HOW TO BEGIN A MEMOIR rattles most writers, though perhaps none more than those who had eccentric childhoods. When growing up amid the crazy or quirky stuff of life, competing, vivid images provide a virtual funhouse of choices and can leave the writer more than a little stuck for what to write first. It’s at times like these that we should defer to an expert, and in terms of both having an eccentric childhood and being a fine writer, few people can compete with Tanya Ward Goodman. I caught up with her a few years ago, after her remarkable book, Leaving Tinkertown, was named to several best-of lists for 2013. I thought maybe it was time to revisit this interview, this being the start of a new writing year. In a word, the book is perfect. So meet — or re-meet — Tanya. She’ll get you going.
How to Begin a Memoir
By Tanya Ward Goodman
I didn’t plan to write a memoir. When my father was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s at age 57, I moved home to New Mexico from Los Angeles to help take care of him. I started taking notes about what was happening just so that I’d have something to go back to after it was over. The doctors gave my dad five years and he slipped out just shy of their deadline.
After he died, I continued to write as a way to stay connected to him. At first, I wrote whatever popped into my head: a day, a conversation, a description of a place. After caring for my father, I’d become so aware of the ephemeral nature of memory that I was almost frantic to write down everything so I could hold on to all of it.
As you might imagine, frantic regurgitation of haphazard memories does not make for good structure. Two years worth of random writing turned into two hundred pages. I allowed myself to believe I might be writing a book.
But where to start?
I had essays, tiny scenes, scraps of dialogue and pages of description, but I didn’t know how to put it all together. I started to think about how I did and didn’t fit into my family and I realized that the book was about identity — my search to find my own as my dad was losing his. In order to begin, I had to clue the reader into who I was right away.
I grew up in a roadside attraction called Tinkertown Museum. My father built the museum a little bit at a time. He built with what he had. Before we all started thinking seriously about “reclaimed” supplies and “green” building materials, he was using bottles as bricks and old barn wood as paneling.
I tried to look at my pile of pages the way my Dad might have looked at all the stacks of wood and bins and boxes filled with odds and ends that he kept in his workshop.
How to choose the first line of your memoir
The first line of my memoir is a line I’ve used throughout my life as shorthand to explain my family, but it took many drafts before I realized that it should be the first line of the book.
The story depends so much upon the reader understanding the relationship between me, my dad and our house and how the museum grew up around me – almost like a sibling. The first chapter of my book came as an answer to the questions “Who am I?” and “Where did I come from?” I figured that if I could answer these questions, I would be able to help the reader (and truthfully, myself) understand why I would return home.
I thought of the first chapter as a condensed version of my mythology. It’s an origin story that tells not just the beginning of my life, but the beginning of Tinkertown. As I wrote, I began to see how my Dad’s creation of the museum paralleled my childhood. Because I was thinking always about identity, I took the opportunity to think about how my experiences diverged from my father’s. I looked for details that would read like a slide show: lost teeth for me, mosaic of bones for my dad. It’s all true stuff, all raw material, but arranged properly, it gives an immediate sense of character and place. Details like “rainbow suspenders” and “going to prom with one boy while lusting for another” set a time and a mindset. By the end of this first chapter, I hoped the reader would know me and know my dad and feel that I could be trusted to lead them through the rest of the book.
Because the book is about memory, I wanted to tell this first bit as the oft-told tale it is. We all have stories we tell again and again. We tell the story of our birth, the stories of our courtships and weddings and funerals. Honed by years of telling, these stories are streamlined and automatic, held more in our mouths than our heads. I wanted the story of my life to come out as if we’d just met and I was rattling off the details.
Choosing the last line, the close of the book
The last line, “I felt I was grown” leaves room to ask, “But what if I wasn’t grown?” I needed to ask that question to get to the rest of the book. I needed to ask that question so that I would dig into my memory for the details and find the real story.
If you get stuck at the beginning – or in the middle (I get stuck a little bit every few pages) try to write the automatic version of your life story. Give the reader everything about you up to age 18 or 25 or 40. Tell the story you always tell. And then go deeper. Who are you? Where did you come from? I ask myself these questions every time I sit down to write. And the answers are always new.
