IAM SO EXCITED TO INVITE YOU to come join the just-launched month-long memoir workshop I’m doing on the giant website Beliefnet, where (with a little prodding from yours truly) May has been named Memoir Month! The workshop is called “Writing What You Know” (sound familiar?). Why Beliefnet? Because I believe that writing what you know is the single greatest portal to self discovery. Come take a peek as we gear up, or register to join the free group class.

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WHAT MAKES GOOD MEMOIR? I get this question all the time when I teach. And reading your comments on this makes me think it’s time to limn that line between what is merely some great scene versus a scene that is ready for the writing.

At some point in every memoir-writing class, I tell my students about a male architect I barely knew when he married a friend of mine. For their wedding he not only designed, but also sewed, his wife’s crushed white velvet, floor-length, cut-on-the bias dress, and made her white pillbox hat to match.

Consider that scene for a moment: Another bride, another groom, another musty old church filled with people in their 30s shooting looks at the dress, the hat, this Olympics of sewing on the part of the groom, the guests getting real wide-eyed at one another, raising their palms skyward and their shoulders to their ears. Here comes the bride, and is that groom in the tux and the slender Italian eyeglass frames straight or what?

Great scene. But what is it about? A fine collection of images, but what does it illustrate? Is it a tale about the way we live now?

Just because something happens doesn’t make it interesting. Don’t believe me? Tell someone your dreams. Unless you’re paying them to listen or haven’t slept with them yet (but might), chances are they’ll go to some lengths to avoid this download of your subconscious. Call my husband. He actually gets up and leaves the room if someone tries to tell him a dream. I think that’s why we’re married. So I don’t always have to be the rude one. He looks at this watch, nods, and actually says, “Oh, look at the time,” and leaves.

What is this about? The illustration–the crushed-velvet wedding dress, the tall groom, the whispers rocketing around the old stone church–needs a context, a frame. Ever notice how the perfect frame can bring out the color in your oil painting, your photo? Same with writing. The frame, the reason for the tale, is the same thing. And the question you now must tape to your wall is, “What is this about?”

What is the wedding story about? I have no idea–yet, at least–though in the 13 years since I delighted in witnessing it (and their happy marriage), I have picked it up a thousand times and had a look, each time putting it away again. It is gorgeous, it is there, and one of these days it will tuck into a tale I’m telling, but until it makes sense, in context, it’s just a spare part waiting to be sewed onto something else.

I’ve got a million of them, thank goodness. And so do you.

_______

For those of you on your first visit, or who haven’t read them before, my series On Writing Memoir is here.

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ARE YOU WRITING SOMETHING? Oh, come on. You can tell me. Everyone else is writing about their lives. You can, too. But which story? And how to tell it? I teach memoir, and while my class is off for the summer, I’ll continue posting memoir tips here on TSP, hoping you can find the time to get to your story and that I can be of some help. My theory is that anyone who survived childhood has enough material for several books. So let’s get to it. Here’s an exercise; read along and let’s see if it gets you going.

The way I see it, we had long, lovely trips during we learned a lot. There was that cruise on The Queen of Bermuda when we were maybe 7 and 9. The ship had a saltwater swimming pool. High tea was served at 3. A solid wood library was below decks in which the books were kept on their shelves with elastic cording in front of each subject row.

Those are the details, but where’s the story here? Nowhere, as far as I can see.

So let’s try this:

When I was 13 there were two trips: The Easter vacation (as it once was called) to Puerto Rico, during which time President Eisenhower died of congestive heart failure. I remember reading Ike’s obit with my father. The second trip that year was to meet relatives I never knew we had. They lived in Colorado, which is where I observed hailstones the size of golf balls, Pike’s Peak, and the curious marriage of my mother’s cousin. I took notes on them all.

In between Puerto Rico and Colorado, both my mother and Margaret had gotten Vidal Sassoon haircuts. Angular, severe and precise, these cuts both delineated their separate jawlines and distinguished them from me in yet another way. We three were de-identifying then, and we were all glad to shrug off a piece of the other, I think, on the path to becoming our own women.

There is a difference between the two italicized paragraphs above, and that difference points out a basic rule of memoir, which is this: Just because something happened doesn’t make it interesting. You might think that everything you do is fascinating, and good for you, but to make it work on the page for someone else it must illuminate something, illustrating something universal, telling a tale that at the very least provokes us to think.

