Memory Writers Network

by Jerry Waxler

My dad owned a neighborhood drugstore in north Philadelphia, and on the nights he was able to make it home for dinner, most of the conversation centered around him telling us about the menagerie of characters who streamed through the store and gave him endless raw material. We sat and dutifully listened, but since there was no rule about equal air time, I grew up without having picked up even a smattering of skill to help me tell stories of my own.

In fact, I spent quite the next several decades story-less, feeling awkward about reporting on what happened to me. And though I didn’t realize it at first, I gradually noticed that my lack of storytelling was cutting me off from people. Stories are how we tell each other who we are, and so without stories, I felt isolated. Once I noticed how important it was to be able to tell stories, I set out to learn in adulthood what I had not learned as a child.

It turns out that with a little digging you can find storytellers who will teach you their craft. For example, Charles Kiernan, coordinator of the Lehigh Valley Storytelling Guild, has been studying story telling for years. For him, storytelling is a performance art. He looks like Mark Twain, including the flowing mane of hair and bushy mustache, and when he dresses in period costume, it’s like listening to your own copy of Mark Twain. In addition to the performance and folklore aspects of storytelling, he’s also interested in creating them.

Here’s the simple, powerful lesson he shared with me, that he’ll be teaching in more detail at the Augusta Heritage Folkarts Festival in West Virginia, July 8-13, 2007. Say you’re sitting around at a family gathering, and the older adults start telling stories about Uncle Bob. The ones who knew Uncle Bob start laughing, and everyone else glazes over. They never met Uncle Bob, they didn’t know his pranks, or the sadness underneath his smile, so the story isn’t working for them. The problem is that so many family stories contain codes. The people who know the code can make sense of the story, and those who don’t know the code are left out.

It’s like that old joke about a newly convicted criminal in the penitentiary. Someone down the cellblock screams out the number “68″ and all the other prisoners crack up laughing. The newbie asks what is going on, and his cellmate says, “We’ve heard these jokes so many times, we just tell them by the number.” It’s the same with family stories. As storyteller Charles Kiernan, coordinator of the Lehigh Valley Storytelling Guild, explains it, say you’re at the dinner table celebrating a holiday with your extended family. You start telling stories about Uncle Bob, and all the adults who knew Uncle Bob crack up, while the kids who don’t remember Uncle Bob glaze over. Why are they staring at the ceiling, waiting for an excuse to get away from the table?

Kiernan’s family-oriented workshop will teach students to slow down and instead of telling stories in code that only insiders understand, they’ll learn to tell the story in a way that can be understood by listeners who never met Uncle Bob. The trick is to describe him in more detail. What did he wear? What was his hair like? What room do you picture him in? Sit down with someone who didn’t know him and describe him in as much detail as possible, so your listener could pick Bob out of a crowd.

If you want to tell a story, look closely at your language, and “unpack” it, laying out its content for everyone to appreciate. With a little learning you can turn the joke known only to the old inmates into a joke you can share with kids and strangers.

While this advice sounds simple, I consider it to be brilliant. For one thing, it acknowledges an important fact. Just because we think we’re telling a good story doesn’t mean the listener is hearing a good story. That in itself is a powerful piece of information, because most of us think that when we tell about events, we are doing the best possible job sharing the story. It turns out, the storyteller plays a crucial role, shaping a bunch of events into something worth listening to. Once we realize this fact, we can start looking for tricks to give our stories more impact.

Secondly, the message is brilliant because it is extraordinarily fundamental, sweeping across all aspects of storytelling. For example, I was preparing to write a description of my years in college, and was hoping to explain how the music of the times influenced my feelings. I could hope that by simply mentioning that the Beatles were intense or important, I might be able to convey what I was feeling, since everyone really knows about the Beatles. But I remembered Kiernan’s advice about avoiding code words, and thought how that applies to those icons of the sixties. If I just mention the word, “sixties” or “Beatles” I might hope everyone understands what I mean. But they will only get what they think, not what I think. That’s like the prisoner saying “68.” I have to tell a story.