Leaving Tinketown, an excerpt
With It
I was conceived in a pick-up camper on the New Mexico State Fair Grounds when my parents were on the road with the carnival. They were carting around a freak show called “World of the Weird” along with a miniature wood-carved western town my father had made, known then as “Folk Arts Village.” At the end of the Albuquerque run, my mom packed up her bags and left my father to manage the rest of his life alone. She returned to her family home in Rapid City, South Dakota, where I grew secretly for several months. After six years of unprotected sex my parents had assumed that they could not have children. They figured that when they parted on that dusty lot in New Mexico, they would stay apart. Five months later, in March of 1968, they reconciled around my mother’s round belly and set up housekeeping in Albuquerque.
Although they stopped traveling with the carnival full time, Dad still packed up his brush box and hit the road a dozen times or more each year to work as a showpainter. Sometimes he painted brand new rides like the Sea Dragon and the Flying Bobs in a factory in Wichita, Kansas, but most of the time, he headed out to one dusty lot after the next to slap color on rides that had been kicking around the road season after season. Carny folks call this being “with it,” which means that even if you’re not on the road, the road is always with you.
On the day that I was born, my father was supposed to be driving a convertible down Central Avenue in Albuquerque, in a parade commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the end of the Navaho Long Walk. Instead of chauffeuring a Native American princess in a Cadillac, he piled Mom into his old, blue Ford pickup and hightailed it to St. Joseph’s Hospital in downtown Albuquerque, where he paced the halls for thirty-two hours until I was cut from my mother’s womb and handed over to the nuns who fed me sugar water and told my parents that I was the most beautiful baby they had ever seen. My father paid the hospital with two crisp thousand-dollar bills that he’d kept tucked into his boots as securely as I’d been tucked into my Mama’s belly. This is no surpise. My father always paid in cash.
A month shy of my first birthday, Mom and Dad bought a house. Though they often called it a “cabin,” the cinder block structure was without notable detail save its location at the bottom of a steep gravel driveway in the shadow of the Sandia Mountains. My brother, Jason was born a year later and we grew up in this house. Subject to the creative whims of my dad, the house grew with us. At five and a half when I began making my first offerings to the tooth fairy, Dad created a mosaic of bones near the front door. In elementary school, while I struggled with the multiplication table, Dad commenced building a geodesic dome on the roof of our living room. As I navigated the treacherous social terrain of middle school, Dad shrugged off the rules, mixed a batch of cement and began to build walls made out of beer bottles.
My parents split, my Dad re-married, I got braces and glasses and a bad perm. I wore tennis shoe roller skates and rainbow suspenders. I stopped playing the clarinet and took up theatre. I researched the pros and cons of the death penalty for my high school debate team and went to prom with one boy while lusting for another. I held slumber parties and played truth or dare, I studied for the SAT and looked at college catalogs and when I finally left this house, I felt I was grown.
Author’s bio:
Tanya Ward Goodman grew up at Tinkertown Museum, a roadside attraction built by her father, Ross Ward, in the mountains of New Mexico. She attended Northwestern University and currently lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband and two children. Her writing has been published in the Los Angeles Times, the “Cup of Comfort” series edited by Colleen Sell for Adams Media, the anthology “My Teacher Is My Hero” and online at Brain, Child Magazine, The Huffington Post and Literary Mama. Her memoir “Leaving Tinkertown” was the 2008 winner of the Southwest Writers Conference Storyteller Award under the title “Mighty Fond of You, Too.” She blogs regularly for the parenting website The Next Family at www.thenextfamily.com
Want to work with Marion Roach Smith to write memoir? I now teach four online memoir writing classes, and work as a memoir coach. Come see me and let me teach you how to get started writing memoir, how to move your writing along, or how to finish what you’ve got.
Brad Engborg says
Good advice for getting “unstuck” on where to begin. The jumping off point is often the hardest but once started a landslide of ideas often follow.
Tanya Ward Goodman says
Brad, so glad to be of help. “Landslide” is the right word for what happens when the ideas start to come. I let everything land on the page — no holds barred — and then go back and trim. Cheers!
Shelly Miller says
Such helpful advice as I sit down to start writing today. I love the way you set the scene, I could relate to so much of it. You’ve dangled enough of a carrot to make me want to read the book.
