Telling Herstories: The Broad View

The End of Beginnings

Opening Salvos #17  Matilda Butler

Opening Salvos, a topic I've been covering since early November 2008. I was on a trip to visit family when my first blog post was due for Telling HerStories. I wrote it but couldn't get my password to work. It was my first time on TypePad and I was in learning mode. In desperation, I sent my business partner, Kendra Bonnett, the text and she managed to get it to go live for me. Since then, I've posted every month about effective ways to grab your readers in the opening lines of your memoir so that they'll stay with you from your first word to the last. 

And speaking of list, today, my 17th post on this topic, will be my last. 

Most of my blogs posts here have been the outgrowth of an interview with a memoir author who shared her ideas about how you craft a memoir opening. And although there is still more to be learned, I began to find repetition was occurring. Therefore, it seemed like time to take on a new topic, one that is broader and might prove useful to you at multiple stages in your memoir-writing journey, not just when you are focused on your opening. 

My topic, beginning in June, is called ABC's of Writing. These will be practical, quick tips covering a range of writing topics. The idea came from the research that Kendra and I have been doing for our book titled Writing Alchemy. For one of the chapters, we've gathered books about writing that have been written by well-known authors. There is much more in these books than we can possibly mention in our publication. Yet, there is valuable advice for memoir writers on those pages. Think Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Rita Mae Brown, Vivian Gornick, Elmore Leonard, Elizabeth Berg, Maureen Murdock, Susan Wittig Albert, Janet Barrington, William Zinsser, and more. 

We decided to take nuggets from these books, ideas that are worth conjuring with, and create brief five minute videos. Each is designed to give you new insights about writing in brief, manageable doses. We've done our first few and finally have a format we think works. We are still mastering how to make these five minutes. My last one was slightly more than nine. However, we will continue both with creating the videos and framing the concepts in five minutes. Just give us a few more tries. Each month when I work on my blog for the ABC's of Writing, I will have finished a video (a series called Writing in Five) that I hope will interest you.

For this last Opening Salvos post, I want to share with you some of the links to interviews I did with authors who talked about effective beginnings. Their ideas included: create a take away, have an attitude, play with your opening until you have the right one, set a scene, use sensory detail, begin with dialogue, create a microcosm of the whole story, use the five senses to convey emotions, and more. Below are the links to some of the short interviews:

Sue William Silverman

Linda Joy Myers

Hope Edelman

Jessica Bram

Betty Auchard

Mary Gordon Spence

Maralys Wills

Kim Pearson

Becky Levine

Joyce Boatright

In addition to these short audios, Kendra and I interviewed other authors about many aspects of memoir writing. Near the end of these interviews, I asked each woman to read her opening and to discuss her thoughts on writing openings. Below are links to some of the long interviews. You'll find their comments on openings in the last 15 minutes.

Susan Wittig Albert

Susan Tweit

Heather Summerhayes Cariou

Nancy Bachrach

Leslie Gilbert-Lurie

Judy Mandel

Janet Riehl

Karen Walker

Want to see what we're up to with our short videos that we're calling Writing in Five? After looking through about 15 books, I found only one that talks about openings. Fortunately, it is a chapter in William Zinsser's book, On Writing Well. Although the emphasis is on general nonfiction writing rather than specifically memoir, I still found it useful and hope you will too. Here's the link to view the video.

While this is the end to Opening Salvos, it is the beginning to a new series that I'll be delighted to share with you each month. See you in June with the ABC's of Writing.

It Isn't Enough to Hook Your Reader

Opening Salvos #16 by Matilda Butler

Whether you are just beginning to write your memoir or have been working on it for years, your opening is one element that requires a great deal of attention. I’ve known readers who say, “I’ll give a book ten pages, but if I don’t find it interesting, then I won’t read more.” There was a time when I thought this was unduly rough on the writer. After all, the author’s published book might be 250 or 350 pages. Maybe the interesting part just isn’t at the beginning.