Look back at the first paragraph. There are lots of details: A ship’s name, a saltwater swimming pool, tea, books, shelving. They are decoration, nothing more, driving no story forward, ultimately giving it light and color, sound and taste. Same thing with paragraph two, at least until you get to the haircuts, and the subject of de-identification comes in. Then we are on to something that may or may not interest someone else.

What we are “on” to here is the mission of She Said, She Said-those differences established because we grew up in the same household. In my previous memoir writing posts I’ve discussed small aspects of how to write memoir. This is a big one. This is about territory.

What essay or book are you writing? What was your assignment? On TSP, for me, it is to illustrate those separate aspects of the same families. And unless you are a very famous person who has lived a very interesting life, you too must make a large decision about your memoir to narrow it down from a mere retelling of your life’s facts. Only those very public few whose lives have been littered with close encounters with other famous moments and people can sell books in which they merely chronologically relate their lives, their autobiographies. For the rest of us, we must choose a narrower field of vision-parenting, recovery, our dogs, being the winner of the Becky Crocker cooking award, losing a sister, being a sister, living green–to name but a few.

What is your essay, book or story about? You must ask yourself this question and be ready to narrow your field to one topic only. My assignment being very clearly set in my mind, I can then search my memory for only those things that will bring to life how it is we live separate lives under the same cover of family.

What are your ambitions when you sit down to tell your tale? Let’s talk about them here and see if we can’t get you writing that story you’ve been meaning to write.

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WRITE IT DOWN. I tell this to my memoir students all the time. Carry a notebook, index cards, write on your hands if you must, but write it down.  Keep notebooks in car, next to your side of the bed, in the kitchen; tuck an index card into your back pocket, jacket pocket, jeans pocket. And carry a pen.  And they do, and then right around the third class, someone asks, “Write what down?” Ah, what good students. I was waiting for that.

I’m always grateful when the question is asked. After 11 years of teaching, and more than 500 students, you’d think I might be tired of it, but I never am, because what we write down versus what we do not need to write down is about as important a distinction you’ll need to grasp to write well about your family.

The first thing to know is just because someone is going to dispute it, does not mean you don’t write it down. Margaret and I have lots of topics on which we do not agree. We’ve made lists. (Here’s hers).  We’ve disputed one another’s facts. She even thinks I make things up and that I have done so ever since I had an imaginary friend. No matter. We write things down, she and I, always have, scribbling away, as you can see here, when we were first thinking about what TSP should be, writing, writing, always writing.

But what do we write? Key phrases, the look of a room, bits of dialogue are good places to start. For instance, many of us have just enjoyed (endured?) the Spring high holy days—Easter and Passover—during which we got together with family. Ah, family. Why have them if you can’t write about them? My sister and I have felt this way since birth. Right, Margaret?

And yet, when I wrote about the holidays recently for TSP, it was another sister I wrote about, a non-biological one, but a sister, all the same, the piece written from notes I took at the time of the event that were stored by subject in a file. Among those notes were the details of my daughter’s imaginary friend, along with details of a Passover spent at a generous sister’s home. I had jotted down a few things that night in my notebook. For instance, to remind me what she cooked, I wrote down, “homemade tortellini.”  That detail tells us that it was not traditional Passover fare that was served that night, and is important to the story, since it heightens and adds to the theme of the non-traditional. So: details. Details are good.

How were your holidays? Now is the time to write down details of them so that next year, as these days again approach, you’ll be essay-ready with your version of the tale. It was those notes of Passover at a sister’s gracious home that allowed me to share mine with you.

What’s in your notebook?

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ANOTHER FAKED MEMOIR. This time it’s Herman Rosenblat’s book, Angel at the Fence, a story with a story line that was simply too good to be true. Here’s the plot: A boy imprisoned in a concentration camp during World War II is kept from starving by apples thrown over the camp’s fence. The angel? A lovely young girl who years later reconnects with Rosenblat on a blind date in New York City. They marry and live happily almost-ever-after, until the groom gets caught palming off his faked memoir to a relentlessly unsuspecting public. Do I sound unsympathetic to all concerned? I am. But not for the reasons that you might expect.

