Memory Writers Network

By Jerry Waxler

Since I was a teenager, I tried to understand how my own mind works. I read Freud in high school and psychology was the first college course I ever took. Then I turned inside myself for insights. I’ve meditated since 1971, been in therapy for 15 years, and kept a journal for 20 years. After all this work, I finally found a way to make sense of my own mind. Rather than speculate who I might be, I simply review who I really am, by finding and writing stories of my life. Memoirs are a fascinating window into the workings of life, and they are filled with lessons that don’t require any jargon or psychological theory.

But it’s not easy to understand the past, lost as it is in hazy memories. Through a gradual process I’ve been piecing the past together, like an archaeologist reconstructing the Dead Sea Scrolls from tiny fragments. Over time, I am becoming more familiar with long forgotten periods. I am learning the trajectory of my life, how my hopes and dreams propelled me to arrive here. Introspection and recollection enable me to link together parts of myself which have been disconnected for years, and let me understand the people who have influenced my life.

To understand more about the effects of memoir writing, I look at my book shelf. What do self-help authors have to say on the subject? One of my favorite, Dan Goleman, in his classic “Emotional Intelligence” uses brain science to back up the claim that we can improve our feelings by describing them. Similar principles have been pursued for decades by Drs. Aaron Beck and Albert Ellis, founders of cognitive therapy, which teaches that people can change the way they feel by changing their thoughts. Just in the last few years, their work has been validated by brain imagery that shows brains while people label their emotions. Such imaging shows that words stimulate the thinking part of the brain and soothe the emotional part. Since describing emotions helps soothe people, it’s reasonable to assume that telling stories about emotions works at least as well.

As I study the relationship of writing and the mind, I begin to see my two great interests converge. It turns out that writing can be therapeutic. Many writing teachers have made this connection between powerful writing and genuine emotion. Natalie Goldberg, arguably the most influential writing teacher of our era, wants writing to bubble up from deep within our spiritual and emotional core. She calls such authentic writing “cutting to the bone.” For a more literary explanation of how memoirs heal, see the fantastic book Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives by Louise DeSalvo, a literature professor at Hunter college, an author and a scholar of the life and writings of Virginia Woolf. The book explores in a thousand ways how memoir writing heals.

Desalvo makes the case that writing is an introspective activity that lets us reach into our mind for words to help us make sense of life. By finding those words and writing them, we explain events long forgotten, or never clearly thought through. And then when we share these words, telling our story to others, we open ourselves to the healing effects of social connection.

During my many years of studying literature in school, and hearing stories told about fictional characters in movies and books, it never occurred to me that writing about life could be turned inward. After decades of searching, I’ve discovered the answer to many of my questions about healing and the mind might be answered by taking a fresh look at storytelling, turning it inward towards my own life.

by Jerry Waxler

I’m reading two books that take a teaching approach to memoir writing. Instead of focusing primarily on the life the author, they use the author’s personal experience to provide an in-depth look at a topic they learned about. The two books are “I Know You Really Love Me: A Psychiatrist’s Journal of Erotomania, Stalking, and Obsessive Love“ by Doreen Orion, and “China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power” by Rob Gifford. If you are unsure how to turn your life experience into a great read, Orion’s and Gifford’s approach could expand your options.

In “I know you really love me,” Doreen Orion has written about her experience of having been stalked for years by a woman who had the delusion that she and Orion were secret lovers. Orion, a psychiatrist, met the woman who came to the hospital looking for treatment. The patient became obsessed with Orion and then began years of stalking, fortunately not violent, but astonishingly intrusive. Because of the depth of her delusions and her instability, there was never a guarantee it wouldn’t reach a crisis point and turn violent. Many murders are committed by jealous lovers, and since Orion’s stalker believed they were lovers, there was a risk this would end tragically. And to make matters worse, the laws against stalking are vague and ineffectual, so Orion not only had to deal with her stalker, but with a disinterested legal system as well. To protect herself she had to become an advocate for legal reform to improve laws and help other victims of stalking. After reading this page turner, I know more about delusional obsessive love (erotomania) and stalking than I thought I would ever know.