That was then and this is now. Today the implicit rule for many readers is even stricter. A page or two is all the reader looks at before making a decision. If her interest hasn’t been captured or at least tickled within a few paragraphs, the book goes back to the library or onto the unread pile. Who can blame the reader? You’ve probably done it yourself. There are a seemingly unlimited number of well-crafted books and an equally unlimited number of demands on our time. The collective attitude of readers might be described as: “I’m busy so show me why you should get some of my valuable time.” 

Let’s face it, Twitter has taught us how much we can say in 140 characters. Originally, I thought it was a limited form of communication. Now when I read Tweets I am amazed at how much can be said. Is it great prose? Of course not. Can it get my attention? Absolutely. 

A Tweet is not a memoir or novel. But it begins to shape expectations. Authors can no longer assume that readers will indulge weak beginnings while we get warmed up. 

There is no time for throat clearing. So what can we do? Recently, Kendra Bonnett and I interviewed Linda Joy Myers upon the publication of her new book The Power of Memoir. We explored a number of topics and then near the end of our conversation, I asked Linda Joy about her perspective on writing the opening to a memoir.

She gave two take-aways during our interview. I hope you’ll go over to Women’s Memoirs to listen to this five minute segment. I’ll share one of them here: 

• Play with your opening. 

Linda Joy urges you to get into play mode when you work on the opening to your memoir. Try out different ones. See what voice works for you. Don’t be afraid to write and discard a number of alternatives until the right now reveals itself. Take advantage of the delete and backspace. An opening that doesn't work for you can be popped just like a bubble. Keep playing until you have a beginning that will hook your reader. 

I started this post with the statement: It isn’t enough to hook your reader. What did I mean by that? You’re probably thinking that finding a way to connect with a reader is already a challenge. I talk more about this in today’s post on Women’s Memoirs. I hope you’ll join me there where you can also listen to Linda Joy's interview.

Dandelions, Words, and Getting Off to a Strong Start

Opening Salvos #15 by Matilda Butler

Living in the country makes me appreciate all plants that manage to survive the voracious appetites of deer, the tusks of marauding wild boar, the poison of swarming bees, and even the beaks of birds (seen yesterday biting the leaves off my winter crop of snow peas). I’ve even gotten fond of dandelions, and not just for their tender edible parts. 

Dandelions are strong and if they were people, I’d call them determined. They multiply rapidly. They seem to survive almost all efforts to eliminate them. Words, on the other hand, multiply slowly and are quite susceptible to the delete key, the eraser, and even the pencil line drawn through them. Are there some types of words that are better off removed in order to let our writing shine? Are there some words that weaken rather than strengthen our openings?

An Audio with an Answer

That’s the question Kendra and I discuss in a very short audio we posted on our website earlier today. We’ve been reading books about writing, featuring those by well-known authors who have not only written bestselling books, but also written about writing. Our reading is research for the final chapter in our book Writing Alchemy. We’re pulling together some interesting concepts but leaving behind an incredible wealth of valuable ideas for readers.

Kendra got the idea that we could share some of these gems in a new series we’re calling Writing in Five: Quick Tips. These will all be five minute audios with just a single take-away for the listener. We want you to get ideas that you can quickly put into practice.

Our New SCN Online Class with More Answers

And speaking of “quickly,” we’re also discussing our new Story Circle Network online course, Writing Alchemy: Quick-Start Method. Writing Alchemy, the focus on our pre-conference workshop at Stories from the Heart V, was geared to an in-depth look at each of the five components of writing. In our new online course, we’re giving you a fast way to start using Writing Alchemy, to layout the content of the elements, and then to write a 1000 word vignette. 

Now you’re probably wondering why I started with dandelions. In the audio, Kendra shares a quote with you that uses dandelions as the metaphor. Click here and listen to our audio. We think it will give you a quick tip for writing success. Of course, we hope you’ll also consider taking our SCN online class. 