So how can I unpack my thoughts and feelings about the Beatles? I’ll talk more about that in my next blog entry, and put into a scene what I mean by the coded word “Beatles.”

by Jerry Waxler

The tiny town of Bethlehem in Southeastern Pennsylvania has a lot going on. It was the birthplace of Bethlehem Steel, it sports an 81 foot high Christmas star, hosts the annual regional music bash called Musikfest, is home of Lehigh University and Moravian College, and has its own public radio station, WDIY where I’m being interviewed today. It also happens to be the home of Lehigh Valley Storytelling Guild. Storytelling interests me, not because I’m an expert but because I’m human, which is the chief prerequisite for interest in stories. We start learning stories from the time we’re babies, and we become attuned to them through a life time of exposure. In fact, they are everywhere, and form the basis for the way we look at the world, learn about people, and let people learn about us.

When I started to explore life-writing, I realized that while I’m an expert story listener, I have a lot to learn about story telling. Since stories are everywhere, you would think that learning about telling them should be simple. Many successful writers recommend that you learn the art of writing stories by emulating the books you enjoy reading. My problem with this method is that once I dive into the story I stop thinking about writing. In a trance, I turn the key on the door of his apartment, put my briefcase on the table by the door, and recoil in fear at the sound I heard in the other room. It’s hard for me to break out of this trance and analyze the writer’s technique.

It’s easier for me to draw lessons from memoirs. When I read a memoir, a significant proportion of my attention is already focused on learning lessons from the protagonist’s life. I want to understand what makes his or her world work, what’s special about it, what I can see that will help me live in my world. So since I’m already learning, it turns out to be natural for me to learn lessons about storytelling. And I can learn from first time authors, as well as from the masters. I find many lessons about storytellers from beginners, such as Margaret George’s Never Use your Dim Lights, or George Brummell’s Shades of Darkness or Harry Bernstein’s Invisible Wall.

Another place I learn about story telling is from people who teach writing. One comprehensive book for storytellers is a 400 page classic called simply Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee. Since good screenwriting is good storytelling, don’t worry about the fact that your life may not be made into a movie. If you’re serious about representing your life as a story, I recommend you dig into such material, and learn more about how stories are told. Not only will you be learning to tell your own story. You’ll learn to see more perceptively into the stories you read, watch, or hear.

I love trying to understand what makes a story tick, so it was with great delight that I spoke with storyteller Charles Kiernan, from Bethlehem’s Storytelling Guild. If you want to learn how to tell stories, it makes sense to ask a storyteller. All you have to do is find one. Since I knew about Kiernan’s guild, I turned to him to ask him his ideas about stories. It turns out he was just getting ready to teach a workshop he’ll be presenting at the Augusta Heritage Folkarts Festival in West Virginia. July 8-13, 2007. This was a perfect time to have that conversation, because he told me about the lesson he is preparing to give at the Folkarts Festival. It is one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard for turning life into story.

So what was the simple powerful advice Charles Kiernan offered? The gist is, “Break down the code, and spell it out.” Stories are like space ships and time travel machines. So even though I learned about this storytelling trick in a tiny town, I can use it to tell stories that transport me around the world.

I’m going to explain it in more detail in my next blog entry.

 by Jerry Waxler

I have enjoyed thousands of stories that involve brutal murder and outright assassination. Why am I so attracted to mayhem, when most of the time my thoughts are no more edgy than wondering what’s for dinner, or what I am going to do tomorrow? It turns out death is closer to everyday life than you might think. Just turn on the news — murders, war, disasters, disease, terrorism.

Even in the most innocuous circumstances, life and death battle under the surface. Take food for example. Fine cuisine sounds like it’s about pleasure and elegance. But that need for food is caused precisely by our need to stay alive. We try to stay as far to the alive side as possible, which results in eating more than we need. But eating too little can cause death. This balance drives so many decisions, even when we’re not thinking about it.

It’s the same thing when we pursue a career. On the surface, we’re driven by many things, by challenge and drudgery, pride and frustration, but we also need food on the table and a roof over our heads. In short, it keeps us alive.

