Wrestling With Finding a Memoir Topic? Here’s Some Help
MANY OF MY STUDENTS wrestle with the “what to write” question. They struggle when trying to find a memoir topic. It’s a nearly hand-to-hand combat with which I have great familiarity. As a young New York Times employee, I used to marvel at the other cubs who seemed never to be at a loss for a good topic. Me, I wrestled, which is one of the reasons I try to supply you with a regular influx of ideas, things to react to, as well as some good old-fashioned provocation. Need some now?
Reading Other Sources to Get Ideas
Along with an idea, the very best way to motivate you to bring the piece to the page is to have a personal/professional interest in the topic. What do I mean by that? Maybe you have elderly parents, and maybe you worry about the myriad things that can go wrong with their care, and maybe you’d like to write about the process of living that experience. What to do?
One is to read the New Old Age blog on The New York Times website. After you find something there to provoke you, you might find yourself writing anything from a blog comment, a letter to the editor of that blog, a blog post of your own, an op-ed, or the chapter in a book you’ve been meaning to write about love and the pressures put on it while caregiving.
In a recent post on the New Old Age blog, I found a study that addresses the neurological reasons why older people are increasingly susceptible to scams. It’s fascinating, as well as potential fodder for your very own essay. Maybe one or both of your parents have fallen prey to a scam. Maybe this study sparks something in you about aging and the brain and how we change. Maybe you’ve got your very own ideas after reading it.
Ideas for a memoir topic are everywhere in this media-rich time. Look around. Read. And react. It’s what writers do. Yes, even memoir writers. Going through a long term care situation with an aging parent, partner or friend? Do some research, and let us in on the journey. Tell us about your world, and you’ll inform us about our own.
Hi Marion:
The New Old Age is one of my favorite blogs. I jotted down these thoughts five years ago after moving from Los Angeles back to Florida to be closer to my parents. My father, at 87, was beginning to decline both physically and mentally and my mother was in rehab recovering from breast cancer surgery at the age of 85.
What I carry in my purse now
1. A mezuzzah case without a prayer. What could be sadder or more ironic.
2. A prescription for .25 mg Xanax. They help the anxiety that keeps me awake most nights. Sleeping pills are a no-no since I can’t be unconscious for those late night emergency calls from my parents or their caregivers
4. Hastily jotted sticky notes. These often end up on the driver’s seat of my car or on my ass while walking thru the grocery store. Most people will NOT tell you when you have a sticky note hitching a ride on the back of your skirt? That’s just mean.
5. A tube of Bert’s Bee’s colored lipgloss. It gives my tired face a macabre bit of kabuki color when I need it .
6. Twenty different To Do lists. Some in my father’s distinctive engineer’s scrawl, most in my own illegible handwriting.
7. A pound of change for the parking meter at my mother’s rehab center. 20 minutes for a quarter. About what my time is worth these days.
8. A key ring to make a janitor swoon. Twelve keys including 2 for my house, 2 for my parent’s house, one for their safe deposit box and an assortment of scan thingies like Barnes and Noble, CVS Pharmacy, DSW Shoes for retail therapy.
9. My cell phone. Instead of drooling at the sound of it, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, my response is fight or flight. I’m running out of new ring tones to choose from.
10. A tweezers for pulling stray chin hairs. They catch the light at precisely the moment I’ve convinced myself that I don’t look as rough as I feel.
11. A pocket calendar with laughably small squares. Plus, I just noticed it’s a 2006 calendar and this is 2007.
12. A brochure for an assisted living facility that my mother is curious about, but can’t bear to think she might really need.
13. And last but not least, a relaxation CD my good friend Anne sent me. Great stuff, if I only had time to listen.