Shirley Hershey Showalter says
Loved this excerpt and this advice. Having an image that relates to the content seems like an organic way to write. For me, the image was farming.
Marion, I love the clean new look of your website.
All best to both of you in 2014.
Virginia Mallon says
Great idea to use the first chapter as “a condensed version of my mythology”. It worked for me, I want to read the book. Thanks!
Virginia Simpson says
Wonderful article offering a new lens through which to view my memoir. As I continue to write, I will utilize your suggestions and questions. I look forward to reading your book.
Katherine Stevenson says
This posting is SO timely as I struggle to get started with my own memoir. Everything written here was so helpful especially, “I get stuck a little bit every few pages.” Thank you, as that is my reality.
If I do not win this book (thank you again Marion for all the great resources you offer us) I will buy it. Sounds like a must read.
Tanya Ward Goodman says
Hi Katherine,
I think writing is a constant cycle of stuck and unstuck. The writing, the not writing — even just getting myself to sit down with it is sometimes the sticking point. Keep at it!
Fondly,
Tanya
Erin says
Tanya’s summary of her youth was actually packed full. Even though the details of her childhood were briefly covered, as a reader I was clued in quickly by her short but visual and sometimes relatable descriptions.
Viga Boland says
I really appreciated this post on several fronts: when I began writing my own true story of child sexual abuse over 18 months ago, I didn’t know where to start. Do I start with the nitty-gritty so folks can get right into it what the story was really about? Or do I introduce them to the child I was before it all started happening? I opted for the latter as a friend said she’d like to know the little girl to whom bad things happened before she got to what happened. Your post confirms I did the right thing, even though I feared I might bore folks with some of the details. Turns out I didn’t and the book has sold well.
Now, as a result of the importance of my my book topic, I’ve been asked to run memoir writing classes for our local library starting February. As I brace myself for the task of helping others do what I did (on their own subjects of course) I’m looking for all info I can get to help them and voila! Along comes your very timely, for me, post. I hope to share sections of this with them, with your permission. It’s what I would have told them about where to start, but having a top memoir writer say the same thing will certainly support anything I suggest. Thanks so much.
Viga
Tanya Ward Goodman says
Viga, so glad you found a way to tell your own story. Congratulations on the success of your book and I wish you much success with your workshop! You are welcome to quote this post. How kind of you to ask.
fondly,
Tanya
Viga Boland says
Thanks Tanya. Look forward to sharing your thoughts with my groups.
Viga
Elizabeth says
I love how you talk about searching to find your identity as your dad was losing his. Your books sounds wonderful.
Lyle Wiggins says
My childhood was so much different than Tanya’s, yet so much the same. I didn’t grow up in a museum, but my experiences have been so eclectic that it has been difficult to cobble together a cohesive narrative. Reading this post has given me some ideas I’m eager to explore. I look forward to reading the book.
Tanya Ward Goodman says
Lyle,
I’m so glad my post has given you some ideas for structuring your own childhood memories. I understand the difficulty of “cobbling together” a coherent narrative when there is so much rich material. (Maybe you’ve got more than one book in you.)
Fondly,
Tanya
John Willis says
Marion,
I am a former memoir writing student of yours and regular follower of your blog posts. As always, they are full of very useful information on writing and I like to save them as pdf files for future reference. With the old website I was able to print them to pdf files. When I do that now all I get is gibberish. Is it possible to add a print icon or change the formatting so I can print them as pdfs?
All the best,
John Willis
Patricia Shinaberger says
Thank you for this prompt on how to get started….and to let the reader know what themes will become the themes of the story.
Thank you Marion for providing these lessons and examples of excellent work to your dedicated memoirist fans. I must have this book!
Shareen says
I love the idea of asking “who am I” each time I sit down to write. I am eager to use this tool and see what happens as I do. Thank you!
Leith says
What a great example of what you teach us Marion, “what is it about?”. Tanya’s description of the little notes and pieces of paper that became her memoir is encouraging! We all have these but can’t figure how they can come together. A great read to start the New Year!
