Does Memoir Have To Be About Trauma?

IS MEMOIR ONE BIG BUMMER GENRE? I mean, is memoir always about trauma? Does there have to be a terrible experience in every tale written from what we know? In my role as a memoir coach and writing teacher, I get these questions a lot. This demanding line of inquiry also comes to me when I appear on panels and talk shows, and at every dinner party after someone hears I write and teach memoir. “Ugh,” someone will inevitably groan, “more bummers.” Is it possible to write from a happy marriage or motherhood; merely from our kitchens or gardens, but not from the deepest cellars of our lives? Let’s sort it out here.

A recent email from one of my online memoir class students revealed that the idea that memoir is a trauma-based genre has the kind of teeth that ever-grips some writers. Thinking that she lacked the story for a piece of memoir, she supplied a long list of examples of places and ideas from which she would prefer to write that are not sad, bruised, traumatic or otherwise dark. Some were even funny. All were light. And all — or so she thought — were prohibited, owing to her definition of memoir as a bummer genre awash in trauma stories. She was wrong, and so I told her, and gave her the good news that all of her ideas were good places from which to write.

Memoir Does Not Have to be Trauma-Based

Memoir is about the distance from here to there, and while I’ve been known to say that memoir is like a crime procedural, that does not mean it requires trauma. Memoir requires transcendence. You can learn to laugh, begin to value a garden or a species; maybe, like my sister, Margaret Roach, you learned to find peace in your own backyard and write a memoir that shows what you know. But you learn and, if you show and not tell, you teach us along the way just how you learned what you did.

That being the case, you can write a memoir about learning to meditate or loving your dog; how an urban childhood morphed into a life lived outside and a true knowledge of trees — or any old thing that you want, as long as you show us how you went from here to there.

Writing From What You Know

I fly-fish, something I took up a few years ago. Recently, while on the stream pictured above, I achieved the deepest sense of peace I’ve known in a very long time when I realized that I was connecting to my father, with whom I fished as a child. He has been dead for more than 40 years, but I am utterly willing and able to admit that I experienced the strongest bond to him that I have since his death while on that stream. In pouring rain, at 58 degrees and three hours into the day, I was happy. The trout, the only one caught, was a bonus.

Along the way to learning to fly-fish, I have acquired a knowledge of aquatic invertebrates, those bugs that live in the stream and inform us about the health of the water. I have learned to tie knots and, I suspect, I will soon develop an appetite for writing about life on the stream – its luxurious awakenings, as well as its humbling lessons. If you’ve tried it, you know that fly-fishing – done barbless, as a catch-and-release, with a dry fly that mimics what’s alive at that one moment on the stream — holds a slender margin of success. That is, if success is measured in fish. For me, success is measured in peace, and with that on the scales, I have felt the bounty of my decision to wade into the water.

And so, my fly-fishing is not about trauma and is not bummer-based. It might be about awakening, or reconnecting, and when I figure that out, perhaps I’ll start writing about it. (Or perhaps I just did).

How to Choose a Memoir Topic

So, to get back to the client who wrote me with her long list of memoir ideas, I also have this to say: Knowing how to choose a memoir topic requires slowing down and thinking about these transcendent journeys of your life. You’ve had many, and not all are trauma-based. Some might be. Perhaps many of them are. Which do you want to write? It’s your choice.

Memoir about trauma can be deeply powerful and should never be dismissed. If you choose to write memoir after growing up in a cult, for instance, you can teach us about the power one person might have over many and what it takes to recover from such undo influence. If you are writing from the #MeToo movement, your recovery will be a steep and difficult climb, but one that holds lessons of strength, resilience and of finding one’s voice.

Few if any, of us lives one, contiguous life story marked by a single theme. What is required of good memoir writing is to see each of those themes as individual areas of expertise and to write from one of those for each piece of memoir you produce. I define these areas of expertise as what you know after what you’ve been through. Looked at this way, you probably have dozens.

This idea of writing from one area of expertise at a time is unique to me and how I teach, but I stand by it every time. Try it. It will teach you how to have a writing life and liberate you from writing that one big book you’ve been writing for seven years, that no one has read and you do not know how to finish. Sound good? Want a writing life instead of a life of toil? Write from one area of your expertise at a time. You have hundreds.

Is that area of expertise a result of trauma? Okay, then. Write that. It is from one of the joy of being on the stream, in the garden, or with your children? Either way, you’re good to go.

Want more help?

• Follow Me on Instagram as I teach in short, vivid photos

  I am a memoir coach, memoir teacher and memoir editor. Come see me in any one of my online 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 upcoming Master Class, the prerequisites for which are Memoirama and Memoirama 2. It’s live, once a month, and limited to seven writers who are determined to get a first draft of their book-length memoir finished in six months.

Thank you, Canva, for the lemon.