Call time on your memoir!
Decision #4 from Sixteen Superpowers Memoir Writers Need to Have. Over sixteen posts, I help you make pacts with yourself so all will go well for you.
Photo by Ales Krivec on Unsplash
4. Call time. Time-box your plot.
YOUR MANTRA: Time is on my side.
Time creates compression. Compression turns pages.
Use time in your favor. Decide on the front end to contain your plot to one present timeline. My memoir BOUNDLESS is one year in my life. From that year, I had the freedom to choose how to move back in time to the past and project into time to the possible future. This compression gave the plot urgency and momentum.
Remember, a memoir is not an autobiography. It’s not your whole life. Don’t tell us your whole life unless you are Barack Obama. And oh, he doesn’t do that. He has one memoir that’s about his early years in Honolulu and Chicago (Dreams of My Father) and another that is first of a planned two-volume set about his presidency (A Promised Land).
Serial memoirist Dani Shapiro is the master of time-boxing. Devotion is a year in her life that she calls a spiritual detective story. Inheritance is a year in her life after she learns the man who raised her was not her biological father.
Know that you probably have more great stories in you. Don’t dilute your great story by telling all the stories.
It’s the lens through which you view your life that makes it a story.
DECISION: Pick a time frame and call it a story.Â
ABOUT SIXTEEN SUPERPOWERS OF MEMOIR WRITERS
It’s easy to write a memoir! All you need to do is write something with universal resonance that is true and comes from your life.
Let’s get real. To write a memoir, you need a basket of superpowers.Â
As a memoir writer with a forthcoming book (BOUNDLESS, coming December 2024 - pre-order here at Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Amazon and as a book coach/developmental editor who works with memoir writers, I’ve learned quite a lot about tapping into literary superpowers.
What’s enduring about memoir is that it is real, and it matters. A few decisions you make on the front end will determine whether it will go well.
In this series of posts, I give you 16 decisions to install at the beginning of your journey. Make these pacts with yourself, stick to them and you’ll get there!
THE FULL SERIES - AVAILABLE TO PAID SUBSCRIBERS
The Sixteen Superpowers of Memoir Writers: Make These Decisions on the Front End, and All Will Go Well for You
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Why Writing Your Book Will Change You As Much As It Will Change the World
From Lived Experience to a Book: The Path of My Memoir, Boundless