When you tell your own life story, listeners and readers, without necessarily realizing it, are tuned in to the issues that kept you alive, or brought you nearer the edge of death. You can keep them engaged by becoming more aware of these forces, and learn how to insert them into your tale. Here are some examples of the way life and death might enter your memoirs:

If you escaped Hitler’s clutches, your story becomes a fascinating race for your life. But even if you didn’t have such a dramatic escape, look for any instances when death came near. When I faced an aggressive, armed policeman during a 60’s war protest, walked away from a broadside car crash, was mugged by a gang of kids, survived self-imposed starvation when I decided to eat only fruit, sitting peacefully one moment by a campfire and then thrust into panic as flames raced through the parched grass and leaves of the forest floor, I came a closer to the precipice. Children are especially vulnerable, so childhood memoirs like Jeannette Walls’ Glass Castle feel like cliffhangers, as we wonder how those kids are still alive. In Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, some babies lost the fight.

When important people in your life die, these are potential areas of trauma. Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking centers on this confrontation with death. In my life, I have lost my older brother, Ed, when he was 37, and my first cousin, Jules, when he was in his twenties. And there was John Kennedy. How did their deaths affect my life? Since then, my parents died, and friends have died, events that feel like a great, mysterious knot, tying together the forces of life, death, and love.

In war, people kill each other all the time. Even though most wars happen far away, they affect us in so many ways, whether we fought in one, had loved ones go off to war, been caught as a civilian in war, protested war, or fled from war. Whenever war touches your story, it parts the veil between life and death.

When I was sixteen, I read about the Nazi death camps. Only a few years earlier, across an ocean that seemed very small, millions of people had been murdered for being born into the same religion I was. Since then I have watched many people take their groups seriously enough to kill for them. So when you write about the group you are in, or ones you interact with, it might be appropriate to wonder about the deadly nature of group identity.

Look at the faces of sports fans when their team loses. It’s a moment of grief. Games are battles, in which adversaries fight, and the loser of the game symbolically dies. Kids cry over games. Gambling and other addicts step even closer, risking their property and sometimes their lives for the next fix. By conveying this visceral connection in your memoir, between competition or addiction, and the quest for life, your reader will be able to feel its power.

Wrinkles in the skin at first seem a mere cosmetic annoyance. But signs of age remind us that we are not going to live forever. As friends die, you may look more closely at the meaning of life. In fact this quest is a great reason to write your memoir. When you become aware of the dance of life and death, it prods you to dive in deeper to understand the urgency and intensity of your own story. And when you feel this connection, your reader will feel it too.

Terrorism! Melting ice caps! Another traffic jam! When is someone going to do something about this mess? While I am waiting for “them” to change the world, “they” are waiting for me. It’s time to break this impasse by taking action. But how? I already tried to bring about world peace by disrupting a campus when I was in college in 1968. It was scary confronting a mob of police, and I don’t believe the world has become more peaceful as a result of those actions. Now that I’m older, I’m looking for better methods. I recently became inspired by a talk hosted by the “Coming of Age” organization in Philadelphia. The main speaker was the CEO of AARP, Bill Novelli, who echoed the sentiment of his book, 50+: Igniting a Revolution to Reinvent America in which he claimed that I can join an army of new oldsters to help move the world in a positive direction. A week later I went to another Coming of Age event and heard similar ideas eloquently delivered by Marc Freedman, author of Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America.

When I was a kid, I thought that older people were the problem. They seemed so invested in the status quo. Now that I’m one of them, I find old people aren’t so bad after all. In fact, I feel just as passionate about changing the world as when I was 20. While Novelli and Freedman spoke of a variety of ways that others have chosen to pitch in and move their own little corner of the world, I have a grand idea. It seems to me that the missing element in modern civilization is that we don’t seem to be doing a good job of learning from our mistakes. And in my opinion, that’s where the army of us oldsters can help significantly. We’ve seen the world go by for more years than others have, and have gained an appreciation for what matters in the long run, and what fizzles out.

It’s not that I have all the answers. But if there is any wisdom at all to be gained from experience, and my experience tells me there is, then I’d say we need to communicate more of our life story. And we’ve been born at the perfect time. Just as boomers are reaching “that certain age” technology has provided new opportunities for us to collaborate. The printing press brought ideas from individual minds out into the public, broke us free from a layer of oppression, and opened the way for the Renaissance. The internet makes the printing press look like an old relic. We’re ready to take this thing global, and who knows what rebirths we can bring about?

