Sep 14
As I recently edited my memoir for the umpteenth time, I struggled over how to best fill in certain blanks in my family history. I didn’t want to present information I didn’t know as true. And I wasn’t out to embellish anything —not a good thing to do in memoir—but I lacked important information.
I remembered reading Debra Marquart’s memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild In the Middle of Nowhere,
Choosing the right title is an art. Sometimes, titles come in a brilliant flash of insight. Sometimes, not. I write poetry so I’ve had years of practice with titles. With most poems, I can usually find an intriguing title fairly quickly. Not so with my memoir. I’ve spent hours and hours and hours trying to come up with just the right title. In the process, I’ve discovered a few things to think about when choosing a title. But first, I’ll share some of my title failures and why they failed (no laughing out loud!)
My memoir is the story of how, as a child, I used the intuitive gifts inherited from my Norwegian great-grandmothers to transcend my father’s dark legacy. Below are the titles I’ve used along the way, in order of appearance. (I’m sharing the bad first so you can see how I learned from my mistakes).
The Language of Thorns. Okay, yes, I’m a poet. This shows it by being too literary and dramatic. Read more
I’m a big fan of passion. I believe that whatever we do has to be done with passion. Maybe this is why my house is currently a certified disaster zone or why I’m behind on bookkeeping—because it takes me awhile to work up my passion for these tasks.
When you do something with passion, you do it for yourself and nobody else. You have an inner fire. I can tell when an author has passion—I feel it in their writing, in their words, in their images. They capture me.
I recently read a post on Photofocus.com by photographer Scott Bourne (@scottbourne) where he asked the question of his fellow photographers: “What if you concentrated on making only meaningful photos?” Bourne explores what this concept might mean to his body of work and encourages photographers to find what is meaningful to them as artists—not what they think is meaningful to others.
He writes, “There seems to be a rush to mediocrity in so many of the things that surround us lately that we may be in danger of simply forgetting about excellence.”
As writers, we have to be knowledgeable about the market—what’s selling, what’s not, how genres have shifted or combined to make new opportunities. But we don’t want to write to the market. We don’t want to write about vampires just because that’s the new hot trend (unless that’s truly your passion).
The most successful authors make their own trends. They find what they’re absolutely passionate about, what is most meaningful to them, and write about it. Read more
One of my favorite writer’s tools is to practice word riffs. To me, word riffing is like playing a musical instrument (of course, that’s where the term riffing comes from). I’m learning to play guitar and one of the things I like to do is randomly strum away, making up my own little songs (often sung to my cats and starring their names—they just love that).
First, some tips for word riffing:
I’ve never ridden a motorcycle in my life. Never even been on one. So when my hubby recently suggested we take a motorcycle class, I had no frame of reference. I didn’t even know he’d owned one when he was younger and living in Southern California. I’m not sure what prompted his sudden need for speed, but we talked about it and decided to take the two-day safety course to see if we could pass the test (back in his early riding days there were no classes, nor tests). I wanted to take the class to see if I even enjoyed riding.
Being a type A, my hubby arranged for us to have a private class and to have both days collapsed into one (to save time, of course, since we are busy business owners). We passed the written test in the morning. No problem. Then from 12:30pm to 7:30pm we went through two days of riding instruction. Keep in mind I’ve never ridden. Keep in mind I didn’t know where the brakes or clutch were or what a choke was. (Other than this is what I wanted to do to my husband by six o’clock that evening). Read more
As a freshman in college, I wrote one of my first poems in response to a painting that hung on the wall of an art gallery where I worked. It was an abstract painting of a woman’s body and I wrote my poem in an abstract style—mimicking the curves and nuances of the painting. I even titled the poem “Abstract Painting #6” after the name of the painting. I remember this because it was the first poem I ever published. Firsts tend to make an impression on me.
As a writer, I’ve trained myself to be observant of my surroundings. But I don’t always succeed—there are days when I’m so involved with my “other worlds” that I literally don’t notice what’s happening around me. Once, when I worked at a law firm, I went for an entire day before noticing that my colleagues had rearranged my office. (Something they thought was hysterically funny for some reason).
When I enter a new environment now, I try to notice my surroundings—I look for what’s unusual or unique. I look for those “firsts.” If I find something intriguing, I store it away for later use in a poem or story. Read more
Recently, I read Jacki Lyden’s memoir again, Daughter of the Queen of Sheba: A Memoir. I don’t normally read memoirs more than once. But I wanted to re-experience her word riffs and stream of consciousness writing to see if I could find a way to use these tools to go deeper into the minds of my own characters.
Lyden tells the story of growing up and living with a mentally ill mother. Her parents divorced when she was young and, after her mother marries a doctor who turns out to be controlling and abusive, she begins to speak to God and believe that she is the Queen of Sheba.
The author writes the lines below in response to a letter from her mother, who says that she was really never mentally ill, and that her behavior was the result of the prescription drugs her doctor-husband gave her. Lyden writes:
“Never crazy. It never happened to you. Ant Trap Zap! It never happened to me. We’ll throw out those old pages and get some new ones at the K Mart. There is a life I’d like you to try, size six. We can always take it back if it doesn’t fit. You will be a housewife heroine, pushed into adversity by a demanding doctor-husband and prescription drugs, and I will be free forever from the taint of your insanity. Prescription drugs, I tell my friends confidently. Misdiagnosis. Miss Diagnosis. Clodhopper attendants, Nurse Ratched on the case. Dolores naked and chained in a pit. Lions and tigers and bears.” Read more
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