One Big Tip on Planning A Memoir

WHEN IT COMES TO the work of planning a memoir, the advice you will receive online, in books and in person should always include the words “structure” and “argument,” as well as the question, “What is this about?” If you’ve taken any of my online memoir classes, read my book on how to write memoir, or worked with me on your manuscript, you know how decidedly I return to these words and phrases again and again. But I’m ready to add one here, since I recently realized its value in how to plan a memoir. It’s this: Listen to Motown.

My husband and I were riding in the car when this occurred to me. There we were, slogging along on a snowy road, stuck behind a salt spreader, when I could feel the temperature in the car rise as the winter conditions forced a man to drive more slowly than he preferred. Solution? Put on some music. And when I did, a magical idea popped into my head.

“Motown!” I shouted. My husband, in need of coffee, as well as relief from the transfixing transom of the two-lane salt spreader we’d been staring for eight miles, looked over and replied simply, “Yes,” thinking he was registering the style of the music I chose.

“No, no, no. I mean yes, it’s Motown, but it’s the key to how to write memoir.”

And it was there on the long winter road that I got one of those looks I get a lot, the one that suggests that the other person is hoping like hell that any second I’m going to make this all make sense.

Where to Find Your Inspiration

I suspect I use that look a lot, as well as get it. After all, I work with hundreds of writers each month and hear about all manners of inspiration from them as people tell me where they get their ideas for books and how they plan to structure them. Always, there is a lesson for me about inspiration. Specifically, it reminds me that inspiration is everywhere. You can write a book shaped in the whorl of a seashell, the grid of a city or the layout of the rooms in your home. Perhaps you feel the metaphor between music and math. Maybe your dog has taught you everything you need to know to live with your spouse. None of these ideas throw me. I get it. You feel encouraged to write based on something you witnessed. This is such great news.

And it brings me back to Motown.

Maybe you’ve never listened to Motown. Maybe you don’t even know what it is. In terms of my usage here, it’s a sound, though Motown, in its finest sense, was a source of change for the better in the world.  Read up on it and learn. But for our memoir writing purposes, let’s stick to its sound.

The music of Motown is complex and layered. Consider the Gladys Knight song, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” one of my all-time favorites and one whose many parts I know by heart. There is Gladys in the foreground, singing her soul out, while surrounding her is the motion from the Pips. They are under her, around her, repeating a theme, reinforcing an idea and supporting her message.

How To Use Your Voice in Memoir

This is what you must do in your memoir writing. All too often, writers of memoir set out to have themselves as the front-person, the main singer, the predominant voice of the book and forget about the orchestration – that backup material that will color and heighten and add, support and reinforce the messaging of the story. It’s as though these writers based their work on the old form of opera, where someone stood at the edge of the stage and shouted at us. If you’ve been to opera in this century, you know those days are dead and buried and what has emerged is a vibrant, integrated art form. Applying this to your work, when reading it, do you hear only one, lone voice, practically shouting out its message, or can you also hear a good set of backup singers in the form of well-curated characters, superbly-drawn scenes  that pertain to this one story, and a well-orchestrated single argument throughout?

Of course, this idea is not limited to Motown. It can be applied to any genre of music, or even any body of work from a band or a performer from Vivaldi to The Fray. It’s all in the mix.

What do you hear when you read your work? Does it sound like you are singing all by yourself in an empty room, or have you written a well-planned piece of work that backs up your ideas and supports your themes? Have your characters got a good reason for being included in your chorus and are they singing on key?

Let Me Leave You With One Big Writing Tip

It’s hard to know, isn’t it? I mean, how do you plan for a well-orchestrated book that reads well? Let’s fall back on Motown again here, writers, and see if I can leave you with one big, happy tip for the day. Instead of waiting until you’ve written the work and then listening for that one, lone voice or the pack of integrated sounds, how about we plan the book from scratch using Motown as our inspiration?

Here’s how: Go to iTunes and search for Motown. Then find your people, whether they be Smokey Robinson and Miracles, Gladys Knight and the Pips or The Supremes. Then look at their song list. Hmmm. Interesting. If you are a music person, you know a bunch of these. Now what happens if you start pulling out a few tunes and putting them in the order of some narrative tale you want to tell?

For instance, let’s look at the Spinners. Their hits tell mighty tales of love and loss and the return of that love. What if you just grab those that tell of your history of not knowing love, finding love, not appreciating that love, consequently losing that love and then working hard to get that love back in your life? What songs might be the soundtrack to that tale? How about these?

THE SPINNERS

• Then Came You
• Could It Be I’m Falling in Love
• One of a Kind
• How Could I Let You Get Away
• Working My Way Back to You

See how this works? Look at that narrative arc. It’s called having some fun while planning your memoir. So have some. And then write.

Making a Memoir Playlist

And by the way, Motown curated a playlist to accompany Michelle Obama’s great memoir, Becoming. So this Motown thing really does work both ways – before and after you plan your memoir. I actually knew this, since my agent did the same thing for me after I published a book on the history of red hair. As a pub date gift, she sent me a cd of songs about the power of redheads. It’s hot. And I love it. And I listen to it all the time.

I’ve also previously written about this topic of playlists and your work. So have a look at this post on finding creative inspiration, this post on where a single lyric sent me, and this post about making a memoir playlist.

Apparently, I’ve thought a lot about the music in memoir. But let me be clear. I am not saying that planning a memoir is as easy as crawling into your ear buds or Apple Beats and listening to your favorite tunes. I am saying that inspiration is waiting there for you, but that you’ve got to use it well. So grab those headphones, listen up and write.

Want more help? Join me in live, online memoir classes

Memoirama: Live, 90 minutes. Everything you need to write what you know.

Memoirama 2. Live, two hours. Limited to seven writers. What you need to know to structure a book.

How to Write Opinion Pieces: Op-eds, Radio Essays and Digital Commentary: Live, 90 minutes. Get your voice out into the world.

And keep in mind that I am now taking names for the next  Master Class, the prerequisites for which are Memoirama and Memoirama 2. Live, once a month. Limited to seven writers. Get a first draft of your memoir finished in six months.

Photo by Adam Birkett on Unsplash