By developing a community of thinking people who talk about life in an inquiring way, we can learn from each other. Your wisdom is contained in your life experience. Share it with the world! Even if you don’t know how writing could change your world, start writing anyway. Your experience turns into stories that are authentic, in a voice that is authentically yours. That’s all that matters now. Find the authentic voice and share the authentic experience. As you go, you’ll discover the sense you’ve made of your past, and then discover the impact your experience has on others. By writing and organizing your story, without even knowing how, you are already beginning to serve. And like any service to others, you’ll be the first to reap the rewards.

Writing about life will give you more energy. Even if you already have plenty of energy, writing will give you more. And if you are too tired to write, writing will wake you up.

Writing will make you more knowledgeable about how to write and how to tell stories. You can press these enhanced skills into service as you discover things you want to share with the world.

By writing about your own life experience, you open up parts of yourself to others. This makes the world a friendlier, more intimate place to live.

Write for a cause, write for a community, write for posterity, write to share yourself. Write to change the world.

 by Jerry Waxler

“I don’t know why I did it,” Tobias Wolff says to his guardian, in his memoir “This Boy’s Life.” The previous night, Wolff had stolen gasoline from a neighbor’s farm truck. Caught in the act, Wolff admitted it, and to atone for his sin, he was sent back to the farmer to apologize. But Wolff couldn’t force himself to utter the magic words, “I’m sorry.” Despite his guardian’s desperate plea, Wolff doesn’t apologize and doesn’t offer any reasons. His act of defiance just sits there, confusing to him, disappointing to his guardian, and not very clear to the reader, either.

It was a powerful choice for Wolff to not explain himself to the reader. Another writer might have invented some explanation, or speculated from today’s wisdom, looking back on his young self. But in letting his act stand unexplained, Wolff lets us see the way his mind worked at the time, a troubled teenager, not sure why he’s doing the things he does. His strange, impulsive acts remind me of times in my own teenage years when I acted without knowing why I was doing what I was doing, occasionally doing destructive, or even cruel things. It’s difficult to remember those times. It’s certainly uncomfortable. But reading Wolff’s memoir helps me once again stand in that fog and look around. I hate it, and yet it was part of my life.

I read an excellent book about how to raise a teenager called “Yes, Your Teen is Crazy!: Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind”. In offering insights about teenagers, the author provides a scientific background to what most of us already believe. Teenagers don’t always behave rationally. Wolff shows us through story.

The fact that teenage boys are willing to follow their impulses into dangerous and defiant territory says a lot about the human condition - it helps explain wars. For example read Tracy Kidder’s “My Detachment,” a tale of coming of age while he was an officer in Vietnam. This book also shows how the fog of youth fits in so well with war. Kidder just didn’t seem to be able to connect with life, letting readers of his memoir share his state of mind at the time he experienced it. In the documentary movie, “The Fog of War,” Robert S. McNamara talks about the bad choices that were made in Vietnam. It’s tragic to realize that in times when life and death hangs in the balance, so many decisions are made in this fog. From the coming of age memoirs of Kidder and Wolff, I wonder how much of that fog comes straight from the teenage mind.

As a reader, I did not find Kidder’s or Wolff’s lack of clarity to be a very pleasant experience. It’s more fun to read about clarity. Take the scene in Jeannette Walls’ “Glass Castle” when her father was whipping her - she was shocked, but as the beating continued, a light bulb went off. She realized that she did not need to accept this forever, and she started plotting her escape. I loved Jeanette Walls’ lightbulb. Her insight gave me a sense of hope, very different from Wolff who was swept along by his own cunning tactics for survival, but didn’t quite see where he was going, and even when he tried to escape, he failed and slipped back into the fog. Wolff’s memoir forced me to struggle with hopelessness. So what kept me turning the pages? Why didn’t I give up on him and throw down the book in disgust?

One of the attractions about coming of age stories is that the reader hopes that the protagonist is going to turn a corner, to open his eyes, and see beyond the fog. The suspense for me as a reader is my desire that they will grow out of their adolescent craziness, and escape into a saner world in which clear choices lead to positive outcomes.

 by Jerry Waxler

Many people intend to write more after they retire, because they will have more time. I agree that you will have more time when you are no longer working a day job, but I’m not so sure that it’s free time you need more of. In my experience, more free time does not necessarily lead to more writing. It’s what you do with your free time that matters.