By the way, we’re even offering a special discount on our [Essential] Women’s Memoir Writing Workshop to all who take our SCN online course. We’ve never offered it at such a low price before and it is only available at this price to those who take our Writing Alchemy: Quick-Start online course. 

Have some fun. Figure out the quiz. Get ready to be inspired and motivated.

Opening Salvos #14 by Matilda Butler

Fun, always a good place to start.

Is memoir writing fun? Sometimes, when the memories and words and sentences work together in an amiable manner. But many days, writing is work, not play. So I thought we'd have a little fun today with a quiz to help your thinking about memoir openings.

Inspiration and motivation: Get ready for Austin. See you there.

Today, let’s have a bit of fun. Let’s ignore what we’re writing and instead think about what others has written, specifically what women memoirists have not only written, but published. Besides, a little fun will get us in the mood for the upcoming Story Circle Network Stories from the Heart Conference. It’s almost here. In a few days, I’m flying into Austin from California. Meanwhile, my business partner, Kendra Bonnett begins her drive from Maine in a couple of hours. We’ve planned our pre-conference workshop and will do our final coordination in Austin on Thursday. 

Stories from the Heart V is sure to edify, inspire, and encourage us as we continue on our journey of telling our stories. Our pre-conference workshop is sold out, but there ample room for you in the Saturday and Sunday workshops. If you haven’t registered, there’s still time. Here’s the link for the list of workshop leaders and for registration. 

The Quiz

My blogs always focus on Opening Salvos. I usually interview an author to get her ideas on effective memoir beginnings and then discuss what she said. Today I thought I’d do something a little different. I’ve chosen nine memoirs from my shelves (and shelves) of memoirs. You’ll find the opening to each below. Then I’ve given you a list of their titles and authors. The Quiz is that you have to figure out which opening goes with which memoir. I’ve posted the correct answers over on our Women’s Memoirs website. 

Once you match the openings and the authors, I’d like you to ask yourself a few questions:

1. Based on this opening, would I like to read more of this memoir?

2. Did the memoir take me right into the story? If so, how did she do that? If not, what could she have done differently?

3. Was there a strong link between the book’s title and its opening? Should there be? Did I like it when the two fit together closely or do I want the link to evolve during the telling of the story? Which approach will work better for me.

The Quiz itself has correct answers. But the questions listed above have no right or wrong answers. They are simply prompts to help you think through what you like in other memoirs and therefore what you probably want in your own.

I hope to see you in Austin.

Nine Memoir Openings 

Memoir Opening #1

“Two months ago I left my husband, and now, for the first time in years, I am neither scared nor angry. My heart is light. My career is blossoming. My child is happy. Life is full of possibility.

I am talking with a friend when my cell phone rings.

Janine? my sister Jane says. Have you heard from Amy?

No, I say, my skin already prickling from adrenaline. What’s up?

I got a call from Kimberly-Clark. Amy hasn’t been to work in three days.

.......................

Memoir Opening #2

The cats of my childhood came out of the alley. Alleys ran up the center of our blocks, as they often do in the Midwest, so that to a child, each house faced two ways. For me, the most important direction was the alley. I was an alley child, as my cats were alley cats.

......................

Memoir Opening #3

Prologue: The early evening train pulled into Albert Lea with brakes squealing and slowed to a crawl alongside the Wilson & Co. meatpacking plant. The lamps at the corns of the parking lot cast the packinghouse itself in shadow reminding me of a prison-break scene in some movie I had otherwise forgotten - a Hollywood movie, not one of the foreign films I now preferred. As we cross the channel where I used to watch for giant goldfish while Mom waited in the car for Dad to get off work, I could see the depot glowing up ahead. 

........................

Memoir Opening #4

My father and I were in the laundry room and we were having a crisis. It was the strangest thing, but I couldn’t stop crying. And there were a few other weird things: I was wearing a yarmulke and a nightgown, for one, and then there were my hands, red and raw and wrapped in plastic baggies. My lip was split. There were paper towels under my feet. And weirdest of all, everything I owned seemed to be in the washing machine, whiles and colors, clothes and shoes, barrettes and backpacks, all jumbled together. Huh.

