MEMOIR REMINDER: ALL ABOUT YOU BUT STARTS WITH ME

My story, your story, one story

What’s a memoir reminder? Just that the book called a memoir isn’t a biography, auto-biography, or a novel.

None of that, not for a memoir. It’s all about keeping time and not flying all over the place in a random, scattershot, manner.

An example of where it starts and where it ends?

For example, a teen memoir might begin in high school years.

It could start on graduation night when an older brother shows up unexpectedly and steals the show.

Or how it felt when another older brother convinces your father to sell him the car you’ve been driving for years.

However it starts, make it memorable. Make me turn the page.

Does it start when you were left without a best man for your wedding at the last moment and a family member stepped up?

Tell me more.

Or maybe when you shared secrets and forgot the old pirate saying that only dead men tell no tales. My favorite: you can share a secret among three people and know it will be kept as long as two are dead. Same thing?

In other words, say as little as possible, if that. (Thank you Elmore Leonard.)

My memoir reminder

This is what memoir looks like. I added the gin bottler for a little Fitzgerald boost. The papers on the right are editorial notes from Indigo Editing.

The paperback on the left is Vivian Gornick’s ‘The Situation and the Story.’

That’s it, all any writer needs, at least a memoir writer. You’ve done the research, now get it right.

On the other hand, after you finish for the day, after you’ve drained your memoir swamp and leaked it all onto a once blank page, this is the place for you:

Go ahead and lock yourself into the harness of writing, then break free, get wet, get some sun. You’re a writer, not a naked mole rat, so catch a few rays.

Work it out so where ever you find yourself working, you have this to reflect on. Feeling warm yet?

Memoir reminder pt 2

My story is a typical cancer memoir along the lines of ‘Cancer found, cancer treated, new appreciation of life.’

You’ve heard it, read it, maybe lived it. What makes my story any different?

Location to start with. I had neck cancer, more specifically tongue cancer as if neck cancer doesn’t sound horrible enough. Add a virus called hpv16 and it turned into Sex Cancer.

And everyone knew it was hpv16 sex cancer; if they didn’t, I told them. Which created an awkward pause most of the time.

I explained it in a most literate way, that hpv16 sex cancer was somewhere between Stephen Crane’s ‘The Red Badge of Courage,’ and Nathanial Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ and the red wings handed out by Hell’s Angels on special occasions.

I worked hard during the process to keep things in perspective.

Maybe too hard. My story is one of revenge against cancer to show it picked the wrong victim.

How do you explain sex cancer to a wife when they wondered if just maybe it came from an extramarital affair?

What’s it like in a radiation waiting room when a Trump loving patient verbally abuses a cancer driver because he thought channeling Fox News was normal?

What happens when you discover the insurance is cancelled while you’re on the way to your first chemo appointment with your spouse driving?

That’s the situation and this is my story.