The Voice in Memoir

Be true to your voice in memoir

Restructuring the memoir is fine.  Works in progress go through many revisions.  The first draft is usually…ahem…vomit, anyway.  Okay, at least mine are.  And I need to remember not to compare my “drafts” with the finished, edited work of other writers. 

But as I redraft and restructure my memoir, I keep coming back to the same sticking point.  Every time I grab a new blank document and try to open the memoir pithily, enticingly, I lose my voice.  My memoir is not a philosophical tome.  It’s meant to offer advice and humor to parents contemplating lengthy endeavors, taking time away from the family.  How a parent can cope with this.  How they can succeed.  It’s meant to inspire and show others how to take courage and attempt something they may feel inadequate to accomplish.  And, of course, it is meant to entertain.

Humor helped me get through ten years of attending college part time while raising a family.  It simply has to be part of my memoir.

The thing about my writing style is my voice.  Whether I’m giving presentations or writing memoir, it’s the same.  It’s me.  If you’ve read any of my camping adventures on Camping with Kids you get the idea.  A few critique partners, professors, and writing facilitators noted that they enjoy my dry wit. 

In my memoir, I have the voice of innocence and the voice of understanding or experience.  Memoir needs these two voices.  The narrator must discover something from her journey through memory and share that information with the reader.  I must take the reader into the scenes of my struggles as a parent in college.  I can’t seem to move forward in my memoir any other way.  I can’t babble on in thought.  I’ve condensed scenes dramatically and left others bleeding on the floor and added much, in the first two chapters, by way of insight.  Perhaps this pass through revision will leave me feeling better prepared for beta readers. 

Oh, by the way, my short stories don’t share this humorous voice.  Not everyone, characters or people, can be me.  And this is probably a good thing.  Just ask my family.

The Importance of Internal Dialogue in Memoir

            Remember, memoir is not autobiography.  Memoir recounts an important time in the writer’s life, an important journey, happy or sad, triumphant or not, where a discovery is made.  This journey is merely a slice, not the whole life pie.  But within that slice, as in fiction, internal dialogue is important. 

Discovering the possibilities

Internal dialogue is a dialogue the writer/character has with herself.  This dialogue in memoir usually projects present day thoughts or logic or knowledge onto prior actions of the writer/character.  It’s like an interpretation of the preceding action, scene, or anecdote. 

Like fiction, memoir cannot be merely a collection of scenes, dialogues, or actions.  Some scenes and actions are used to move the plot forward, to create tension, or to enhance characterization.  Other scenes need to be interpreted by the writer through internal dialogue. 

Interpretation in memoir explains why a particular action is so important in the writer’s journey.  The writer attempts to revisit that part of her life again, through memoir, and discovers newfound knowledge to share with the reader. 

            As I move ahead in my revision work of the college memoir, I’m probing beyond my literal college experience to discover the epiphanies that I was too busy to see at the time with the daily grind of college and family life.  My husband and children find my scribbled thoughts on torn pieces of paper left on tables and counters, bookshelves and bathroom vanities.  I tell them to throw away nothing they find and put it on my desk on the porch.  When I get time, I type them into the prologue document to my memoir and sort them from there.  [This cuts down on the fire hazard in our home.]

Memoir needs to be more than autobiographical.  It needs to provide insight not merely the facts of the experience.  Memoir is a writer’s story about a specific time in his or her life with the writer’s present day reflections on that time.  

Oh…the timer’s beeping and I need to get the apple pie out of the oven.  I hope you all have a blessed Thanksgiving.  Thanks for stopping by.