China Road by Rob Gifford teaches an entirely different sort of lesson. While Orion was forced to become an expert in erotomania because of a twist of fate, the only pressure Gifford was under was his own obsession to more deeply understand China. To satisfy his obsession (can obsessions ever really be satisfied) Gifford immersed himself in his subject, traveling for months across Route 312, China’s equivalent to our old Route 66, and like Route 66, extends across the breadth of China. This road parallels the old Silk Road, one of the oldest trade routes in the world. His journey, symbolically from east to west, shows the transformation of the Chinese culture from the quintessentially eastern civilization into a great westernized power. He does so through conversations, research, and personal observations. It’s a terrific read, and provides me with fascinating, complex, and very personal insights into the Chinese people and the course of their history.

While both of these books serve the purpose of teaching books, they are also memoirs, based on personal experience. As I try to tease out what they are doing, reading these memoirs like a memoir writer, I look more closely at how they have harnessed life story to keep the reader’s attention. How are these personal stories like memoirs embedded in a context of knowledge? The most immediate observation is that in both books, the author is clearly in the frame, sharing sensory and emotional impressions. As you read, you are walking miles in the author’s shoes, empathizing with their needs and emotions.

To grab this empathy, each book starts by engaging the reader in the author’s personal challenge. The protagonist wants something, at the beginning of the book, and then achieves it at the end. Orion is in danger. She wants safety and to get her normal life back. To protect herself and others like her, she digs for deeper insight. Gifford wants to fulfill his dream of understanding the Chinese people. Also, Gifford uses traveling along the road to keep the reader engaged. He starts out at one end of the road and strives to reach the other end. It’s tangible, as well as symbolic and provides a satisfying impression of motion and achievement.

Writing Prompt

To decide how you are going to tell about your life, consider how your life has taken you into contact with knowledge, by choice or by chance. For example becoming expert at a disease because you cared for someone who has it, or learning on the job in a nerve wracking business environment, or being a peace corps volunteer in an exotic culture, or an astronaut, or your wife’s passion for horses, or any of a million other ways life might have carried you into a specialized area of learning. If your life connected you with knowledge, then you can share that part of your life with the reader, and teach them something while they are turning pages. Harness your curiosity and the reader’s curiosity as two wings of a bird that will carry the reader through your story.

by Jerry Waxler

Many people are unsure about writing their memoir because they think all those memories will pull them into the past. It’s true that writing about memories is like digging down into a deep old pile, but there’s no need to get lost in it. The goal is to bring back the treasures. There are valuable lessons, achievements, and pleasures in there but you can’t access them because they are buried under a multitude of experiences. To gather their value, tell the story. To promote the legacy you can take advantage of yourself, I’ve compiled a list of 10 ways writing your memoir will help you now and in the future.

1. Develops writing skill that come in handy for all sorts of other communication applications, like writing letters or newsletter articles.
2. By organizing your life into stories, people get to know you faster, and often more intimately than through the usual chatter of everyday encounters.
3. Writing is a powerful brain toning exercise that will keep you keen and energized.
4. By reviewing the past, you notice things that happen over and over. Once you see such patterns, you can learn how you contribute to them, and find ways to improve next time. This benefit is available at any age, even if you think you are finished growing.
5. Memoir writing helps you rework the past, making better sense of things that pull you back, or things that confuse you that never made sense. This helps you feel better in the present.
6. You can glean stories from your life, and apply them to fictional stories you create about characters in worlds of your choosing. Telling stories is one of the pleasures of a creative life.
7. You can often gain insights into your siblings and other relatives, creating a richer, more compassionate experience with the people who share your genes and childhood.
8. Reap rewards from your life the way a farmer harvests crops. By becoming more conscious of accomplishments and victories, you boost your confidence about who you are and where you’re going.
9. One reason people seem to fade with age is that they lose touch with their past. Writing maintains links between past and present, giving you confidence to see yourself as an effective actor in the world, even though many of those actions happened years ago.
10. By seeing life as a story, you build the skills to tell a sensible story of the future. Generating a story of the future is a powerful motivational and planning tool that helps you continue to move forward with energy.

By Jerry Waxler

To research the memoir she is writing, QuoinMonkey visited her childhood home. At first the lush vegetation crowding the house looked like the work of a zealous gardener. Then she realized the house was vacant and surrounded by weeds. To get her arms around this disturbing sight, she posted on her blog a photo and a haiku named “You Can’t Go Back“. Another blogger, ybonesy, commented that the weeds were trying to consume the house. I tried to lighten the mood with physics, pointing out that seeing your childhood home is a sort of time travel, like when you watch a star and realize you’re seeing the light it emitted a million years ago. I appreciated the opportunity to brainstorm the passage of time: the haiku, the photo, time travel, and return to the earth. Yet I was still unsettled, wishing I knew the appropriate response to seeing a childhood home turning decrepit.

