Laying Out a Plan

Before I start writing the memoir.  I lay out a plan to give me direction.

This doesn't have to be elaborate, a page, single spaced, will do.  What you need is an idea of exactly what you want to write about, where you are going, and the problems that came up. 

A personal experience memoir is always easier to write if you start with a plan.  Here are three examples:  I couldn't stop grieving for my brother, it was an agonizing time.  I hadn't talked to my daughter in 30 year.  We struggled for many years trying to keep our baby alive.  Generally, I like to put forth a problem and then lay the story out in a few paragraphs.

Here I'm going to take a story from one of my student’s and lay out the book in a few paragraphs.  Since most personal experience and memoirs are written in first person, I will use that here.

The problem:

I was happy being divorced, and raising my two children Tim, 13 and George, 17 in a Northern California town. We had moved here about three years ago, and I had a job that allowed me to get home about two hours before they did.  Now, it was almost time for them to come home. Tim came in at about five o'clock greeted me and immediately went upstairs.

I knew George wouldn't be here for the next half hour or so.  Lately, George seemed deeply depressed.  I had tried asking a few questions, but he wouldn't talk to me.

In a few minutes Tim came down the stairs, stopped, and said, "Mom, don't be mad at me, but George said to tell you that he wouldn't be home tonight he was joining a cult and leaving town." 

“What!”

My heart leapt into my throat.  This had to be a joke.  I started to panic.  I knew I had to try to find my son.  But how?    I called all his friends only to be told, no, they hadn't seen him.  Next came the police, they weren't much help.  Then I called the hospitals-nothing.  By now I was absolutely frantic.  By 10 p.m. it began to sink in.  He had disappeared somewhere.

 I made my way up to my room, closed the door and cried my eyes out.  I knew I was facing this crisis alone.

The next few weeks were a nightmare for me.  I had a job helping women who were facing abuse at home.  I had always been dedicated to it.  Now I couldn't get my heart back to what I was doing.  Every phone call, every time the door opened, every time I saw somebody coming up the walk, I knew it was George.  But it never was.  I knew he had been searching for something within himself.  Some unknown had been gnawing at him but I could never get him to talk about it. And then there was Tim.  Fortunately, Tim didn't seem affected by this, but I knew he was.

Those first few weeks rolled into a year, but life went on.  I was able to take on other people's problems and help, but my mind was always on George   Was he alright?  Was he sick?  Was he happy?  How was he living?

Christmas was always the hardest.  I looked back at the good times we had.  Then, the fourth Christmas after my son left, I received a call.  For a few minutes there was silence then a deep voice said, “Mother I called to tell you that I'm never going to call again. Goodbye."  It was George.  Stunned, I had a thousand questions but before they all poured out at once, he hung up. I can't tell you what that did to me.  Was there no hope?

Things were going well for Tim.  He graduated high school and was getting ready to go to college.  He seemed to get along alright, without his brother.  He had a lot of friends, and now a girlfriend.  I was really going to miss him when he left.  I couldn't get it out in mind that maybe his brother would come home.

Several years later I heard a news flash on the radio.  A cult from San Diego had committed mass suicide. I didn't think too much about it.  Then I got the call from the police asking if I had a son named George.  "Yes, I said."  They had found some scribbling among his possessions.  He was among the dead cult members.  I caught my breath -- I couldn't think -- George committed suicide?  But it was true. I went into a deep depression for over a year.  And after awhile, I began to understand. Something was missing in George's life.  I couldn’t let that happen to Tim, I swore then and there that I would pay special attention to both him and my grandchildren when they came.  I could do no less.

After you get this far, of course, you know where you are going but you still have to write the chapters and the scenes, but this gives you a roadmap that you can follow fairly easily.

You might want to look at one of my client’s personal experience memoirs.  It brought a very nice advance from Time Warner and will be out August 2007.

Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife: Irene Spencer. 

 Irene Spencer was born February 1, 1937, in Salt Lake City, Utah.   Irene grew up in a fundamentalist Mormon family- the 13th of thirty-one children.  Her mother was the second of her father's eventual six wives.  It was no surprise she found herself, at sixteen years of age in a plural marriage, sharing her husband with a half-sister.

www.irenespence rbooks.com