Writing a story has a different kind of power. A story has structure—a beginning, middle, and an end, and in a story, we use scenes and other writing techniques to bring the past to life: characters, dialogue, and action.

A scene takes place at a particular moment in time, and draws upon the use of sensual details—smell, sound, texture, description, color, taste. In a story, we are both the narrator and the “I” of the story—the main character. This dual point of view helps to create a witnessing experience of ourselves as we write from our current point of view about who we once were, an artful weaving of then and now, past and present. Alice Miller, a Swiss psychiatrist, says that being witnessed is a significant part of the healing process.

To start creating stories from your memories, list the ten most important events or turning points, moments that changed your life. Write each vignette one by one, focusing on your emotions and the meaning the story has for you. This will give you a good start to a memoir or life story. After you have several stories, you can quilt them together in whatever order you desire.

Dr. James Pennebaker, one of the premier researchers in the field of writing and healing, says, “Story is a way of knowledge.” This is a very exciting idea—to think of a story as having a life of its own, to imagine that a story can teach us something as we write it. I have discovered this to be true in my memoir writing and coaching. When memories are kindly invited to join us at the table, when we put fingers to keyboard or pen to paper, something interesting starts to happen: as we write, fresh and strange ideas meander onto the page, unexpected sentences arise out of us, thoughts and feelings that we hadn’t thought of in a long time. We wonder if we should delete these unexpected sentences, we may feel alarmed, ashamed, excited, even giddy. This is great! It means that you have allowed your true expression to come through. It means you burst out of your usual control, and allowed an inner wisdom to speak through you.

In my book I talk about the ways that memory is stored in the brain and explain how traumatic memories are stored differently. We might stay stuck in the trauma, even having flashbacks and feeling traumatized all over again as memories replay in our minds. Putting our experiences into a story—even a fictionalized story—helps us to reprocess our memories and frees us to move forward. Researchers found that the immune system is improved by writing for only 15 minutes four times a week.

As you write, it’s important to make sure you also capture the positive stories of your life, keeping a balance between dark stories and the lighter ones of happiness and joy. If you write only ten minutes a day, you can begin one of your vignettes, finding new meaning and appreciation for who you are and create new opportunities for a better future. It takes courage to write our truths, but the rewards are great. Begin today!

Tips for Writing to Heal
1. List 10-20 important turning points in your life. Create a timeline and plot these events on your timeline so you can see how the events cluster.
2. Choose one or two new turning point stories a week to write. Be sure to use sensual details and write scenes.
3. If you write a darker story, follow it up with a lighter one for balance.
4. Genealogical and historical research can help to create understanding and compassion for your ancestors. You can write from the point of view of your father, mother, or grandparents after you discover some of the details of their lives.
5. Write from old photos—describe the photo in detail, and then imagine what happened before and after the photo captured that moment in time.
6. Write freely—don’t listen to your inner critic.
7. Notice how you feel empowered as you claim your voice, your memories, and your past.

During my workshop, I encouraged everyone to come up with a “Turning Point List” of events that were significant in a deeply emotional or spiritual way, and then to write one of those stories. I also talked with the group about plotting their turning points on a timeline so they could visually locate when these events happened.
Suggestion: Write a list of 10-20 turning points, moments of being, moments of significance in your life. Then each week, choose 2-4 of those moments and write about them. Soon, you will have written what could be the spine of your memoir. Writing even just 20 minutes at a time helps you to get your memoir written!
Be Brave–Write your Story

There are a lot of great questions and interview at Women on Writing and Women’s Memoirs. People are stopping by to comment, to leave a question, and so far I’m keeping up with them!

The blog tour at WOW–Women on Writing–lasts all month. Stay tuned this week at Women’s Memoirs for audio posts, a book review, and a recipe and photo scrapbook, along with some great ideas and questions from the hosts at Women’s Memoirs.

The topics on the blog tour include: How to Write Your Memoir and Go Home for the Holidays, Write a Healing Memoir, Truth and Secrets in Memoir Writing, how to manage writing a memoir and the inner and outer critics, and much more.

In the meantime, begin your own memoir with,  “I remember the day that everything changed…”

Be brave–write your story!

To view a complete schedule and links for the Blog Tour, CLICK HERE.

Nine years ago, I decided to write my first book, which became Becoming Whole: Writing your Healing Story. I organized this book from the workshops I’d been teaching therapists for several years, and wrote it in five months. I researched editors, joined self-publishing groups, and learned about the book world step by confusing step. The book was published first by a very small press, but the experience was rife with misunderstandings and problems for three years. During that time I learned about publicity: what you have to do to get people to buy books. I gave talks, workshops, and book events all over the bay area, and even in a few independent bookstores in the Midwest.

Once I was free of the contract, I went on to self-publish the book again under my own press, still learning the ropes of the self-publishing world. I learned about ISBN numbers, Bowker, The Library of Congress, Lightning Source, Amazon, layout, design, paper, fonts, print companies, shipping, and distribution. Most of all, I discovered that a whole world existed about publishing and books that I had always taken for granted. No longer!

In the meantime, I’d started my organization The National Association of Memoir Writers because of my passion to support and develop the world of memoir writing, and eager to become involved with writers like you. I wanted to create a world of memoir writers that I could participate in every day and share my knowledge of how to begin, develop, and complete a memoir. In my writing life, I was writing a novel about WWII, and had traveled to England twice and to Germany to research it. Finally, the first draft was done, and I decided to pitch the novel at the East of Eden Conference in 2008, hoping to be published the traditional way, which I knew was best for a novel.

I was teaching a workshop at the conference, so I grabbed a few extra moments to have an appointment with Verna Dreisbach, one of the agents at the Speed Dating with Agents event where you get five minutes with an agent or editor. I’d learned to always bring with me a copy of my books and the brochure for NAMW. Verna is a warm, friendly young woman with wise eyes, a soft voice, and a cascade of lovely red hair. I felt comfortable with her. I noticed that as I pitched the novel, she kept glancing at Becoming Whole and my brochure. Finally she pulled them toward her and said, “That all sounds good, but tell me about this.”

To make a long story slightly shorter—she was impressed by my organization and liked Becoming Whole. She said to sit with her at lunch, and in the meantime, she’d look at the book. Wow. I was shocked to receive this kind of reception after having gone through at least 50 agents already for my various books.

At the end of lunch, she said, “I’ll be happy to represent you.” I stared at her in shock, seeing her mouth form the words. I mumbled something, trying to make sure I wasn’t imagining this. I had virtually no expectation that I would find an agent that day. I guess having tried for so long, I thought I’d just talk to a couple of agents as a matter of course since they were there, but I’d learned along the way not to have high expectations.

She smiled, and nodded, and I realized: I have an agent! You could hear the whoops and hollers from my writing group friends all over the hall.

Later, Verna told me that one of the reasons she signed me was because I was, “Bigger than just the book.” She was talking about platform—that there was more going on than just Linda Joy Myers who had written a book. I had an organization behind me, and had created a larger network. These days in the publishing world, that is what we have to think about. NAMW is part of your platform, and there are many ways of creating your network that in future articles and workshops we’ll be talking about.

Within two months, I’d written a proposal for a new book, similar to Becoming Whole, but different. Alan Rinzler, the Executive Editor at Jossey-Bass, a division of Wiley in New York asked to meet me, and supported my book to be accepted for publication. Well, I was in shock all over again, and deeply happy.

