetrating sexual abuse by accusing me of doing the same thing. I can tell of a Grandma whose number one value is family as she balances believing in her grandson and believing in her son. I can tell of a favourite uncle who abused me for reasons I don’t understand and who I continue to see and interact with.

These are the things only I can say.

Aren’t you a little young to write a memoir?

At what age does a person become qualified to write a memoir?

When I started my memoir at 18, people would often say, ‘Aren’t you a little young to write a memoir?’ This question came despite a prolific writing career.

Now at 32, the question comes less often, but still some people ask it, while it passes through the minds of others.

Like any piece of writing, doesn’t the story come first? I write because the story is one only I can tell; I work hard at mastering the craft so that story is told in the best way. Isn’t this all that’s needed?

Teaching readers to cope

Why do readers choose memoirs tackling the hard topics? I believe the answer is to learn how to cope.

Sandy Blackburn-Wright’s Holding Up the Sky tells her stories of working in South Africa through the end of apartheid. In the early hours of 2 February 1990, the same day Nelson Mandela was released, a savage slaughter was carried out in a community so close to Sandy she had to become involved:

I had learnt to flick a switch in situations like this. There would be time later for the shock to sink in. Right now, people needed us to act quickly and calmly and not add to their panic. On the inside, I didn’t know how I could bear more killing, more loss. Putting those thoughts aside…

In my memoir I could almost transplant that passage, the coping mechanism is so similar:

I had learnt to switch off in situations like this. There would be time later for me to wonder what I’d done wrong this time to invite the rape. Right now, Bruce needed me to be quiet; more, if I wasn’t silent, he promised he’d kill me. On the inside, I didn’t know how I could bear being used to sexually fulfill him sometimes and then be bullied the rest of the time. Putting those thoughts aside…

Yes, I know that’s out and out plagiarism, so I wouldn’t use it. But the similarity in coping with harsh realities is worth comment. And I do wish I’d written it myself.

A matter of pacing

Pacing in a memoir gives readers a chance to recover from emotional events. My memoir deals with sexual and emotional abuse, so without balancing the heavy sections with lighter sections, I’ll lose readers, and may well lose hope of a publishing deal. Last year, a couple of girls at the bookshop read it and described it as ‘dark.’

Sandy Blackburn-Wright’s Holding Up the Sky also deals with the heavy stuff: Witnessing South Africa toward the end of the apartheid era. After a particularly heavy chapter or section, she’ll find a way of lightening the next section. When Sandy goes on a Christmas holiday in London after her roughest year so far, the reader is as grateful for the break as Sandy is.

Yet even when she’s away, she contrasts living in the West with living in South Africa. It’s the use of contrast that keeps the lighter section connected to the main story and is something for me to consider in how I place sections in my memoir.

How to deploy ‘the hook’

Stephen King is successful because he leaves questions unanswered. Often within the first paragraph of his stories, he causes readers to want to know the answer to a question or two. He then moves into other parts of the story. When he answers those initial questions, the reader now has many other questions. If King has done his job really well, these readers keep turning the pages not just for unanswered questions, but because they care about the characters and the story.

Sandy Blackburn-Wright, author of the memoir Holding Up the Sky, uses the hook too, albeit in a more subtle way than King. Rather than posing questions at the start of a section, she often plants her hook at the end, with a hint that the bad things are coming. This way she tells the story from the naive perspective she had when the events unfolded, and adds insight from hindsight.

Why this is interesting to me is I love the hook. Ever since I started writing, I’ve sought to master the device. In my memoir’s most recent draft I attempted to incorporate the hook, but it wasn’t until I read Sandy’s book that I began to get an idea of how to do this. Now I have that question answered.

The fine art of keeping a writing commitment

Saying you’ll do it is easy. To do it reveals your character – and your creativeness.

When I started this blog, I said I’d take five daily steps toward completing my memoir. Any project has tasks that must be done, like, in my case, the actual writing and editing. Some things are important to do, but at a pinch, if I didn’t do them I could still finish the book, e.g. reading current memoirs and those by past masters. Finally, are things that add value to the project, but if left undone readers wouldn’t notice, e.g. reading books on the writing craft.

While the musts deserve top priority, today I discovered a new angle that taught me things are not straightforward.

To celebrate Easter Monday, my patron and I joined his family at the Easter Fair at Meadows, in the Adelaide Hills. The day was spent wandering through stalls at markets, drinking more cups of tea than I care to count, eating almost from the time we got there till the time we left.

And as we drove through the Hills to visit friends on the way home, via Hahndorf to find a genoa Christmas cake for afternoon tea, and invest some more time in a secondhand bookshop, I arrived home not feeling keen to do my regular five things. So I took the easy way out.

I read four chapters of the memoir I discussed here, and then blogged this article. While some tasks lead more directly to my finished memoir, some allow me to maintain my sanity and keep my commitment on a busy day.  In short, sticking to my agreed discipline is sometimes going to involve flexibility and creativity.

To write daily or not

The question of whether to write every single day, or to have a day’s break once a week, has no simple answers.

Stephen King, in On Writing (or UK readers here), says when he’s working on a book, he’ll write 10 pages a day, every day, even on Christmas  if necessary. Another writer, though it slips my mind who, says it takes three to four days to build up a rhythm. Therefore, if you’re resting once a week, you need to spend half your working week regaining your rhythm.

Self-help, another interest area of mine, offers conflicting advice. Jack Canfield, in The Success Principles (or UK readers here), describes Lake Arrowhead’s fields of daffodils. Apparently, more than a million daffodil bulbs have been planted. A sign there promises ‘Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking’:

 The first answer was “One Woman – Two Hands, Two Feet and Very Little Brain.” The second was “One at a Time.” The third: “Started in 1958.”

But elsewhere, Canfield stresses days free of work. Likewise, Brian Tracy, suggests one day a week free from reading, writing, or anything related to work. Elsewhere though, he also suggests daily action toward your most important goal. So what does a writer do?

To work out which was best, I tested having a day off a week for several weeks, and decided I preferred writing daily. So here I am, completing today’s fifth step toward my memoir, on an Easter Sunday where the rest of the day will be writing- and reading-free.

African lessons

Reading from the perspective of learning to write effective memoirs is challenging my beliefs about what makes a memoir good.

The one I’m reading now is Sandy Blackburn-Wright’s Holding Up the Sky. Sandy  grew up in Australia with an obsession for Africa. She moved to South Africa in 1988 to serve the community through a youth leadership program in a local church. As the realities of apartheid went from being something that happened on the news, to something that happened to the people she knew, Sandy had to work out how far she’d go to stand up for her beliefs.

Before reading Holding Up the Sky, I’d considered writing my memoir in the style of a novel, where the story is told through scenes – lots of dialogue, little narrative summary, etc. I thought anything else would breach the rule of ’show, don’t tell.’ But Sandy is an excellent storyteller, and she doesn’t use the scene approach. She tells stories, and these stories stick in my mind as clearly as if I’d watched them on TV.

Her writing style suits mine. My background is as a journalist and Sandy’s shown me I can write a memoir sans scenes, and it can have heart.

Also, what I say will be more truthful. Rather than invent dialogue (writing dialogue’s a weakness for me anyway) from dimly remembered conversations 25 years old, I can use the snippets of dialogue I do remember to flesh out the stories.