Later I was listening to the audio memoir, The Path by Donald Walters, a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda. As a young seeker he tried to penetrate the secrets of the universe by reading the Bible, but he was upset by the story of Adam and Eve being thrown out of the Garden Eden for eating the fruit of wisdom. Walters complained, “What sort of God would want us to remain in ignorance?” As I pondered this question, an insight leapt into my mind and for the first time the story of Adam and Eve made more sense to me than it ever had.

When I was young, all I saw in this story was the deception of the snake, and the disobedience against a direct command. I cried, “No. No. Not the apple! You have it all. Stick with the pleasure.” Now, I realize how much depth there is in the story. They were young, naked, and sexy, but physical pleasure wasn’t enough. Their temptation was for knowledge. Instead of being ignorant and self-involved, as I had first supposed, I now see them as courageous. They chose wisdom. In exchange, they must grow old. Now, as I grow older, I’m seeing for myself the terrible price of that bargain. I lose everything, including eventually my own life. In exchange, I want to enjoy every bit of the wisdom that is owed me.

A few days after I had this insight, I was teaching a memoir class, and one of my students wanted to write about his spiritual unfolding. A number of events over the years had convinced him that there was more going on in the universe than he could see on the surface. He glimpsed this transcendent aspect of life through visionary experiences, unexplainable “coincidences,” and inspirational insight. He wanted to write about what he had observed. It would be a sort of work of art to express the way the universe had made itself known to him through his life.

In my opinion, the journey towards spirituality is a wonderful topic for a memoir. I recently read two such memoirs, one by Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies, and the other by Martha Beck, Expecting Adam. Both books rely on a fundamental storytelling technique, called the “character arc” which stimulates the reader’s curiosity to see how the protagonist grows. To create this sense of development in your own memoir, look for your evolving wisdom. Even in a collection of essays, show how you started skeptical and self-involved, and then gradually understood more, until finally you understand a lot.

Over the decades our childhood home grows old. Even our body becomes less fun. Yes, I know all the hype, and believe me I’m hanging on to my body for dear life, but the progression is pretty obvious to me already, and I’m only sixty. So if the body is aging, becoming less enchanting, less thrilling, finally less sexy, why should anyone want to keep turning pages to the end of the story? To find the closure to this tale, the redemption, the reason you or anyone would want to get to the end, I suggest we go back to the beginning and look at the bargain God made with Adam and Eve. Unfolding wisdom is the reward. Look for that wisdom and share it with your reader. The evolution of the central character will make a good story to read, and incidentally will also make a good story to live.

Writing prompt: What stories illustrate the evolution of your wisdom? What incidents in your life exposed a guiding hand, a compassionate presence, a coincidence that “couldn’t have happened.”

by Jerry Waxler

I’ve been misplacing my car keys for years, but lately I’ve been noticing a more disturbing problem. I keep forgetting where I put my life. I have to think before I remember where a past event fits into the scheme of time. And I’m not alone. Most people older than, say, 50 have to struggle to remember all their vacations, jobs, homes, kids, hobbies, illnesses, friendships. After decades there is just too much information to keep straight. On the surface, that doesn’t seem like a big deal. Who cares if I forget when I started singing in a choir, or how many times I saw Close Encounters, or if I can only remember glimpses of the summer I spent in Europe during college? Perhaps I ought to just accept a disappearing past. But I think it’s a worse problem than it first appears. So much of who I am is built from the story of how I got here, and losing the story makes me feel like I’m losing me.

I don’t remember when I first noticed my memory was getting tangled, but I do remember being surprised by it. I didn’t see it coming. I never heard my parents or grandparents complain about feeling confused by too many memories. I’ve never seen it pointed out on television, movies, or the hundreds of self-help books I’ve read. It’s an invisible problem, or at least it was until I noticed. Now, I see how hard it is for anyone over 50 to maintain an organized understanding of their journey. The more I think about the problem, the more it makes sense. The past fades because we let it. When I was young, I didn’t ask my parents about the old days. Since they never talked about their past, they forgot it. And the cycle continues. As I grow older, no one asks me about my past, and now I’m forgetting, too.

