With the gardening season nearing its end for this year, I’ve turned introspective. Looking back on my life, I see that I’ve accomplished a lot, especially tied to and around the garden. Not that I’m ready to retire, or anything like that! But when I think about my family, I ponder what kind of legacy I can leave them. Heck, my friends might also be interested in knowing about the myriad seedlings I’ve nurtured.
So, I’ve decided to write a memoir. I want to share my love of gardening and the joy I’ve known working with the soil and watching things grow.
But what do I know about memoir? I went searching for how-to information and found a lot of advice. I first learned that memoir is always nonfiction; it’s based on my actual life, not something I’ve spun out of my imagination. (I can’t say I grew a 65-pound pumpkin if I didn’t really do that. Darn!)
One of the first decisions I need to make is what kind of book to write: memoir or autobiography? I favor memoir; who wants to read the dense details of my birth in a forest glade and grade school classes at the Green Thumb Academy and my full scholarship to Sowing Green University? Still, if I wanted to, I could turn to MasterClass and its definition of What Is an Autobiography?
Since my main mission in life is gardening, and I have so much to share, I could write a self-help gardening book combined with memoir elements, drawing on my many years of experience to offer tips. In fact, I could start out by writing essays on how gardening brings me joy and spin those into a book deal, as suggested by Louise Deasey, in How to Write a Memoir Essay.
At Writers.com, I found a step-by-step guide to writing a memoir. Before I plunge in, though, perhaps I should read several other memoirs to get a feel for what I’m doing. Marion Roach Smith, who wrote the classic guide The Memoir Project, also offers a list of great memoirs to dig into, in her post How to Write a Memoir: Read These Books.
I learned from Jennie Nash on Writer Unboxed that a memoir is not just a random bunch of things that happened to me, even if they were sort-of interesting. Lilly Dancyger in Columbia Magazine agrees. She says that something powerful might have happened to me (I’m thinking of the year that both my tomatoes and my zucchini won first prize at the county fair), but just having the experience is not enough. I need to get across to the reader how that event affected my life.
In fact, I should think of my memoir in the same way I would my fiction work. Back at MasterClass, after reading their 10 Tips for Starting a Memoir, I realized that I am the main character in my story! (That’s frightening, in a way.) Brooke Warner, in a post on The Write Life, suggests focusing on ways to have my readers feel what it’s like to be me. (Another frightening prospect.)
I need to decide what details to include in my memoir and how much of them. I’m thinking of organizing my book by season: cycling through the year by focusing on what I did in the spring, summer, fall, and winter. That idea came from Cyndy Etler, in her post How to Write Your Memoir with Fun, Easy Lists.
But I’ll also need to be aware that digging into my past may be scary. I may need to face or relive unpleasant memories. (The time I lost an entire crop of rhubarb to snails comes to mind.) In a post on Writer’s Digest, Greg Wrenn explains how doing research for my memoir can help tamp down those fears.
What a lot of work! I may scrap the memoir idea and aim for more of a broad record of my life, something to pass on to my kids; I could even record my memories as an oral history. That’s a route suggested by William Zinsser in The American Scholar. “Writers,” Zinsser says, “are the custodians of memory.”
Betty Wryte-Goode is a writer and mother who lives in the Lehigh Valley. Her passions include writing, reading, shopping, gardening, and exploring the internet. Betty is always looking for writing tips, so if you have any you would like to share, please send them to her through our Submissions/Contacts page.