JUST WALKING AROUND. That’s where context comes from. By being out, being aware. And context is what you need if you are going to write memoir. In fact, the role of context in writing needs to be understood for you to achieve as a writer. This is a greatly misunderstood aspect of the art of writing what you know, since many people think that since the material is from our own lives, we’ve got all we need to write. We do – and we don’t.
To make something universal to others, a person writing memoir must contextualize the work. There must be something familiar to the reader, even if that familiarity is merely a vague sense that the piece was published in the right season, or is responding to something larger going on in the wide, wide world. For this, you must read, and you must look around.
And whenever I discuss context in writing and bring up how to get some, a howl goes up in the class.
“But I’m a full-time mother,” someone will say. “I can’t get out.”
“I work three jobs,” another will offer. “I’m caregiving my elderly mother,” perhaps. And in those responses they reveal that we think “looking around” means something more complex than literally looking around.
So, start chanting this to yourself: Context in writing. And then, let me suggest some place to go to illustrate the wrote of context in writing what you know.
It does not. For a lovely little eavesdrop on a couple of people looking around, listen to this, a walking tour of lower Manhattan with Studio 360 radio host Kurt Andersen, and the marvelous artist, Maira Kalman. In this little afternoon, with no particular goal, they walk and pick things up, and have coffee, and look at the world. And in that they remind us that artists do not have a special pipeline to the mystics that allows them some special vision, but that instead, to be great at what you do, you merely have to get out and take a walk, see where it leads you, and respond.
Try it.
eileenroach says
Hi Marion,
So I have a 3×5 blue card posted next to my computer with the suggested The Pleasure of His Company and am ready to tear down the walls inside but still unsure where to go with it. Could you jump-start me once again?
marion says
Hi, Eileen: This comment got kind of lost in the book giveaway. So sorry. I was suggesting you write on the theme of the men i your life whose love you soughs and what you traded to get that love. Does that help? Hope so. Write on.
Benjamin Vogt says
I think this is where incorporating research can come in and be helpful, too. Not just experiential conext, as you say, but that something larger can be scientifc, historical, pholosphical, literary, etc. I’m working on a memoir about Oklahoma, where I was born, and my memories. But I’m also weaving in the history of the southern plains, the treatment of native americans, the ecology, family stories of immigration and settlement–though I am the driver of this minivan of experiences, I can take a back seat at times to contextual and open it up to say “this is America, this is where we come from, for good and bad.”
marion says
Hi, Benjamin. What bounty you bring to this reply. Many, many thanks. You’re right on about this. Taking a back seat is a great and much-needed skill in memoir writing. Thanks again. I hope to hear more from you. Go get ’em on the memoir.