We have perhaps all been trained to write the essay that focuses on thinking rather than generate more creative writing that invites emotions in writing. The result is that too many would-be memoirists slip into writing essays and avoid placing emotions in memoir writing.
An essay addresses the mind while a memoir speaks to the heart: one mind speaking to another mind rather than one heart speaking to another heart.
Intuiting this, people ask often, “How can I make my story more interesting? It doesn’t have much emotion?” These are people who are on the right tack. Others need to hear, “You aren’t in your stories at all. How can you make space for more emotion?
You belong in your stories
As Viga Boland, a guest memoirist on this blog, so well said it, “Put the me back into memoir.”
Essentially, when we read a memoir, we are not looking to learn about theories and philosophies. We read memoirs to learn about a person’s experience, about a personal hero’s journey.
Of course, in placing your emotions into your memoir, you need to safeguard your boundaries. Writing a memoir is not an occasion to “tell all” and cause emotional injury to one’s self or to others. But, even with this caveat, it is possible to share much. For many writers, that is much more then they are willing to share at present.
The more a writer shares the more sharing become all right. A good rule of writing to set for yourself is to write you vignette or story and let lose with your emotional side. Then, put the text aside and read it much later—even months later. Often the writer is comfortable with a text that had seemed too revealing earlier.
In conclusion
Each in its own way, the posts below address emotions in memoir writing and offer you a path to introducing more feeling into your writing.
What is Your Memoir’s “BIG WHY”
What is your memoir’s BIG WHY? Without a BIG WHY, your memoir will not shine. You story will be smaller than it needs to be.
As I interview prospective clients for coaching—something I do often, I listen to why their reasons to write a memoir. Many do not yet have a compelling reason to write their memoir, a pushy “why.” I strongly suspect they will not continue into coaching or editing—and may not finish their memoir at all.
What is your memoir’s BIG WHY?
Yes, there is something that has urged them to be in touch with me, but that presenting reason, I sense, is not yet gnawing at their consciousness, boring into them until they have to give in to it, causing non-writing to be more painful than writing. These people will “try to write” a memoir, but I sense they are not committed.
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Banish Fear of Revealing Too Much: Be a Bigger Presence in Your Memoir
The fear of revealing too much of ourselves in the memoir we are writing can be paralyzing.
We wonder: “What will people say? How will people react to what I am revealing?” So…
We hold back in our writing. We stop ourselves from personal revelation, from sharing secrets.
The fear is founded—it’s not always a friendly world out there. And, of course…
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Writing Feelings into Your Memoir
Recently, David asked in an email about “writing feelings into your memoir,” about writing a memoir that, if I am understanding him right, is not all details and facts.
Below is my response which can serve as a stand-alone article to help you write your own memoir.
Leave a comment below expressing your experience of writing feelings into your memoir.
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Here are some of my suggestions for writing feelings into your memoir:
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Evoking Emotions in Your Readers
You Can Evoke Emotions in Your Readers. Here’s How. Instilling your memoir with enough emotion to stir up a response from your readers is do-able. It is undeniably one of the most important results an author must set out to achieve. A memoir seeks to move a reader and without evoking emotions, a memoir cannot […]
Lightning or When Young Love Strikes
It was the summer the city burned. The weather was dry and hot, but the real tinder was a mixture of frustration and anger, white and black, promises and demands. If I paused to consider these things, the pause was imperceptible. I stood at the edge of the pool contemplating…