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If you’ve been reading memoirs,
you’ll notice that each experience is unique, whether the memoir is about
childhood, death, surviving divorce, or even surviving college. Through specific details, the memoirist achieves
universality.
Of course universality is not enough.
I need to show my hard-won epiphanies
through self-reflection. This is the
difficult part for me. I’m a scene
writer. I need action. I enjoy the comic moments of raising a family
in all their hilarious detail.
“You need more internal dialogue
here, Victoria,” my critique partner told me.
And of course she was
correct. But to look inside myself?
Perhaps I had been too busy
raising that family of mine and hammering away at my bachelor’s degree to pause
and reflect about how I felt when my children constantly interrupted my
studying time or when I was attempting to make study tapes for various
classes.
I need to fill my memoir with
self-made maxims and self-wisdom learned, not so much the subject matter
learned. My college memoir is a candid
story of self-improvement through the college education of a mother. My children’s presence punctuates my college
experience.
I remained their
primary care-giver and continued to teach them from my newfound knowledge base.
Are these maxims easy to find? No. In
fact, I find myself spending whole days trying to figure out “how I felt” or “what
I learned” at a particular time during my college journey. It gets to the point where I need to convince
myself that it’s good enough for the first revision and then move on.
How do you get past a sticking point
in your manuscripts? Please offer some
tips.