It looks like post-modern philosophers like Jacques Derrida are right, that our identity is becoming lost in modern times. But unlike other ills, I believe we can fix this one without waiting for a social upheaval or the discovery of some new medication. We can reclaim our lives by writing about them. Writing lets us revitalize our sense of who we are and how we got here. However, few of us have been trained to write our story, and so we may not believe we can take advantage of the benefits of life story writing. But once you get started, you’ll find it’s really not that hard. As soon as you look, you’ll discover memories, piles of them, like the pieces of a huge jigsaw puzzle spilled out in a heap. For most of our lives, we’ve picked up a piece of the puzzle, noticed where it fits, and then tossed it back in the pile! Of course we’re confused.

The key is to snap them into place, and you can do that very simply by writing them along a timeline. Writing anything helps you remember it. This is true with phone numbers and to-do lists. And it’s true for your life story. It seems so obvious and yet it’s a revelation for most people. When you line up the events in order, the sequence starts taking shape.

That’s just the skeleton. Now add flesh. As you review your list of events, watch for ones that jump out. Check to be sure you are comfortable going deeper. If so, jump in. While you’re in the scene, look around. Touch a wall or a table, describe hair styles, dreams, fears, or anything else that you experience while inside the scene. Write it all down. What do the characters say? Were they sitting or standing? What do you smell? Through this window, you begin to make more sense of what happened. In fact, it’s almost magical. You not only regain the memory. You go deeper, revealing more now than you knew when you first went through it.

Some people fear that if they delve too deeply into their memories they might get pulled back into the past. But I’ve found the opposite to be true. As I learn to tell my own story, I have become more curious about the people around me. Rather than pushing me into the past, my life story yanks me into the present with a renewed passion to learn the longings, the patterns, and the relationships that transform this sequence of events into the never ending drama of life.

by Jerry Waxler

After reading Carol O’Dell’s memoir, Mothering Mother about her experience caregiving for her mother with Alzheimer’s, I contacted her to ask what it was like to write and share her story with others. Here is part one of a two part original interview.

Waxler: What did you have to do to turn your very personal experiences into a book?

O’Dell: Like most newbie writers, I used my own life to teach me how to write. I joined local writers group in Atlanta in 1996 (we still have a reunion once or twice a year and all of them are terrific, active writers). There’s a real art to telling your own stories and making them readable, interesting, and universal. I’ve come a long way from my first attempts. One way I’ve found to tell stories that people find meaningful is to focus on the ones I tell the most. If my friends and family listen, and their faces light up, and I see they have been moved by it, I write that one down. If I can make them cry…well, that’s gravy.

Waxler: When you were writing Mothering Mother, what sort of work did you do to reclaim this story from your memory?

O’Dell: I wrote MOTHERING MOTHER in “real time.” I wrote journal style (but on the computer) every day. I wrote in the style you read in my book—in vignettes with headings. Whatever I was mulling over in my mind became the topic for the day—and if it didn’t fit under that heading, it didn’t belong there. Of course, many entries didn’t make it in. I tried not to show that I was whining every day. I also didn’t revise my journal during this process. I didn’t begin to compile this as a book until one year after she had passed. I knew the editor in me could really muck it up—make it too writerly—not keep it emotionally raw. I wanted to capture the moment so that other caregivers could truly relate to me—as a caregiver—not a writer.

Waxler: When you were ready to write the book, were you worried about getting it wrong?

O’Dell: Because the word memoir means literally, “a memory,” I knew that certain moments had to be recorded as I, or as my mother remembered them. Facts are in some ways, secondary to memoir. It’s a perspective kind of writing. Yes, I would at times go back and check “the facts,” to see just how off or skewed my or my mother’s thinking really was. It’s good to juxtapose the facts against memory to show what people “do” with their past.

Waxler: When did you decide to try to seek a publisher, rather than just writing it for yourself?

O’Dell: I wanted to be published early on, so I submitted and published articles, essays, short stories, excerpts, and poems over the last ten years. In regard to MOTHERING MOTHER, I did not revise the book until my mother had been deceased for one year. I wanted to capture that first year—birthdays, mother’s day, receiving the death certificate, ordering the headstone, reinventing my own life—in order to round out the experience.