........................

Memoir Opening #5

When I was seventeen, I found a job in what was then downtown Los Angeles in a store where dresses were sold for a dollar each The store survived through its monthly going-out-of-business sales.

.........................

Memoir Opening #6

Deep in an ocean. I am suspended motionless. The water is gray. That’s all there is, and before that? My arms are held out straight, cruciate, my head and legs hang limp. Nothing moves. Brown kelp lies flat in mud and fish are buried in liquid clouds of dust. There are no shadows or sounds. Should there be? I don’t know if I am alive, but if not, how do I know I am dead? My body is leaden, heavier than gravity. Gravity is done with me. No more sinking and rising or bobbling in currents. There is a terrible feeling of oppression with no oppressor. I try to lodge my mind against some boundary, some reference point, but the continent of the body dissolves.

...........................

Memoir Opening #7

As I have mused back over memories of my relationships with my mother and with my father and of their relationship with each other as far as it was accessible to me, I have become more and more sharply aware of how many other lives are linked with these three, and of how the threads to back before my own birth in 1939 and continue after my parents’ deaths in 1978 and 1980.

...........................

Memoir Opening #8

December 26, 2004

Khao Lak, Thailand

10:30 a.m.

Pain.

It brought me back to consciousness, a sharp, agonizing, throbbing pain racking my body, my legs.

My legs.

I opened my eyes and looked down. Black filthy water covered the lower half of my body. I couldn’t even see my legs. My arms, bare, scratched, bleeding and aching, were wrapped around a palm tree. I was holding on, leaning against the trunk. Balck, oil-slicked, muddied water choked with debris was everywhere. I looked up. The sky was blue, clear, untroubled, the sun was shining. Where was I? Where was Simon? What had happened?

I remembered.

.........................

Memoir Opening #9

Age seventeen, stringy-haired and halter-topped, weighting in the high double digits and unhindered by a high school diploma, I showed up at the Pacific Ocean, ready to seek my fortune with a truck full of extremely stoned surfers. My father, I thought them to be, for such was my quest- a family I could stand alongside pondering the sea. We stood of the blue water surged toward us in six-foot coils.

Titles of the 9 memoirs. Now match the openings with the titles.

(a) Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir by Marge Piercy  (This is the beginning of Chapter 2 as Chapter 1 focuses on memory.)

(b) Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood by Jennifer Traig.

(c) A Match to the Heart: One Woman’s Story of Being Struck by Lightning by Gretel Ehrlich (National Bestseller)

(d) Lit: A Memoir by Mary Karr

(e) With a Daughter’s Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson by Mary Catherine Bateson  (Note: There is a Prologue before the opening I have used.)

(f) Packinghouse Daughter: A Memoir by Cheri Register (Winner of the American Book Award)

(g) If I am Missing or Dead: A Sister’s Story of Love, Murder, and Liberation by Janine Latus

(h) Love Always, Petra: A Story of Courage and the Discovery of Life’s Hidden Gifts by Petra Nemcova

(i) Borrowed Finery by Paula Fox

What’s Next?

Match the openings numbered 1-9 with the book titles and authors indicated a-i. Follow this link for the answers.

Looking for the answers?

Just follow this link over to Women's Memoirs website and see how you did. More importantly, did you learn anything about memoir openings and book titles? 

"Writing is Easy," Says Humolosopher Mary Gordon Spence

Opening Salvos # 13 by Matilda Butler

“Writing is easy. You just need an opening, a closing, and the right words to get you from the first to the second.” said humolosopher Mary Gordon Spence. Humolosopher? That’s right. Mary Gordon Spence sees lighthearted magic in everyday events. Because that humor often shows up in her writing and her speaking, she decided to call herself a humolosopher. A word that is just as original as she is. 