If you look at your free time as time to relax, then more free time will just mean more relaxing. Writing requires a shift in your attitude towards free time, and you can start making that shift right now. The trick is to realize that once you start writing, even if you only last for ten minutes, you will have energy than when you started. Once you develop the habit of creating during your free time, it will stick with you, and carry you towards your goals whether you are working, or after you retire.

When you go to work, you’re on a schedule. Your actions are well-defined, driven by the needs of the business. The people who work together expect each other to do their share. Writing lacks these pressures, and on the surface, this lack of pressure seems glamorous. Be your own boss. Work when you want. But when you actually try to produce readable, or even publishable material, independence loses its glamor.

Now instead of having someone tell you what to do next, you have to tell yourself. There’s no one to sort priorities, give you direction, or warn you of the consequences of slacking off. There are many other things calling for attention: television, the grandkids, or the tennis court. And in the back of your mind, or perhaps right there in plain view, is your belief that free time is down time. “Why should I work in my free time?”

My answer to that question is “Because creativity makes me feel better than anything else I could be doing with my time.” Through experimenting, I’ve found that by writing, I invest energy, but then get back more than I put in. This experimentation has opened a new chapter in my life. I found that by persistently writing, I have nurtured the sort of enthusiasm typically expected only in entrepreneurs or pioneers.

Once you see writing as a contribution to your life, you’ll cherish your free time as a time to create. You’ll find ways to get yourself to the desk. You’ll start habits to help you organize your material. You’ll set goals, even modest ones, that turn your free time into the luxurious glamorous opportunity to create something you can enjoy and share. It’s an awakening, not a retreat.

Start as soon as possible, like after you finish reading this. Take ten minutes and write about the last time you saw your childhood home, or describe your best friend in high school, or list five things you did that pleased your parents, and five things that displeased them. If you feel better, invigorated, satisfied in some sublime way, you have used your free time wisely.

by Jerry Waxler

I drove down to attend a Town Meeting in Philadelphia. The meeting was called “Coming of Age, Ignite the Revolution” for the over 50 crowd. I loved the meeting’s slogan, so appropriate here a few blocks from Independence Hall. Igniting revolution seems the right thing to do, in these times when the status quo seems to be sliding in the wrong direction. I wanted to be reminded that people really do change the world. The meeting was hosted by Philadelphia community organizer Dick Goldberg, a Director of Coming of Age. His guest was the CEO of AARP, Bill Novelli, author of “50+ Igniting a Revolution to Reinvent America.”

I found Novelli to be charismatic, speaking with enthusiasm and conviction about how AARP was founded 49 years ago by Ethel Percy Andrus, an individual who wanted to help older people, and at the same time saw them as an army of social activists, using their experience to make the world a better place. He had my attention, because I’m hoping that I can direct my own energy towards changing the world, and looking for ways to join with others to do it. Even in this time when it’s so much easier to meet people online, it was great to be face to face with people who are interested in making the most of life after 50.

The meeting was held at the public television station, WHYY, and was being recorded for televising in the fall. I’ve never been to a televised meeting before, so that was a new experience. And when it came time to ask questions, I walked over to the microphone, an amazing feat for me, considering I would have been too shy to ask a question in public before I went through the Toastmasters program. So I really am getting better as I grow older. Thank God for Toastmasters, and the life long development of new skills.

I said to a room full of strangers, “I just celebrated my 60th birthday last week.” This was funny because in that room being 60 was a credential, and so I was actually bragging about it. I continued, “But when I think about what defines me as a boomer, I donâ’t think about my age now. I think about trying to stop a war in 1967 by sitting in a university building. I’m not interested now in protest, but am interested more than ever in making the world a better place. I came here tonight looking for institutions that can help. I always thought of AARP as an instrument of social self-defense. It sounds like you’re saying that AARP can also be an institution of social development. Is that true?”

In Novelli’s opening remarks he had talked about AARP as such an institution, but he kept coming back to individuals doing it on their own. I want institutions that can pull people together and create change, and wasn’t sure how much he was assigning to me alone, and how much his institution can help people work collectively. At least now I know the intention is there, and want to learn more about how it is helping.

