Pulling Ourselves Together: How Building Our Timelines Can Help Us Remember Our Stories
So you want to write a memoir but are lost on how to get started. You have lived such a long life - eras, even. How do you even begin?
My advice?
Begin right where you are, with the time you have. If you’re inspired to write a specific story, great - start there. If you don’t know where to start, boy do I have a project for you.
First, I have to tell you that you are not not a writer if inspiration isn’t hitting you square in the face. Inspiration only hits at the most inopportune times – when we’re changing a diaper or driving a car or working on another project – every other time, we’re just sitting down and doing the work.
So here’s your sign to begin. Your invitation to get started on that memoir.
Start by Creating a Timeline
There are two kinds of writers.
“Pantsers” fly through their stories “by the seats their pants,” whereas “planners” plan their work ahead of time by making outlines. Most of us are a combination of the two. No one is a planner when inspiration strikes, but what’s a writer to do when inspiration abandons them?
You create a plan. Or, if you’ve created one already, you return to it.
The plan is your map. Your compass. The plan knows your stories. The plan knows what’s next.
When writing a memoir, the plan is your timeline.
In the personal story class, we start with a blank spreadsheet, and create columns for the year, the place, the event and your memories of the event. It looks like this:
Then, we travel back in time, jotting down the years, the places, the events and our memories, filling in the gaps to the best of our abilities.
You might even travel back to the time before your birth, writing down where your parents were, and how they met. In this case, your memories are inherited. They’re not yours, but they live inside you, just as your experienced memories do.
Here are mine, from the first few years of my life. I’ve blacked out the details that are private, which is a lesson I very much want to impart: Your story belongs to you. You can share it with whomever you want to, but you don’t owe it to anyone. (People write their stories for many different reasons. There is no wrong way to do this!) </rant>
You can go on and on in this way, noting the year, the place, the event and the memory. Think of it like playing Tetris, filling in the gaps of your life.
Writing Your Memoir from the Timeline
Not every event or memory will make it into your memoir. The timeline is, after all, just a plan. It’s a place to begin.
Once your timeline is complete, you can begin writing from where you are, by opening up a word doc and putting those memories down on paper and building a narrative around them.
In the personal writing class, we next look at narrative elements – the characters, stories and details that have made our lives so rich. This is where our stories begin to leap off the page, moving from our imaginations and into concrete form.
If you’re interested in these topics, please consider taking a class. You can use the code Blog20 for 20% off any of my classes.
