Just as in writing a novel, writing a memoir depends heavily on character and characterisation.
(Character is the deep aspect of someone, and characterisation is surface impression.)
If you are writing a novel you can make up the character entirely which presents you with a differnet set of problems. But if you are writing a memoir, you are dealing with pre-existing characters - yourself and those you are writing about - it is a journey of investigation and examination rather than invention.
That sounds like people can be taken apart an examined like machines, Of course, that is not true. Not only do we make up - to some extent - the people around us, but we also make up ourselves.
In both cases we are black boxes through which glimmers of light shine. People are not things, they are largely invisible processes, which we can only catch glimpses of. Thus it is an act of imagination to describe a real person, just as it is to invent a fictional character
The fascination of a memoir, as in a novel, is to watch the outer surface of a person fall away to reveal the deeper truth within.
It’s very hard to see people, or ourselves, because as Norman Mailer put it, we are advertisements for ourselves.
People are largely unconscious creatures. There is your public self, then there is the one you keep concealed, then there is the one you don’t even know about.
Because the conscious mind is all too often simply a PR for the the unconscious mind - which is usually much darker or more perverse in intention than the individual imagines.
The root of the word ‘persona’ is ‘mask’. To write a good memoir you have to get underneath the masks - both of yourself and other people. Which is impossible, but you can at least get some way beneath the surface.
A person is an impression, not a photograph. An impressionist painting you might say. And a memoir is your impression honestly recorded.
The fact that if you are writing a memoir, say, about your father, and you are therefore an outside observer to a private life does not mean your view isn’t valid, if it’s honest and truthful. Because outsiders can often see people better than they can see themselves.
If you are writing a memoir, you are probably the protagonist, or at least one of them. Therefore you are a writer trying to uncover your own inner universe. You are given to self-deception and illusion like anyone else. What makes you special, and the book interesting, is that you are going to greater depths of introspection than most people are prepared to do.
What are you looking for in yourself and in others in your book?
Secrets and contradictions.
Once we know someone is hiding something, we cannot help but be fascinated. Also we find contradictions compelling.
My mother, the subject of my memoir ‘The Scent of Dried Roses’ was to all who knew her a well-balanced, happy, kind and uncomplicated person, well-loved and ‘normal’.
Then one day she hanged herself.
This was the central contradiction that lay at the heart of my memoir. It gave me a mystery to solve.
I never solved it of course, but I learned a lot about my mother that no one that knew her had imagined. That she had suffered mental illness much of her life. That shortly after I ws born she was prescribed largactil for an indefinite period - the ‘chemical cosh’ as it was known then.
She was nothing like her public persona.
The mystery is still unfolding. This year, I met my mother’s art teacher at a100th birthday party for Aunty Olive, my mother’s closest friend. The art teacher told me that Jean, my mother, was always ‘searching for something’. I had never heard this before. It had never occured to me, certainly not as a child, that my mother was ‘searching’ for anything. She just was.
There was one secret in particular that still haunts me. When I was researching ‘The Scent of Dried Roses’, I went to see my mother’s GP, who consulted her notes, and told me that although there was important information in them about why she committed sucide, my mother had instructed the GP never to tell anyone. So I sat and looked at the GP looking a my mother’s notes, and I never did find out what the secret was.
A final remark. When writing a memoir, you must look very closely at people around you and at yourself. Know your subject and yourself - and know your enemy. Because they might turn out to be the same thing.
Important stuff. Of course, had you been writing fiction you wouldn't have been able to resist a scene where you break into the GP’s surgery and steal those notes.
Having the introspective experience writing my memoir seems to be the most challenging part. This has been helpful information on how I can better delve deep into that character “myself”. Thank you 🙏✨