It’s a perfectly good story–for fiction. It would have sold as fiction. It sold to the movies, after all. So, no, the story line is not my problem. And Oprah being duped again? She did call it the greatest love story ever to be aired on her show, but Oprah’s Book Club does such good service to America’s readers and writers that I just can’t fault her; tout enough books and these things are going to happen. And I’m not angry only because it’s just another writer trying to land a better book deal.

I’m mad because just like the three recent bad-ass-lying writers I can name off the top of my head—James Frey (A Million Little Pieces), J.T. Le Roy (Sarah) and Margaret B. Jones/Margaret Seltzer (Love and Consequences; the lie was exposed by her sister)—Rosenblat was wrong about life itself. In life, it’s not the big stuff that forms us, changes us, or teaches us anything real. It’s in the small moments that life is truly lived. And just like not having to sweat the small stuff, you also don’t have to make it up to make it interesting.

When small moments can yield such big lessons, why invent such big drama in what’s meant to be memoir?

Don’t believe me? Consider two sisters coming back together after a long, hard battle over a parent’s illness. Nothing rips apart families quite like a sick parent. Margaret and I did 15 unsteady years with our mother’s Alzheimer’s disease, and among the things I learned during that time was that only in the movies does some huge gift or near-death of one of the sisters reunite an estranged pair of exhausted caregivers. What really happens is that over yet another hushed shared meal, or one more otherwise silent drive to the airport, one sister laughs at the other’s joke, one reaches for a suitcase and gently touches the other’s forearm and in that, and in other tiny gestures, the knitting together begins again.

Let’s look back on the other memoir posts here. Does this theory prove true? In my very first memoir post, “Side Dishes”, Linda talks about her grandmother’s funeral. That’s a big event. Hmmm. But what small moment amid that event begins the reuniting between sisters? See if you can spot it.

S SIMILARLY, IN the memoir post I called “A List That Helps With Loss,” we have Joely’s astonishing tale of the death of her friend Mary. But it is told in the form of a list or three lists, really: What she took, what she heard, and what she said when she went to say good-bye to her best friend. The death was a huge experience, of course, but the things Joely took, heard and said are small, intimate characterizations of the love between the two women. There are no huge secrets, or uber bracelet packed in among these details. In the small stuff presented to us we see the large picture of how we live, love and lose. Later on in the comments on that same post we learn from Zephyr the value of a joke at the deathbed, and from Paul, the enormity of the unsaid.

Small moments, big lessons.

What are some of yours? Got some? Share them here.

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W HILE THE SISTER PROJECT has been up and running only a month, it seems we already know a great deal about one another. How is that possible? One way is through the direct information we share: that Margaret’s my genetic sister, that my sister-friend Paige of “Hey, Little Sister” can really cook. And while pure facts are great, if there is a Number 1 rule of writing (or any form of effective communication) it’s this: Show, don’t tell.

Reading between the lines, beyond the facts, we can develop a deeper sense of one another, from how we characterize ourselves in our posts and in our comments. With a sister, though, that can be a real challenge sometimes.

How can I characterize my sister and me in one small way? How can you characterize yours?

I teach memoir writing, and in good memoir writing, a fine rule to follow is not to tell someone’s height, weight or hair color unless it lends something to your story. If your grandmother’s dark brown eyes are the exact shade of the chocolate icing you’re spreading on the cupcake you make from her recipe, well fine, throw that ingredient into the piece and we’ll feel the love. But notice that it’s a small detail, and that we don’t need her whole face looming up at us to get the picture.

I remind my students (and myself) to characterize the person in the smallest ways possible to reveal who she really is—as well as who she is to you. What are her gestures, her habits?  Here’s the wrinkle, though: The closer the person is to you, the harder it is to characterize her in a gesture. How can I characterize my sister and me in one small way? How can you characterize yours?

Let’s try this exercise on the subject of New Year’s Eve. What do you do, and how does your sister (or sister-friend, or brother) celebrate?

I’ll go first:

Me: Practicing the ancient Scottish tradition of Hogmanay, I’ll be braced in the doorway, no matter whose house I’m at, no matter how cold, or how small my dress, welcoming in the New Year and booting out the old.

Margaret: At midnight, as the New Year rushes in? Oh, she’s long asleep.

Your turn.