During our recent interview, I asked Mary Gordon to share her insights as a public speaker, storyteller and coach, insights that would help women as they develop the opening to their memoirs. Not surprisingly, she began by noting that grabbing and holding an audience is as important in preparing a speech as in writing, perhaps even more so.  

Her first piece of advice is to “let your audience in immediately.” Mary Gordon repeated this several times and I think it is a good reminder to us that if we’re going to share our life story, or a piece of it in a memoir, we shouldn’t hold the reader at a distance but let her join us on our storytelling journey. 

Her second piece of advice is that an opening needs to be a predictor of your story. By this she means that the reader needs to know what the book is about and why she wants to read it. Of course, in a well-crafted memoir this is often handled in scene rather than summary. 

Her third piece of advice is that openings begin long before you start writing them. They begin back when you research your material, find your focus (theme and message), organize your story, and write the chapters. All of this prepares you for the right opening. 

If you’d like to know where Mary Gordon’s humor was originally honed, please join us on Women’s Memoirs where I've posted her audio and given you a peak at the advice her mother gave her in the first grade. Not feeling funny? Don't think you can pull off humor? Don’t worry, Mary Gordon urges you to be true to yourself. She says you reader will always know. However, I think you'll love her take on humor and how it is all around us. She even though one of my stories that I shared during the interview was funny. 

Mary Gordon Spence is the luncheon keynote speaker at Story Circle Network’s Stories from the Heart V conference in Austin, TX February 5-7. She will entertain and enthrall us on Saturday February 6. We hope to see you there.

Effective Openings, Memoir Writing Craft, and SCN's Stories from the Heart V Conference

Opening Salvos # 13 by Matilda Butler

“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

An Opening Sentence Indelibly Inked in Our Minds

If you follow this Opening Salvos blog, you know that I focus on effective ways to begin a memoir. My writing and business partner, Kendra Bonnett, and I regularly interview memoir authors to get their perspective on multiple topics, including openings. As soon as I saw the date for today’s SCN Telling Herstories post, my mind immediately turned to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's opening sentence in his message to Congress asking for a formal declaration of war. There are many ways that he could have started that speech. Yet the carefully crafted beginning was so effective that many of us can recite it from memory 68 years later. 

In pursuit of effective openings, I continue to seek multiple answers to the question, “How do you write in a way that gets the reader’s attention, that makes her want to know more, that causes her to turn the page to see what you are saying next?” That’s really the point of this blog and as you’ll see that the end of this post, I’ve recently gotten some new perspectives from award-winning author Sue William Silverman. 

More To It Than Just Openings

Effective openings, of course, are just that. They are important, but even the best written opening will only hold a reader’s attention for a couple of pages. Writers have to deliver compelling content page after page. How can you take a story, any story, and tell it in a way that engages readers? That’s the question that students ask us frequently. Even those who are writing for their family tell us that they don’t want to create a boring memoir that their children and grandchildren won’t even read. 

It’s the question that my business partner, Kendra Bonnett, and I have been asking ourselves directly and indirectly over the past seven years, first as we wrote our collective memoir (Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story) and now as we teach women’s memoir writing classes and regularly blog on our website: womensmemoirs.com  Sometimes we get a glimpse of what it takes to write effectively, such as using the five senses. We tease out that particular writing element, hold it up to the light, research it, develop writing materials, and teach it. Each time we do this, we see improvements in our students writing, but we know that just like effective openings, a single element is just a part of the whole. But what is the whole?

In the spring this year, Kendra drove out from Maine to spend a month with me in California. We do this once or twice a year, a time of joint teaching, planning the coming year, and developing new products. A major focus for 2009 was better ways to teach writing. Lots of ideas, but nothing seemed to really answer our question. We had even come up with a concept for a book about writing although it seemed too derivative of what had already been done. Several weeks into her stay, we drove to San Jose for a concert, a rare and well-earned evening of relaxation. We arrived an hour early so that we could hear the composer discuss his composition, which would be publicly performed for the first time that evening. During the lecture, he described and demonstrated the deconstruction of the piece into its three basic elements. About three-fourths of the way through his presentation, Kendra and I turned to each other and whispered in almost the same words at the same moment, “That’s it. That’s what we’ve been looking for.” Both nodding, we went back to listening to the composer. I suppose Louis Pasteur would listen to our story and repeat his line that “chance favors the prepared mind.” 

