(Not That One)
In light of my last piece, I was thinking about the different topics and themes that frame people’s stories, and it occurred to me that a lot of memoir subject matter begins with the letter F. I’m not referring to the one-time unmentioned but now ubiquitous F word, although I’m not judging you if you find yourself uttering it quite a bit during your memoir journey.
There are lots of other words beginning with F. Here’s why memoir is all about the F’s.
- Freedom. There’s a tremendous freedom involved in the process of writing about your life and perhaps even more in completing the project. Once you have your book in your hand, you’ve accomplished a life goal. That’s freedom enough. For trauma victims, the freedom comes in closure and letting go. With or without trauma, “getting it off your chest” brings freedom as well. A memoir is the gift you give yourself of sharing your perspective, in your voice, for friends, foes and strangers alike. The freedom you sense is from finally feeling heard.
- Facts. Along the same lines, your truth is what matters in a memoir, and truth translates to facts. You most likely will do some research and share factual data and information, but your memory is a source for facts as well—even if other people in your life have, in your mind, twisted the facts to skew them in their own favor. This is your book, and you get to write down the facts as you see them.
- Family. Many memoirs center around a relationship with a spouse, parent, child or sibling. But no matter what the main topic or time frame of your memoir, it’s likely that you’ll devote some pages to your family. Your childhood influences the choices you make throughout life, so typically your early life with your family is relevant. In your adult years, marrying or becoming a parent also plays a huge role even if it does not directly fit into your theme.
- Fortune. You may be writing about an aspect of your professional life, the way you started out having very little money, or a pivot that changed your direction in life. Your fortune isn’t just about how big a bank account you’ve built. It can be the fortune of happiness or fulfillment. Certainly it can be misfortune, or you can include how luck played into your life.
- Friends. This one’s a little weaker. Some memoirs focus heavily on one or more friendships, but many do not. Still, a memoir typically will mention some friends who played significant roles at some point in the author’s life. Including your friends in your memoir can give the reader a lot of insight into your personality. Also, crafting dialogue between you and a friend is a great alternative to simple description in letting the reader know what you were thinking and how you were feeling.
- Fate. Did you direct your own life, or was it all fate? No one knows the answer to that age-old inquiry. Your memoir explains what happened and how you navigated the situations you encountered. No matter how you interpret the concept of free will, either fate placed you where you ended up or you chose your own fate.
Your memoir might be Fabulous and Fantastic, include sections that are Funny or Fantasy, plague you with Frustration, challenge you with necessary Formatting or eventually bring you some Fame. There’s an F left—Future—that I can’t contrive to make part of memoir. You can apply various lenses in documenting your past but, as Natasha Bedingfield sings, the rest is still unwritten.