Tag Archives: wisdom

In your memoir, how does your character grow?

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by Jerry Waxler

At the beginning of Andre Agassi’s memoir “Open,” the young protagonist hit tennis balls because his father ordered him to do so. As he grew older, he incorporated his father’s demands into his own motivation. As he won more and more games, inside himself, he knew something was missing. The book is essentially a search for that missing ingredient. Agassi transforms from a kid who wants to win, to an adult who wants to understand why he is alive. Eventually he realizes that working only for his own wealth and fame is not enough. The payoff of the story comes from his impulse to help underprivileged kids.

Agassi’s story offers an excellent model for a good memoir. The main character has flaws and moral dilemmas that set the story in motion. Through the course of events, he must solve all sorts of problems related to these flaws. By the end, something has shifted inside him, some lesson learned, some demon conquered. As I close this book, his  increased wisdom fills me with hope, a feeling that motivates me to recommend the book to my friends.

Most memoirs that I love end along similar lines, showing how the protagonist grows wiser. For example, at the beginning of “Here if you need me,” by Kate Braestrup, the protagonist was suddenly widowed. By the end, she didn’t call her husband back, but she did gain beautiful insights into the cycle of life and death. Brooke Shields in “Down Came the Rain” emerged from her post-partum depression with a more realistic, less idealized image of mommy-hood. Bill Strickland in “Ten Points” couldn’t undo the abuse he experienced as a child. Instead, he learned that embracing the horror of those memories led to inner peace.

That requirement for closure at the end of a story often stymies aspiring writers, who can’t at first visualize the satisfying ending that occurred during their own lives. They are afraid that if they report the events that actually happened, the reader will not feel particularly informed or uplifted. This question leads to the heart of the memoir genre. Our responsibility as writers is not just to repeat events but to share a creative way of looking at those events. Finding this shape, this wrapper, this satisfying ending is one of our most important challenges.

Even though all storytellers must end with a satisfying conclusion, memoir writers don’t have the luxury of being able to change the events to suit their needs. Instead, we must adjust the meaning, the implications, the interpretation. The typical exquisitely satisfying memoir does not arise from a perfect confluence of events, but from the wise reflection that shows what the protagonist has learned. Naturally when you first lived through experiences, the lessons did not leap out ready-made. The wisdom occurs to you later, when you go back to look for it, making the satisfying conclusion of your memoir as much a gift to you as it is to the reader.

Even though Agassi lived an interesting life, the structure of his memoir did not automatically arise from that interesting life. Consider an alternate structure. He could have ended his memoir with his fame and his marriage to one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Steffi Graf. But that happy ending would have made it just another forgettable celebrity memoir.

Instead, he and his ghost writer J. R. Moehringer focused on the inner journey, showing how he found a deeper set of values. He won at tennis, but his real love turned out to be helping children get an education. This expansion of his sense of social responsibility is known in literary analysis as a character arc. But I consider it to be more than just the reason to read a book. My term for it is “ending on higher moral ground” and I think it is a chance to find the value in living a life. Agassi found his true calling when he began to play tennis not just for himself but to raise money for those kids, a conclusion that leaves me with hope not only about Andre Agassi’s life, but the possibility for me to live a meaningful life, as well.

Writing Prompt
In your own story, find the values, the inner strengths, and beliefs that developed over time. Compare your character at the beginning and at the end of your proposed memoir. Write (or find) a scene at the beginning of the story which shows the flaw in your initial thinking. Through the course of the book, show a couple of lessons that led you to higher ground. Write (or find in your manuscript) a scene that shows the more mature reaction that will let the reader understand the development of your character, your maturity, or some other quality that will give your reader hope about the journey of your and their life.

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Note

This is part of a multi-part essay about Andre Agassi’s memoir “Open.”

More memoir writing resources

To see brief descriptions and links to all the essays on Memory Writers Network, click here.

To order my step-by-step how-to guide to write your memoir, click here.

Failure to Launch Generates Dramatic Tension

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by Jerry Waxler

According to the television shows “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” the process of going from child to adult was supposed to be easy. I expected to go to college, become a doctor, and raise a family. But the reality was far more complex. The turbulence during the Vietnam War shook me off course and sent me on a long journey that covered a lot of territory but never seemed to arrive anywhere.