Experience Our New Writing Concept at SCN’s Stories from the Heart V

Kendra and I spent the rest of her stay developing our new concept for effective writing, an approach that we will present in our SCN Stories from the Heart V pre-conference workshop in Austin on Friday February 5, 2010. Our writing approach has come a long way from our aha moment. We have now elaborated the concept, researched the elements, found examples in the writings of bestselling and well-known authors, developed materials about what have become five elements, taught the approach in many courses and have students regularly using this approach in their memoir writing. We have seen writers produce professional quality work as soon as they embrace our technique. In addition to teaching students how to use it, we are finishing our book that fully explains and exemplifies our approach, a book entitled Five Magical Elements that Turn Your Words into Gold: Secrets of Writing Alchemy. For more information about our SCN pre-conference workshop, Click Here. 

An Invitation to Join Us and Others in Austin, February 5-7

We invite you participate with us in Austin as we join with keynoters Heather Summerhayes Cariou, author of Sixtyfive Roses: A Sister’s Memoir and Mary Gordon Spence author of Finding Magic in the Mundane, and a group of 27 incredibly talented memoir writers, teachers, coaches, and editors who are bringing their ideas to Austin, February 5-7 to share with you in a vibrant and insightful series of workshops.

Before You Know It, You’ll Be Writing from the Heart 

Give yourself and your writing a holiday present by signing up now for Stories from the Heart V. The SCN early-bird registration discount is only good until December 15. Click Here for more information about the conference and to register before the conference fees increase.

Back to Opening Salvos

Of course, this is Opening Salvos for December so I want to give you two presents -- both audio interviews with well-known memoirists. The first is a link to our interview with Susan Wittig Albert, known to you as founder of Story Circle Network, author of multiple bestselling series including The China Bayles Mysteries and The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter among others, and the author of Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place. If you are engaged in writing your memoir, or thinking about beginning to write, you’ll want to listen to Susan describe both her experiences with writing her memoir and her advice on how to handle various aspect of memoir. Click Here to go to Susan's interview.

My second gift to you is my just completed interview with Sue William Silverman in my Memoir Moments series. Kendra and I conducted a longer interview with Sue about her memoirs, but in this recent interview, Sue and I focused on memoir openings. In her interview, you’ll learn how your opening helps to create a portal into the experiences you want to describe. Especially important are her comments about "giving details an attitude" so that they help to convey your emotions. Click Here to listen to Sue William Silverman’s interview.

Writing Your Memoir by Opening Your Journal - Advice from Susan Wittig Albert

Opening Salvos #12 by Matilda Butler

If you follow Opening Salvos, you know that I interview women memoirists to get their perspective on effective ways to start a memoir. Each discussion has generated insights into multiple approaches. I’ve learned from the conversations and hope you have also. Even if no one technique is right for you, understanding alternatives will help you better consider what will be most appropriate for the memoir you are writing.

This week, Kendra Bonnett and I had the pleasure of a lengthy conversation with SCN founder, Susan Wittig Albert. As you know, Susan’s newest book is Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place. Late in the interview, I asked Susan about her decision to have a Prologue, which presents one opportunity for an opening, as well as Chapter One, the more formal beginning to her memoir. I urge you to listen to her thoughts as I think you’ll find some wonderful insights.

Click here to go to the interview with Susan, available on Women's Memoir website. But before you leave this site, I'd like to share one of Susan's points that will may give you a reason to start journaling or confirm the wisdom of the journaling that you are already doing. 