After the meeting I met a couple of people involved in the Center for Intergenerational Learning, based at Temple University, and learned about their programs. Robert Tietze, Executive Director of Experience Corps, a program in which senior volunteers mentor school kids, including a branch at my old elementary school, Pennypacker, in West Oak Lane. And Aviva Perlo, Peer Counseling Coordinator of Intercommunity Action, Inc, a program in which seniors coach other seniors

My original goal was to learn something that I could write about in my blog about memoirs, and I thought the evening was wrapping up a little skimpy in that area. Then a woman asked me what school I had been protesting at in 1967. I told her it was at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She said, “I was there, too.” I studied her face, trying to imagine if I ever saw her pass me on the campus. Every once in while, the wind blows and the veil of time flutters. Forty years ago, 1,000 miles away, I was hoping to change the world, and now, here in Philadelphia is a woman from that same time and place, trying to work towards social change, at Temple Univerity’s Center for Intergenerational Learning. Ahh.. There was the lesson I was looking for. This coincidence reminded me that life is one unified flow. But I don’t need to passively wait for coincidences. I can do it myself. Memoir writing is a form of personal activism, that links together the past and present, and makes the journey of life more whole.

by Jerry Waxler

Once you’ve written your memoir, will it languish in a drawer, waiting for the day when your heirs will find it? I doubt that plan will inspire you. I have always thought it morbid to worry too much about what will happen to my remains after I’m gone. I want to share my writing now. And there are so many options that can provide that satisfaction.

Writing feels like a very private act, just between your thoughts and the paper, while publishing by definition exposes you, connects you, lets others in. But it turns out writing and publishing are more connected than they first appear. This entire system of words was developed by humans to communicate with each other. Paper is simply a clever repository, where words wait until it is time to fulfill their potential. Here is a summary of the ways that writers move these words from paper to a reader’s mind.

Traditional commercial publishing
Commercial publishing is a business, and like any business, you must learn the ropes, make contacts, find what the market wants and is willing to pay for, and then make a deal. You’ll have to learn how to write queries to gain their attention, and you’ll have to prove to them that there are lots of people who admire you enough to buy your book. If you don’t prove you have lots of such people, most publishers will pass you by. All of these requirements are doable, but they take you far beyond your initial goal of sitting alone and writing.

Self-publish
You can bypass the commercial publishers and publish it yourself. This means no begging. You have complete control. And with control comes responsibility. No matter how good a writer you are, it’s worthwhile to hire a professional editor to fix typos and grammar indiscretions as well as to streamline clumsy sentences. And you’ll need to design the cover and format the book. It’s all up to you. But when you’re done, you’ll have published a real book that you can sell at lectures, give to family members, and market to the public.

Self-publishing technology 1 - Print on Demand
When you have a completed work, you can get it set up as a print-on-demand book through any one of dozens of such companies. They only print what you sell. There are no boxes of books in your basement.

Self-publishing technology 2 - Short run printing
Once you get your book ready for a publisher, you can have it printed in a short run, of 50 or 100 at a time, more economically than you might expect.

Blogs and websites
To get your life into the public, blogs make it as easy as writing in a diary. You might start out just for you, and as you find your voice, you might hook up with others of like minded interest or experience.

Writing groups, critique groups, memoir groups
Writing groups are a wonderful way to share creative time with a few other people, telling stories about writing, swapping tips, critiquing each other’s work. Because you share so much of yourself, these connections can turn into lifelong friendships.

Special interest groups
If your story appeals to special interest groups, like veterans, or an ethnic, religious, or professional group, your book will make a wonderful talking point to earn you invitations to meetings and to become an expert in your community.

Repurpose your material for magazine and other writing
You can keep going, using the material you researched for your memoir as raw material for non-fiction articles as well as for more storytelling and fiction.

 by Jerry Waxler

In searching through bookstores and bestseller lists, I find many memoirs whose central feature is the quirkiness and pain of dysfunctional childhood. For example,

Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls
Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt
This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff

In fact, so many big sellers seem to center on strange childhood, I have been wondering if all of us should be writing about dysfunctional childhoods, or should we feel somehow inadequate if we didn’t have one. To answer this question I have been speculating about some of the reasons this theme of painful early life has caught the attention of so many readers and publishers.

Follow the money
One reason there are successful dysfunctional childhood stories is the success of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes. The publishing business follows trends. So they are looking for other books in a similar vein.