I revised it that summer, (my mother died in June) and then had it professionally edited (mostly copy edited, not content edited. By the way, I highly recommend this. It’s a competitive marketplace, and no matter how good you are, you need a professional eye to take a look at it). I also had to create a proposal, which takes several months to do a good one. I began submitting it in January, six months after starting the revision process, and it took almost a year and a half to sell—in part due to my moving, my daughter’s marriage and the time that took, and honestly, the funk you fall into after a couple of rejections hit you in the gut. It sold in April of 2006 and was published in April of 2007.

Waxler: What’s next?

O’Dell: The prequel to MOTHERING MOTHER is SAID CHILD, which is under consideration at my publisher’s right now, and it’s the story behind the story, so to speak. It’s even grittier, edgier, and took a decade to write, hone, and come to terms with.

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To buy a copy of this book, click the Amazon link, Mothering Mother

This interview coincides with Carol O’Dell’s Virtual Book Tour. For more information about what a virtual book tour is and how to enter Carol O’Dell’s Virtual Booktour contest, and for more interviews and information about other services Carol offers, visit her website at http:\\www.caroldodell.com.

Click here for the book review I wrote about Mothering Mother.

by Jerry Waxler

After reading Carol O’Dell’s memoir, Mothering Mother about her experience caregiving for her mother with Alzheimer’s, I contacted her to ask what it was like to write and share her story with others. Here is part one of a two part original interview.

Waxler: During your original journaling, did the writing help you cope with your situation?

O’Dell: Absolutely! I found insights into my own soul and motives. I found that for the most part, I was a “better” person than I thought I was. My ideals, hopes, intentions were honorable-for the most part. I started to recognize how my experience went across the generations. Since I have three daughters, I started to realize that everything I thought or did to my mother, would one day boomerang. Like the old saying-what goes ‘round, comes ‘round.

Waxler: Even, and especially at the end of my mom’s life, I wrote by the hour. It gave me an excuse to walk out of the room. It allowed me to go into that “observer’s” place. It gave me something proactive to do with my fear, hurt, and sorrow.

O’Dell: Writing, especially personal writing, (but I think all writing’s personal) can be a form of self therapy. I’ve saved thousands of dollars. Instead of, “Physician, heal thyself” is should be “Writer heal thyself!”

Waxler: Many aspiring memoirists fear that writing about their experience might awaken the pain of it. Could you talk about how this worked for you?

O’Dell: Facing my own personal demons was an evolution. I’m sure I inflicted my pain onto others, and at times, my poor writing group was not only “bleeding” with my purple prose, but also from some pretty strong subject matter (I have other “issues” besides good ole’ mom!) All I can say is don’t try to publish this stuff too soon! You, as a person and as a writer, and perhaps your family, have to evolve and incorporate this material into your being. It’s healing, but anyone who knows anything about medicine and surgery will tell you that the healing process can be a messy, nonlinear journey. I think everyone can benefit from writing and examining aspects of their life-but not everyone needs to publish it. In the end, being a healthy, whole person is even more important than being published.

Waxler: Your experience would offer support and encouragement to others in your situation. Do you give talks on this topic?

O’Dell: Do I talk! All the time. I speak at Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Caregiver’s conferences, support groups and online forums. I speak to professional groups because caregiving is beginning to impact the workplace. I speak to writer’s groups and conferences too. I love to communicate.

Waxler: Did you start speaking in public before you started writing, or after?

O’Dell: I’m a preacher’s daughter (my mother was a minister), and I’ve always been “up front,” whether I wanted to or not. I sang as a child, played the piano, testified (I was brought up Pentecostal and we testified a lot!) So I am used to talking in front of people. I started giving writer’s group/conference talks about six years ago. By then, I had published many articles, essays, and short stories and I shared my journey of going from no publications to dozens. I also did open mic nights, booksigning events for anthologies–any way I could get in the practice.

I know it’s not easy for every writer, but I do believe it’s almost necessary to sell books today. You can’t be reclusive or shy. If it’s uncomfortable for you, start small, do open mic nights, join Toastmasters-anything that gives you experience. Also, if you get published in anthologies such as Chicken Soup, you can schedule booksignings. It’s a great ice breaker to get used to the process. And if you’re at writer’s conferences-get in the thick of things-sit with the authors, agents, and editors. Offer to buy them a drink. Small talk. Talk books. It’s not like you don’t have anything in common.

Waxler: How does it feel sharing personal experiences with a live audience?