For this Opening Salvos, I’d like to break with tradition and discuss a point from the interview that puts a completely different perspective on openings. Consider your journaling as the preparation for your opening. Because Susan’s guest blog and writing prompt on Women’s Memoirs focused on the importance of journals, I began to see a new way to think about openings. 

“I began keeping a journal when I was 26 years old, in 1966,” said Susan. She says that  her memoir would not have been possible without reference to those journals that gave her details about both her internal place and her external world. These journals keep her anchored and provide the data for the memoir. 

Right now, you might be thinking, “Well, it’s too late for me. I’ve never kept a journal.” Susan offers encouragement to start your journal now. You can write daily in a physical journal, on the computer, or even in a blog that can be kept private or opened more widely. You can start today or on a special occasion. Two of Susan’s favorite times to start a journal are January 1--a kind of welcoming the new year--or on your birthday--a celebration of the next year in your life. 

What’s the difference between your journal and the memoir you are writing? Susan has thoughts on that as well. Just CLICK HERE to listen to our conversation with Susan. If you missed her guest blog and writing prompt, CLICK HERE. 

Get writing and keep writing. Our life stories are important and should be documented.

"Don't You Want to Know If the Story is True?" Led to Author's Opening

Opening Salvos #11 by Matilda Butler

Are you having a hard time with the beginning of your memoir? You’re not alone. Even if you have written many vignettes or dozens of chapters, you still may not know the answer to how you’ll open your memoir. On Friday, Kendra Bonnett and I interviewed Nancy Bachrach, author of The Center of the Universe and asked her to share her experiences in crafting the opening to her memoir.

The interview went something like this: “Nancy, I wonder if you’d talk a little about the opening to your memoir and your decision to make this your opening.” 

“The opening is the hardest to write,” said Nancy. “I rewrote my opening at least 1000 times. I didn’t know where to begin. I only knew what the last line would be.” 

It turns out that Nancy begins her memoir with an Author’s Note. Why? She told us that while her book was being edited by her publisher Alfred A. Knopf, she kept asking, “Don’t you want to know if my story is true?” She explains that the editor kept replying the way a shrink would -- “Is there something you want to tell us?” Finally, her editor suggested that if she wanted to make a statement to her readers, she could write an Author’s Note. And she did. A very funny Author's Note. It turns out that it was a great way to begin her memoir as it established her tone as well as her role as the narrator of the story. I was already smiling by the time I got to page 1.

Nancy’s mother-daughter story, told with ample dark humor, is true although she took a few liberties. In the wake of the James Frey controversy, she wanted her readers to know how she arrived at her perspective on her mother’s life. And, yes, she says that the memoir really isn’t her story. It is her mother’s story and she’s the narrator. But from the moment you begin reading the Author’s Note until you reach the last page, you feel you’re sitting with your best friend, the one who always makes you laugh, no matter how difficult the situation. 

If you’d like to hear the complete interview with Nancy with her many insights into memoir writing, CLICK HERE. She also talked about finding your voice even if you’re not naturally funny like she is; telling your mother you’re writing about her or keeping it well locked since Nancy’s mother found her memoir in a drawer; handling the different views of siblings; and many more topics. 

A few days before our interview, Nancy posted a guest blog and memoir writing prompt. If you're interested, CLICK HERE.

Write Your Memoir Opening as a Microcosm of the Whole

Opening Salvos #10 by Matilda Butler

What are you trying to achieve with the opening sentences of your memoir? Are you looking for some writing advice? How about getting some writing tips from a New York Times bestselling author?

Kendra Bonnett and I had the pleasure of interviewing Hope Edelman, bestselling author of Motherless Daughters and four other non-fiction books last week. Hope has just published her first full-length memoir, The Possibility of Everything, and we wanted to get her take on a number of issues related to memoir writing.

Our conversation with Hope took place several days before her volume reached the shelves of bookstores. As we talked in the few minutes prior to the official start of the interview, she mentioned that a photographer from the LA Times had called a couple of hours earlier to say that he wanted to come over later that day to prepare a spread for the Sunday paper. It reminded me how we all juggle multiple roles and tasks. Even bestselling authors have to get the house ready for an unexpected visitor. She said that she’d just finished vacuuming before our call. 

