Tag: parents
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Why Boomers Should Write Memoirs about the 60s
As I search for my story, I return to my curiosity about my parents. All I knew about them was summed up in a couple of clichés about immigrants and the Great Depression, but I knew nothing about their specific, day-to-day circumstances. I wonder if reading their memoir would have brought us closer to each…
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Parent’s Memoir Part 3b, Guide for Ghost Writer’s Interview
Over the years, you have learned to avoid topics your parents prefer not talking about. In order to get the story, you need to break these taboos. Consider James McBride’s memoir “Color of Water.” His mother had angrily told him to mind his own business whenever he asked her about his past. As she grew…
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Parent’s Memoir Part 3a, Guiding a Ghost Writer’s Interview
If your interviewee tends to speak in terms of ideas, summaries, and overviews, their memories won’t allow a reader inside their experience. To write compelling scenes, ask for more sensory information, dialog, and thought processes. “What did you see, hear, taste, touch and smell?” In addition to the senses, ask them about their introspective world.
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Answering Parents’ Objections to Writing Their Memoir
Beneath the smiles in those photos were more complex, ambiguous feelings. Writing awakens that complexity. Perhaps fear of writing about the past is a way to try to resist the pain that might be lurking under the surface. If your parents are attempting to make hard times disappear by pretending they never happened, their strategy…
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Is this the year to write your parent’s memoir?
To counter the reasons to stall, focus on the many reasons to proceed. When you see their lives unfold as a story, you will gain a deeper insight into their humanity. They had hopes, desires, pressures from their parents, and if they were like most people, they defied their parents in ways that may still…
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A memoir of mourning helps make sense of loss
Now I realize after reading “Losing Jonathan” that I loved the Waxlers’ memoir for similar reasons. Like Kate Braestrup they were on a quest to wrest their sanity back from the abyss. At first they were thirsty for support from their community. Then, after five years, Linda suggested, “We should try to write a book.…
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Help my aging dad tell his story
I received this question in a comment yesterday, and it is so rich in the story of the human condition I am bringing it forward and answering it in this post. It was posted by Judy as a comment on my blog Be Here Now by Writing. Dear Jerry, My Dad is 89 years old.…
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