Emerging into adulthood is sometimes dubbed “launching,” a term that reminds me of a woman in a fur coat smashing a bottle across the bow of a ship being sent to sea on its maiden voyage. My launching did not include getting hit with a bottle of champagne, but I was hit with other substances which contributed to my loss of focus.

During the first fifteen years of my extended search for my place in the adult world, I tried Plans B, C, and D, drifting on open seas, meandering from island to island, with no apparent route and for that matter no apparent destination. To gain control over my navigation, I began a decades-long course of talk therapy. Based on those discussions, my sense of purpose and direction came back into focus.

In my fifties, I realized that by writing a memoir, I could consolidate the knowledge I had gained from these years of experimenting and exploring. From this panoramic view, confusion gave way to wisdom. Dozens of alternate lifetimes later, I am finally regaining the confidence and purpose I felt before I fell off the launch pad. The whole point was to achieve a sense of empowered adulthood, and it appears I have finally achieved that goal.

I’m not sure that a memoir about this long, multi-stage life would be focused enough to sustain a reader’s interest. But since that’s the way my life actually worked, I intend to try. One of the few memoirs that offer a model for this long approach to adulthood is John Robison’s “Look me in the eye.” As a young adult, he pulled together relationships and career but something was missing.  My impression is that his life came into fullness much later when he realized he had Asperger’s, a mental “condition” that was preventing him from interacting with the world.

Robison was not the only one to have a difficult emergence into adulthood. Many memoirs relate the difficulties of this journey, and while each one offers its own unique slant, together they demonstrate that this developmental challenge of life, to go from child to adult, can provide an enormous amount of dramatic tension.

In my next blog essay, I will offer a number of examples of memoirs whose authors struggled on their transition into adulthood.
Writing Prompt
Consider the impact this period had for you. If you have had a curiosity or horror about your own transition from childhood to adulthood, you will find that the power of this period can make compelling material.

Note
To read the essay I wrote about how John Robison’s memoir gave me permission to be myself, click here.

Story extends my optimism to infinity

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by Jerry Waxler, author of Memoir Revolution: Write Your Story, Change the World

When I was 20, I fought desperately against my future. I refused to become an adult until I understood why I should. Looking back years later, I see my rebellion against the future was a big mistake that caused me and my parents much suffering. I eventually made it through that period, having learned many lessons. The one I treasure most is that my impression of the future profoundly affects my energy in the present. As a result, I have cultivated a habit of optimism, always looking for the good that is coming my way.

That optimism is being put to the test, now that I’m sixty, and I’m looking down the line at what looks like the downward slide at the end of my journey. To maintain my enthusiasm today, I need a more positive image of where I’m going, but it looks so uninviting. Fortunately, over the years, I have amassed an enormous amount of life experience. So to find out more about how to improve my fantasy of the future, I go back to the beginning and learn how my impressions of the future shaped my life.

What I thought the future would be like
As a child, I watched nice families like Ozzie and Harriet on television. The kids had adventures and learned lessons, while the parents stood by to guide them. As near as I could tell, once you grew up the party was over. By the time I was ready to become an adult, I believed life’s journey would look like this: Grow up, get a job, raise a family, grow old and die. After growing up, the rest looked flat, boring, and uninviting.

Chart of expected life

Heaven and hell didn’t help
The ideas of Judaism that I learned in my own home, and Christianity that I gleaned in the broader culture confirmed my worst fears. According to some renditions, after death, I could go nowhere, or to heaven or hell. In any of these options, my soul would continue without further challenge until the end of time.

Heaven forever

Secular learning didn’t improve my view of the future
I thought surely, within the vast universe of knowledge, there must be some compelling reason for living. So I poured myself into a broad search of science, math, history, politics, and philosophy. I found many interesting perspectives in each of these fields, but they gave me no path to work towards, nor any reason to strive in the human drama. In fact, nihilism injected darkness into my heart that poisoned my momentum even more.

Unable to find an impression of the future that appealed to me, and feeling disconnected from society I began to unravel. Protests against the world turned inward against myself and against life. I stopped eating. I was barely able to move, work, or socialize.

