One of my favorite topics to discuss and teach is how to write memoir using lists. Whenever I suggest a list to one of my students or clients, it is inevitably met with skepticism. And yet lists convey so much with so little. Consider the list of what you took when you left. That’s right: When you left. We’ve all left something , somewhere or someone. What did you plan to take and what did you pocket at the last minute as you swept out? Write those down. 

How about that list of what you did not say when someone else left, or perhaps what you wish you did say the last time you saw someone? How would those read? And what might they convey that is simply overstated with any more than the barest of copy? Consider the list.

Then consider the writing process that went into Joan Wickersham’s brilliant memoir, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order. That very word, “order,” in the title tells you what was at stake for her as much as the word “index” conveys her process. Don’t know the book? Have a read and witness how the stately structure of the index allows her to turn the mystery of his life into a future she can live.

The writers I work with are all too familiar with my margin notes that include exhortations to them to “loosen up,” “relax” and “enjoy the writing more.” This is one method of doing so. All too often the very topic at hand freezes the writer on the page, something that no reader wants to witness. Instead, try something daring. Write the ingredients that went into your bad husband as a recipe card for disaster. Try indexing your feelings and researching each one via some diagnostic manual. Oh, and after you are done with lists, think about mental maps and other such visuals that could lend themselves to memoir.

But let’s start here: Give me a list, or even an item that you took when you left. If you’d like to see my very favorite list ever, please read it here. But let’s list.

 

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash