Beginnings

Heart and Soul of Memoir Writing

At the start of the year, as I write my new book about healing and memoir writing, I’m meditating on beginnings and what matters most to me—to inspire memoir writers to go deep and write what is on their heart to express. As I coach new writers who are beginning their memoir, I’m reflecting on what beginnings mean.

Sometimes things coming to an end are a new beginning.

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

--TS Eliot Four Quartets

While we may mourn an ending, beginnings are fresh. Enticing. During these beginnings, everything is possible. You feel your story humming in you and you’re tuning into it. At the same time, you’re hesitating. The voices start talking in your head, the doubt, the insecurity—can I really do this. Should I? Is it even a good idea. What if the discoveries I make as I write are painful. I don’t know how to write good sentences.

Yes. These early stages contain thoughts and doubts like that –for everyone! Most writers who come to the page have an idea to pursue, but then…the idea morphs into another idea, and soon you are left with a lapful of spaghetti strands of a story. Many stories. This is not unusual—most writers, who have creative minds and therefore lots of thoughts, end up bursting onto the page. Multiple pages. But there are other writers who go slowly, who need to take their time. To meditate and muse between each sentence. Trying to have faith that another sentence will come. These writers say, why can’t I write more. Is there something wrong with me.

Creative writing of any genre arises from a nameless place. The words, their power, their truth can render us breathless in moments of surprise. Our job is to nurture the places we can’t name by allowing our imagination to roam freely, welcoming a state of not-knowing. This is very difficult for some people who prefer to have a map, a plan. To feel secure, and that is fine. Your writing will still well up from a nameless place, and creativity can’t be planned. Yes, we can invite the muse to show up by sitting at our desk regularly, but what matters is not just words or numbers of words, but their connection to soul and heart. It’s like a treasure that we must search for patiently, a wild animal of storytelling that needs kind attention and patience to emerge.

In our fast-paced world where everything is now, moments of meaning and the treasures of slow attention are lost or forgotten. Musing is not in style, production is. The inner gifts of insight, exploring our thoughts and Being take time and silence. Some writers define this journey as a spiritual quest, as I do.

The seeker goes out on the road or sits in a meditation position and extends awareness outward while doing nothing. The mind grasps and grabs, reacts and blathers, but nothing needs to happen. Spiritual teachers agree that in the nothingness the treasure will be revealed.

Trusting in your own unique way to explore your writing, spending time with your inner self, and finding out how to do that is part of the exploratory phase of writing a new work. While we are always in an exploratory phase if we have an open mind to the offerings of the creative process, at the beginning of any project, we feel the most vulnerable. Lost, yet suffused with desire and dreams to write what is on our heart.

Tips for enhancing your beginnings:

· Freewrite whatever needs to emerge for fifteen minutes every day.

· Notice the judgments that arise—and write them down.

· Now have a conversation with those judgements—argue with them, present an alternative point of view. Stand up for your writing self!

· On a large sheet of paper, create a timeline of unfolding events—your right brain appreciates a visual record of where you might take your story.

· On a large piece of paper, draw a circle and put the theme of your memoir in the middle. Branching off the circle, freely draw other circles and inside write ideas, themes, characters, events, meaning, and emotion.

· Then write about your mind map experience for ten minutes.

· What stands out, what makes the hairs on your neck rise in anticipation? Writing is a full body experience!

Speaking of beginnings, this week I’m pleased to be starting a series of mini-workshops at the National Association of Memoir Writers. The first workshop begins Thursday, January 29: The Heart and Soul of Memoir Writing. This is the kind of beginning that gets my heart pumping! It’s a workshop that gets you started writing. First, we’ll get acquainted, then write with other friends, then share in small groups.

I hope you will join me with memoir writers and friends to begin the year together for connection and inspiration!