O’Dell: I LOVE to create a story, a vision that everyone in the room can see, hear, feel. Just as in writing, the old adage, “Show, don’t tell,” still applies. Showing the audience a story beats telling them, “you may experience frustration.” How about, “I’d stand at the counter shoving Oreos into my mouth at 6:00 at night. I hadn’t slept in 30 hours, and mother’s yelling at me to come change her night gown.” It’s visual. I implied the exhaustion, frustration, isolation.

There’s no greater feeling than to look into people’s eyes and know that they’ve agreed to suspend belief for a few minutes and go with you on this journey. To see them smile, laugh, cry, nod, forget to breathe, and then that sweet release at the end of a story…I LOVE IT! It’s like getting to “watch” your reader reading your work, which you don’t get to do, so this the next best thing.

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To buy a copy of this book, click the Amazon link, Mothering Mother

This interview coincides with Carol O’Dell’s Virtual Book Tour. For more information about what a virtual book tour is and how to enter Carol O’Dell’s Virtual Booktour contest, and for more interviews and information about other services Carol offers, visit her website at http:\\www.caroldodell.com.

Click here for the book review I wrote about Mothering Mother.

by Jerry Waxler

Money motivates us to achieve remarkable things. We go to work whether we feel like it or not, accepting the alarm clock, traffic, and other rigors of the working life in exchange for pay. When we come home at the end of the day, motivations shift dramatically. We do what we must for home and family, and when we’re ready to relax, we can follow our whims. We can watch television, play with the computer, or read a book. Occasionally, we desire to harness our creative force and achieve a more sophisticated goal, like writing a memoir. To write a memoir, you must hone writing and editing skills, peer into the hazy and sometimes uncomfortable past, organize your material and try to craft it into a story. You could do it as much or as little as you choose. It sounds so free and easy. And that’s the problem. Without boss or deadline, why write when you could watch television?

Freedom is one of the most difficult challenges an aspiring memoir writer can face. If you don’t have good reasons to stay focused on the work, there are many other pastimes that will seem more attractive. So to write your memoir, keep your passion burning. When you wonder if it’s worth it, review your list of payoffs: creative ones like the pleasure of crafting your story; psychological ones like hoping to put old demons to rest; and social ones like giving a gift to your kids or reaching out to strangers.

There is one more reason that might occur to you. “Perhaps I can publish it and make money.” Money could help pay for a vacation, or add to your retirement fund. Writing for money could launch a new career, or help you advance in your existing one. If you hit the publishing lottery, it could change your lifestyle. The desire for money leads to rewards beyond the purely pragmatic. Money is a symbol of approval. When people buy your work, you feel validated and accepted. As you imagine a broader audience, your writing expands, changing what had once been a personal memory into an interesting and accessible story.

And yet, as robust as this motivation at first seems, it can be undermined by doubts. “Will I really make money from a memoir? Is my story big enough? I’m not famous. I’ve never been published. Who would want to read this stuff?” The conversations you have with yourself on this subject, like any internal debate that pits motivations against doubts, will help determine how much energy you are willing to invest in your writing project.

Most successful writers agree that it takes time to develop the publishing credentials, the writing skills, and find the markets that will earn enough money to make a difference. So while you work towards a longterm goal, you probably won’t be living on the income.  In fact, there is no way to guarantee whether you will ever make money. If you’re looking at the odds, one thing is certain. If you don’t try you will fail, and conversely the harder you work, the higher the odds.

Fortunately, you don’t need to rely just on the prospect of future benefits. Once you do actually try, something magical begins to happen. You find the process of writing is in itself pleasurable and satisfying. When I write I always feel better after, than before. That turns into a good motivation to keep going. Writing engages your mind and makes you feel sharper. Your writing skills improve, contributing to better speed and quality that you can apply in other writing projects. The subtle rewards of doing the daily work becomes one of the most satisfying payoffs of all. Now in your sense of purpose, you feel a rhythm between the fantasy of future payoffs and the subtle pleasures of immediate ones.

To fortify your resolve through a variety of moods, pay attention as you gradually reconcile emotions from your past that you thought were hopeless, or as you deepen your relationship with siblings, or feel more whole and alive, or any of a thousand other side effects of memoir writing. Before you started writing, you may have heard about these benefits, but you only actually feel them for yourself once you get started. And if money gets you started and keeps you going then your desire for money is already paying dividends.