Thanks
Leith
Elaine Montague says
You said, “I looked at my piles of pages…” and my head actually moved from your imagery to my boxes and notebooks. I laughed because I surely do not know which contain golden words not to be skipped as my husband and I finish a book about his growing up at a school for the blind. I remember when your dad’s exhibit was at the State Fair and have been fascinated by the house in the mountains more than once.
Hiatus is the best I can say for my writing over the past few months, but I’m into Renewal now. Thanks for sharing your writing, your family, and Tinkertown with us.
Elaine
Albuquerque
Tanya Ward Goodman says
Hi Elaine!
How great to hear from you! “Renewal” is indeed a fine philosophy for the new year. Keep asking “what is the story?” and those “Golden Words” will emerge. Wonderful to imagine I might have sold you a ticket at the State Fair!
Fondly,
Tanya
Lynda Lee says
Thank you for this! I have been working on my memoir since forever. I have accumulated pages and chapters galore, but trying to figure out how to put it all together into a cohesive book, and especially, Where To Start, has been making me want to tear out my hair. I think I have written at least twenty totally different Chapter Ones! As soon as I log off of here I am going to try it your way. It’s beautiful!
Is the Tinkertown Museum still open for business? I live in New Mexico and drove by there several years ago, was intrigued, wanted to stop, didn’t have time, meant to come back later… which is sort of the story of my life, and of my memoir-writing!
Tanya Ward Goodman says
Hi Lynda,
So glad to help you get a new POV on your stacks and piles! I went through a bunch of first chapters. I think it’s easier to skip ahead sometimes and write the rest of the book and then, once you kind of know what it’s about you can go back and write that beginning. For me, starting right off from the first sentence is like marrying the guy in front of me in line at the post office. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves! Get to know your book and then the first line will come organically.
Tinkertown is open April through October. When you visit, tell the folks in the gift shop that I said hello!
All the best,
Tanya
Sister Hilda Kleiman says
Dear Marion and Tanya,
I also liked the idea of staring with the condensed personal mythology. I think we all have that mythology in our minds, the main images we carry around and are shaping our thoughts and actions.
I will also look forward to reading this book even if I don’t win – thank you for recommending it!
Sylvia says
You have to stand out with an incident, phrasing, description, situation. Loved her “…They were carting around a freak show…”
Paulette Bochnig Sharkey says
Thanks to my quirky father, I have a wealth of stories I want to tell about my childhood. For years, I’ve made notes as they occur to me, and put it all in a growing computer file. I’ve managed to turn one reminiscence into a published 300-word essay. I poke around the rest, unsure what to do with it. But reading Tanya’s post, and her mention of identity, I had an aha! moment. That’s my way in. Thank you!
Adele says
Easy to read blog – loved it. Even when I verbally share stuff people look at me cross eyed and I stop. No one believes it I think. So when my first book evaluator of ‘Can You See Me Naked’ (non-fiction book re relationships) asked me to write my bio I felt anxious. This blog has given me hope.
m. claudette sandecki says
Has “Leaving Tinseltown” been published? Where is it available to buy?
I can find no sign of it on Amazon or Google.
Claudette
marion says
Hi there, Claudette.
Leaving Tinkertown is definitely available through the publisher.
Here is the link to the publisher.
Please stop by again soon.
Paul Rutherford says
Hey Marion,
For some unexplained reason I was drawn to the Arts Center website and then your site, thinking that 3 books, 7 documentary films and a host of other projects would dull my yearning to write another essay. It hasn’t I guess, I often think back, quite fondly and some time ago, to those evenings of sharing and think how nice it would be to attend class again…and then realize I probably never will, although I do encourage others to attend. Your class always comes up when someone asks me about my writing. I am forever grateful for the polish applied there.
I hope all is well with you. I’m glad to see that you are still sharing your gift.
Best Always,
Paul
marion says
Hello, Paul:
How incredibly kind of you to write this, and how tremendously generous of you to tell others about the class. It goes on still. Thank you. Best to you, as well.
Joe Fiduccia says
You couldn’t be more right. Taking on the challenge of a Memoir is definitely no easy task. Recently I’ve been wanting to do the same, but thinking about the events of my life and the sheer quantity of them can be quite daunting. I appreciate your suggestions to help be get going! Thank you!