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IT’S THE HOLIDAYS, the season to make lists. I had planned to write about that, as in what’s on my list/what’s on Margaret’s. But in The Sister Project’s first week online, so many of you emailed and commented about another topic that I’m moved to take it on here. The topic? Missing your sister at this time of year.

In just these few days, Priscilla wrote of reading to her sister as she lay dying; Melissa shared the story of her sister who was lost in an automobile crash. Lalita remembers her fourth sister as “a star in the heavens,” saying, “She remains a little girl while the three of us grow old hanging on to the edge of the earth, feeling enormously blessed.” And there have been others, each with a story of loss to share.

As I’ve said, I teach memoir. In each first class of a session, I listen to each student’s chosen personal essay topic. In every class, someone will choose to write about someone who left, about loss.

To get the topic going, I might ask the writer to simply make a list of what the person took with them when they went, because when people leave us, what they take tells us if they are going for good, going for show, or merely slinking off to someone else. Saltshakers are a good indication that he has not got someone else lined up. Taking only a sandwich tells us first that she’s hungry, and has little more than tonight in mind.

And we all know what he takes when he or she is leaving for good. Because it has happened to us, and it is in the list of what he took that the tale is told. That’s what makes the story truthful, as well as what makes it yours: What did he take of yours, what of his, and how do you define those, divide those, when at one time those lines were blurred by the smudge of love?

But people leave in different ways. In one first class, a woman sat stiffly, her arms crossed in front of her, dark bangs slammed right down to her brow. When it was her turn to reveal her topic, our exchange went something like this:

“I’m not even sure why I’m here.”

Uh-huh.

“My best friend just died.”

Oh. Oh dear.

“And I’m not writing about that. Nope. Got nothing to say. Too soon. Three weeks ago. Cancer.” She exhaled and unfolded her arms, and I exhaled, and we sat. All I could remember was the inutterable grief it was to lose my friend Susannah and what it is I did.

“Were you there when she died?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you live far away or nearby?

“Three hours away. I got the call.”

“What did you pack?”

“What?”

“What did you take with you?”

The next week she came in with a list. Actually it was three lists:

• What I brought.
• What I heard.
• What I said.

Under each were five mere sentences, 15 in all. And I hope she reads this post and sends the piece for you to read. It’s a wonder.

What about you? Have you lost a sister, blood or otherwise? While each hurt is unique, it carries within it its own identifiers that when shared, help us all to sort through grief, especially in this time of plenty.

Have a list? For some of us it would be what we drank or ate at the time, for others what we packed, perhaps what we prayed, or scribbled down, or maybe what we cook at the holidays to remember her by. I decorate my cookies with my friend Susannah’s panache; were she here, she’d be at my counter with me, covered in nine colors of royal icing.

Have you lost a sister, or a sister-friend, whether to distance, disagreement or even death? Write your list. It would be our privilege to see it.

_______________

Postscript: Artist Elsa Mora lost her older sister, though still living, to the dark maze of schizophrenia 10 years ago, a loss that inspires Elsa’s work even today. Read her story in the TSP Galleries.

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A S YOU KEEP pointing out in your comments, sisters are slices of a whole tale, the whole tale being the story of a family. Points of view can be very pointed, of course, which is why sisters can sometimes be both irksome and essential at the very same time. After all, they know the other side of our stories, the coin flipped over.

One friend of ours recently told us about a sister of hers who is the story-teller of the bunch and who recently related a tale in her characteristic entertaining way, making all the other sisters laugh and howl until another sister blurted out, “I love that story. But it’s mine! That happened to me, not you!” The story-telling sister had co-opted the whole thing, making herself the center of the tale.

Now that’s a good sister story, yes?

We love story-telling sisters, particularly if we can hear both sides at once. In the September issue of More magazine, the Maynard sisters, Joyce and Rona, did just that, taking on the dangerous territory of dual memoir, and handling it beautifully.

In fact, we are flattered to say that Rona is one of our readers, posting a comment on The Sister Project in our very first week. It was lovely to see her there, and to link to her blog, where you can read her take on the Maynard family, which provides another side to the story told by Joyce, in More. Read up.

This isn’t the first time the Roach Sisters and the Maynard Sisters have coincided. Margaret and Joyce worked at The New York Times concurrently, if memory serves, and who knows what other threads connect all of us.

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