In the cold early months of 2009, I wrote a new book, drawing upon all I’d learned in the last nine years about writing, healing, transformation, and the impressive research about how writing changes the brain. I included other things that I’d discovered through my teaching: when we place ourselves through our imagination in the body of the child we once were as we write in scene, we have a new experience. The narrator of now and the child of then each have a point of view; each has a wisdom that needs to be integrated in the mind of the author.  It is this weaving, this process of going back and forth through time, of entering the world of memory that helps to change our perspective. This process gives us new eyes through which to see the world, and we become transformed, no longer experiencing our traumas, the past, or ourselves in the same way. This is a multilayered process that takes time.

I find the idea that we witness ourselves through compassionate eyes as we write ourselves backward very powerful. When we share our writing with others, we witness each other. This witnessing, according to a Swiss psychologist Alice Miller, is a very powerful part of the healing process.

Another important point that I wanted to make is the structure of story, It starts with a problem, goes through the complex layers of solving the problem or situation, then resolves, even if messily, at the end. This is the arc of the story, also called the arc of narrative. Just as your narrative goes through an arc of change, so does the writer, and eventually, the reader.

My book and I have both gone through an arc of transformation through writing and publishing The Power of Memoir. Now that my book now has a life of its own, I will do my best to guide it to the right places, and I hope to share it with many open hearts who want to be free of old restraints. It stands on its own now in bookstores and online, a book about memoir that has its own secret story.

It is an act of courage and personal power to dare to write the truths you hold, to carve a space in the vast realms of time and dive in, using only words as ballast. To enter into memory, to find the body of the child you once were and to dare to listen to him or her–that is courageous, and in this act, new tendrils of self are launched across the abyss from past to present. As we balance on the fine lines of truth, memory, and story, we discover ourselves, we uncover layers that we didn’t know existed. The writing is the key, writing that comes from soul and heart, writing that launches us out from our comfort zone, and into the unknown. There we find wisdom, there we find who we really are.

It’s true that memoir writing challenges us, but it can be a good friend, this process, inviting us to become more of who we really are, to find the voice that is ours and ours alone.

“Re-member” means to bring together the different parts of ourselves, and find ourselves whole.

1. Writing your deep truths frees you from the past and creates meaning out of chaos.
2. Re-membering brings all parts of you together again.
3. Writing with your own voice is empowering, story by story.
4. Telling your truth frees you from shame and guilt.
5. Your stories on the page will be different from the ones in your head.
6. Writing a memoir is a transformational and spiritual path.
7. Your story can help change others’ lives.
8. Research proves that writing heals both body and mind.
9. Creating a narrative where you are the “I” character and the narrator integrates the past and the present.
10. Integrating who you are and bringing memories out of the darkness changes your brain.
11. Writing and sharing your story breaks you out of isolation and connects you more deeply with the larger world.
12. Becoming an author is empowering and inspiring, and frees you from the shadows.
13. Getting published online, in an anthology or in your own book, are ways to get witnessed and move from victim to leader—showing others the way to healing and greater self-esteem.

No matter how many times a writer gets published, there is the thrill of knowing that your words and ideas are moving out into the world and being shared with others. I’m passionate about the power of memoir to heal and to create new connections with others.  Every week in my work with other writers, I see how writing our stories helps us to be more creative in our personal lives and gives us joy.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year, and I hope that if you feel the desire to write, that today you will sit down and listen to that voice within you, and write.

Clouds hung over the hills that divide the Napa Valley from the Sonoma wine country, and the sun began to peak between layers of grey, blue, and sage as I wound my way around the valley to my favorite vineyard and wine tasting room–Cuvaison. One of my retreat attendees was there too, taking pictures of the now spectacular vision of afternoon sun, vineyards, and sweeping vistas that the Napa Valley is famous for.

Yes, we tasted some wine, talked about writing, and for Christmas presents, we bought some Cabernet Sauvignon Chocolate Sauce.

Now that is a writing prompt that begs for sensual details!

We are ready, those who are gathered tonight, to share our stories and our journeys to the heart of our memoirs–whether they become family legacies, spiritual journals, or books. The evening beckons us to get cozy now, and listen to the stories that want to emerge.