Easy for the reader to jump into the protagonist’s shoes
Any vulnerability and danger, puts us on the edge of our seats. Children are vulnerable, so a story about a dysfunctional childhood has a natural hook that pulls readers in. We want the child to be safe, and feel concerned at their crazy parents and excess freedom.

Watch in voyeuristic horror
Protecting kids seems like a basic contract all parents are supposed to sign up for. And when it breaks down, we feel horrified. Like onlookers at an accident, our disgust draws us on to the next page. We watch in horror as kids cope with parents who disobey the rules.

Revel in the entertaining surprises
The quirkiness of a dysfunctional childhood is simply more entertaining and surprising than a normal one. These surprises and shocks keep us reading.

They offer hope
If they suffered this much and survived (enough to be able to write this book), then there’s hope for the world. Resilience of individuals gives hope for resilience for the rest of us.

Someone had it worse than me
Many of us think we had difficulties in our childhood. These books are testimony to the fact that other people also had it bad, or in most cases significantly worse.

The family unit rules
The family is a unit that is precious and powerful, a crucible of human experience in which we were formed. Parents and extended family feed, clothe, teach, guide, punish, demand, coax, love, or not. Siblings stick together or not. Memoirs of extreme cases help us piece together a deeper understanding of this unit and give us glimpses of how it worked in our own life.

Solve a puzzle: Is it nature or nurture?
For years we have heard endless debates about the impact of nature versus nurture. Did they grow to be good people because of their childhood or despite it? It’s a fascinating question, and we hope that this one book, this one person’s experience will help us settle this unsolvable debate once and for all.

Solve a puzzle: where is the love?
As I read these books I easily see the dysfunction. But in the back of my mind, I feel like I’m reading a detective story. I know there must be love in this situation somewhere, but where? My curiosity to find the love draws me on.

Putting words on our pre-verbal times
We all started childhood before we could put words on our experience. Then gradually we found words, but it took years before we could eloquently advocate for ourselves or explain our world. Our unformed voice was a sort of muteness. Reading someone’s story of that period gives us words.

Learn about coming of age
Coming of age is a universal experience. We all went through it, but we don’t necessarily understand it. Reading about how it worked for other people helps us sort out our own coming of age.

Surviving great suffering indicates greatness
We don’t all win a Nobel prize, or an Olympic gold medal. But one thing we did all do is survive childhood. If faced adversity in childhood, now you have overcome that adversity — the greater the difficulty, the greater the achievement of having survived it. So when we read a story about someone who survived a difficult childhood, we are actually reading the story of a champion. And readers like champions.

by Jerry Waxler

Entire epochs of my life, like the decade after I got out of college for example, have disappeared into the haze of the past. And I’m not sure that decade made much sense when I was living through it the first time. The past is strewn behind me in a jumble of memories that won’t go away, but won’t come clear either.

So instead of leaving that pile just sit there and bother me in its messiness, it’s more fun to search through the piles, and turn them into something beautiful and sensible. This exercise of finding the stories in life might seem daunting at first - so many memories, so little structure. But like cleaning up any messy pile, the starting point doesn-t really matter. I could start anywhere.

For example I could take out a photo album and when I feel an emotion stirring, jump into the scene and write about it as if I was there. Or compile a timetable of my life, including dates and short descriptions of major events and transitions. “I was born in 1947. When I was five I went to Pennypacker Elementary School. I walked three blocks to school and then walked home for lunch, everyday for six years.”

Ask yourself questions about the past. You’ll discover remarkable material lurking within your mind. Describe the furniture in your living room. What year did you move? What did you plan to do for a living, and what changed as you grew? Describe your aunts and uncles.

Then add emotion. What frightened you? (Recurring dreams of being chased by dinosaurs.) What did your parents want from you that you could never do right? (Be perfect.) How did it feel when you visited your grandparents? (It felt good when grandmom pulled out her piano music and started playing. It felt bad when she lectured me.) How did you feel at summer camp, or during a big argument? As you gather the information, and turn memories into scenes and time-lines, take a step back and think about how you would pull these disparate elements into a story that would make sense to someone who doesn’t know you.

By seeing it through the lens of a story, you regain so much of who you are. Out of the pile of vague memories emerge a sensibility that can help you organize who you are today. And if you strive to make it a good read, you’ll be taking the next step of your journey, turning yourself into a craftsperson, a storyteller of life.