By now, you probably know that I always talk to authors about openings -- sentences, paragraphs, chapters for their memoir. After all, I call this blog “Opening Salvos.” The conversation with Hope did not disappoint. We had an extended discussion of what she wanted to achieve in her opening as well as her general advice to writers. 

Kendra and I were both taken by her discussion of how the opening needs to be a microcosm of the entire book. I was stumped about how to illustrate that concept with a photo and then I thought about an apple. If you think of your memoir as a complete apple, then you might imagine that if you took a slice of the apple, it would be like the first chapter. It has some of the skin and flesh, even part of the core and its seeds. Yet, it isn’t the whole story. 

As Hope talked with us about openings, we asked her to read the first paragraph in her memoir. She took us through what she was doing in that paragraph and how it hinted at the journey she was making as a woman and a mother to find healing for her daughter in a Mayan village in Belize. 

In addition to a discussion about openings, we discussed creative non-fiction’s role in memoir writing, the differences between writing a non-fiction book and a memoir, how to take an embarrassment of riches in memoir material and shape it into a memoir others will want to read. 

If you’d like to learn more about Hope Edelman’s writing tips and techniques, please join us at Women’s Memoirs where you can listen to her interview.

"Let It Be" - Advice for Women Memoir Writers Looking for the Opening

Opening Salvos #9 by Matilda Butler

In a recent Women’s Memoir Author Conversation with SCN member Karen Walker, Kendra Bonnett and I were intrigued by a number of her responses to questions from our listeners. We invite you to listen to her entire interview. But right now I'd like to focus on just one response. Near the end of the interview, I got to ask my question about memoir openings. Specifically, I asked Karen to read her first three paragraphs and then tell us how she came up with the idea for her opening and why she chose this way to get her memoir started.

Karen’s memoir, Following the Whispers, started out as a rehash of her journals -- more than 700 pages of rehash. “Then I turned my manuscript over to an editor and she told me, ‘You have a story in there somewhere. Just tell it.'” That was the beginning of a long journey for Karen, a journey that included going back to college and taking every creative writing class they offered. During those classes, she began the rewrite of her memoir.

For anyone who has written, we know that meant the rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite of her story. Karen told us that her current opening “was not the beginning of my memoir when I started.” Because Karen originally thought of her story as that of a woman who had lost custody of her young son, she had started the story with that loss. Later, as she rewrote her memoir and eventually worked with another editor, she came to see that her story wasn’t about losing custody. It was a story of ignoring her inner whispers, whispers that gently urged her in the right direction, and finally learning to follow her whispers. 

As Karen neared the completion of her memoir, she still didn’t have a good opening. Her advice to writers is: “Don’t worry. Just let it be. Just allow the right opening to come. It always does.” Karen got her inspiration one evening at a regular folk dance gathering she attends. She saw a friend dancing around the room with his two daughters snuggled in his arms. Karen said, “At that moment, I saw how different my childhood was from these two lucky little girls. I also saw I now had the perfect opening to my memoir.”  

Be sure to listen to all of Karen’s interview. Click Here to go to the blog with her interview. She has many interesting points for memoir writers. You’ll especially like her discussion of the Golden Thread.

By the way, I’ve spent the past two weeks working on a short video in which I share the first of seven secrets to writing an effective memoir. I too struggled with how to begin that video. In a video you have to grab a viewer even more quickly than you do in a memoir. The video is now posted on YouTube. If you’d like to check it out, Click Here or go to http://www.tinyurl.com/lpnkb9  If you like it, please click on the Subscribe button. We’re working on the second video - Women’s Memoir Writing Secret #2. 

We hope you'll share the video with other life writers. Be sure to let us know what type of information you'd like in these videos and we'll add your suggestions to our list.