Eastern views added nuances to the future
My confusion about the future was tearing me apart. Thanks to a variety of compromises and insights, inch by inch, I came back to life. One perspective that motivated me was the Eastern philosophy that after each death, there would be another birth, with more challenges, opportunities, hopes, and dreams.

Eastern view of life and death

This chart seemed infinitely richer than the one I previously visualized. I loved the idea that even when I can’t see immediate results, my actions today will cause repercussions tomorrow. These beliefs helped me dispel despair, and expanded my vision beyond the tiny fraction of life in front of me. But it left many questions about how to make the most of my time on earth.

Instead of seeking absolute meaning I began to connect with people
As I regained momentum, got a job, and formed relationships, I realized that my zealous pursuit of Knowledge had blinded me to the people in my life. Once I loosened my obsessive grip on ideas, I became aware of the enormous satisfaction I felt with my friends, family, coworkers, and community. Social connections made me feel more balanced and more at peace with myself and the world.

My life path was not so boring as I had anticipated
By the time I was 35, I had achieved a stable lifestyle, with a job, a committed relationship, and day-to-day comfort and purpose. This stability, which I had fought so hard against when I was younger, became a blessed victory. While the future still looked flat, those first 35 years were far more complex than I had originally expected. I had made false starts, was distracted by illusions, addictions, and dreams that just didn’t work out. With diligence and assistance, I reached upward, out of these valleys and fulfilled my potential.

More interesting than I thought

Lifelong growing
When I was 50, I returned to Villanova University for a Master’s degree in counseling psychology. My education loaded me with insights into how to help people grow, and my understanding of the human condition became deeper. It occurred to me that the journey of adulthood had now turned upwards, and that by striving, I was not only helping other people grow. I was continuing to grow, myself. This added another feature to my increasingly interesting chart.

Still growing after all these years

What draws me to the next step?
Now I’m sixty, an age traditionally associated with the end of adult responsibilities, and I fear the downhill slide. And so, my enthusiasm is undermined by my old bugaboo: fear of the future. I am tempted to follow poet Dylan Thomas’ urging to rage against the dying of the light. But that risks repeating the mistake of my youth, angrily fighting with the future rather than embracing it.

How telling the story of my life exposes wisdom about my path
A few years ago, I began to write a memoir. On the surface, such a goal may seem to be a frill, a bauble, a celebration of the past. But the more I search for the organizing principle that will make my life worth telling, the more wisdom I discover in the act of storytelling.

I discovered there are two sides to every story, the inside and the outside. Looking from the outside, I see homes, families, and cars. People go to work, vacation, or the movies. But at the heart of the story, there is a character whose desires drive the story forward, while the obstacles help the character grow. At first, the inner story seems invisible to an outside observer, in fact it propels the story forward and keeps it interesting.

Focus on the inner story expands my vision of the future
Inside my character, I feel curiosity and energy. I am compassionate and want to serve others. I notice this tendency in other people, watching many people, including my parents, develop along these lines into their seventies, eighties, and beyond.

My grandmother often claimed she felt young. I never understood how this was possible considering her slower walk and older skin. Now I am experiencing this strange phenomenon myself. I look in people’s eyes and see a glimpse of something timeless in them too. As I chart my life, I realize it is the inner story that continues to grow.

The inner story continues to grow at any age
To find a wellspring of energy today, I consider the shape of my story over the last sixty years. Through the years, I kept thinking the future might be boring, and year after year, I was proven wrong. The character in my story continued to evolve, to gain insights, to become more nuanced. Then I look at other people, at the whole person, their eyes, their hopes, and I read or listen to their stories. By focusing on the inner story, I see them grow. My understanding of the inner story has expanded my vision of the future.

Extending my optimism towards infinity
I have heard many beliefs about what happens after death, from a welcome by angels, to reunions with family, the wise guides who will lead me farther, and even a coaching session to prepare for the next birth. I don’t know which of these ideas are true. But that’s okay. With each passing year, I watch my inner story growing, and with just a well-practiced slip of my optimistic pencil, I can let my chart of the future extend upward, right off the edge of the paper. This visualization of the future gives me the basis for an invigorating, hopeful, and more satisfying life today.

Beyond the visible