Carol O’Dell has never been in headlines. She was an ordinary woman raising a family when her mom’s mind started failing. When O’Dell asked her mother to move in, their relationship became laced with the humiliation and confusion of dementia, madness in the midst of normalcy. It’s a story worth knowing for millions of people in the sandwich generation. To learn more about it, read her memoir called Mothering Mother. And there’s another lesson you can learn from O’Dell’s book. If you think your own life is not famous enough to be worth reading, take another look at what is happening to the memoir genre. You don’t have to be spectacular. You just need to be you, and find the story in your experience.

For proof that people want to know about each other, stand in the checkout line at your local supermarket, look around at the ordinary people. You could reach out and touch them, if you wanted to get smacked, and yet you know absolutely nothing about them and they know nothing about you. Most of us prefer it that way, trying to blend in so we won’t stand out. Then, turn around, to see, also within reach, the tabloid racks, covered with photos of celebrities entering or leaving rehab, getting married and getting divorced. An entire industry brings their private lives into the supermarket, a testimony to the fact that people are curious about other people.

But why should we want to know so much about these particular people who have thrust themselves into the public eye?? All we learn from them is the artificially self-indulgent world of celebrity. Sometimes it’s fun but most of the time it’s plain sordid. I think we’re getting tired of limiting our curiosity to movie stars. I know I am. There is a whole world of people, and I want to learn who they are, what makes them work, how they feel, how they grow.

Apparently, I’m not alone in my desire to know about ordinary people. Look at the popularity of blogs, through which people share snips of our lives, pictures of our kids and pets, and what we did last night. Millions of people are reading this stuff. Memoirs are the next wave in this curiosity about each other. Memoirs let us go deeper, sharing what it was like to grow up, or to take care of someone in need, or to suffer a loss, or fight in a war. We can learn so much about each other through memoirs. It’s an exciting expansion of our ability to know the world.

Most of us only know the private lives of a few people; the ones in our family, and perhaps one or two close friends. Everyone else we see only in the fragments we come across in life situations or tales we share in conversations. As a therapist I hear more, but even in this environment memories arise in disjointed fragments, spread out over time, and not delivered in sequence. If any of them wanted me to really know about their lives, the best way would be to write their memoir.

It turns out that a memoir is by far the best way to find out what it’s like to be someone else. For example, Brooke Shield’s memoir Down Came the Rain, informed me about postpartum depression. Alice Sebold in Lucky informed me of the problems of coping with the aftermath of rape, an unmentionable topic if ever there was one. Martha Beck’s Expecting Adam takes me inside the experience of expecting and then raising a baby with Down Syndrome. William Manchester in Goodbye Darkness brings me face to face with the gore of war, of being shot at and watching friends die in front of you.

None of these topics are pleasant, and so, they don’t come up in polite conversation. And that’s precisely the reason I don’t know much about them. People don’t talk about these things, so how can I ever learn them? In fact, these topics are so unmentionable, people in these situations often feel isolated. But in memoirs, we can be frank. Writers record thoughts in private, and readers, also in private, enter the writer’s experience and learn what it’s like. If the information becomes too intense, they can take a break. No one has to react, offer platitudes, or hide their discomfort.

The insights from memoirs take me far beyond my experience, and far beyond my comfort zone. I would never have asked George Brummell what it was like to grow up black in the segregated south, starting to come of age in Korea, and then after being injured in Vietnam, starting over again, now blind. But I can read about it in his book Shades of Darkness. I wouldn’t know what it was like to be beaten by a stepfather, or to feel the other heartaches of a broken family the way I could by reading Tobias Wolff’s memoir, This Boy’s Life. And while I might imagine what it was like for a daughter to take care of a mom with Alzheimer’s I would never have been able to see it so intimately as by reading Carol O’Dell’s Mothering Mother.

One of the powers of any good book is to invite the reader into a different world. Sometimes it’s sheer escape from our everyday life. But while we’re out of our world, what are we learning? I went through a decade when I was only reading murder mysteries. The battle between good and evil put me into a wonderful hypnotic state. But after years of escaping into the same type of world over and over, I was getting bored. Now that I’m reading memoirs, I not only get out of my own world. I also have a wonderful opportunity to enter other people’s worlds. By reading their lives, I understand a lot more about the people around me. One person’s story at a time, I’m finding that ordinary people at the checkout counter are much more interesting, varied, and offer many more lessons than the menagerie of celebrities facing me on the covers of tabloids.