Memoirs

‘Fantastic - and not just for writing memoirs! I would recommend it as a way to write a novella as well, even a medium-length short story. Just use the "scaffold" concept to build in scenes for your characters . . .  I think this concept has far more applications than just writing memoirs - this is truly excellent stuff.’ (Amazon reviewer: Kate L. - Kindle Edition Verified Purchase)

 

Available now

      Paperback & extract  here

Originally produced as a set of 36 A6 cards the workbook delivers the same step by step process enabling you to set down an 18,000 word memoir in just 25 sessions each requiring at most a 90 minute input. The memoir is viewed not as a full life autobiography but rather as a collection of memory fragments drawn from one particular time of your life. The process guides you in focusing those fragments relevant to the subject of your memoir.

You will accumulate some 60 fragments setting down each in just 300 words. Your written fragments will be ordered in mosaic form: your decisions on the exact order in which you assemble your material will be determined by the nature of the story you want to tell.

And from the Appendix . . .

Background to the workbook

I taught theatre writing for over 20 years in a variety of contexts.

I responded most to students’ mistakes, places where the imagination had unexpectedly usurped the intellect; because of ‘the mistake’ work suddenly came alive, outstripping the drudge of craft so boringly evident in much of the rest of the work.

It seemed to me that we all  carry so much dramatic material within us that never gets out, is never allowed out because of the watcher at the gates of our minds; every line, every word must meet the criteria we’ve been imbuing since our kindergarten teacher sat us on the dunce’s bench for failing . . .

So in teaching I encouraged students to initially brainstorm their imaginations and to throw up fragments of whatever they thought might be related to the exploration they had decided upon.

Next, in the mistaken belief I had lived a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle a small press publisher suggested I write an autobiography – they said there was funding . . .

I conceived of my life as a great trunk full of old snapshots – don’t many of us have such trunks or suitcases in our attics? I decided on periods of my life I would explore and started dipping into the trunk and one by one transcribing the snapshots to short pieces of prose.

It wasn’t a mess but without continuity I couldn’t think why anyone would be remotely interested – it was a bit like being asked to view someone’s holiday snaps . . .

I was concerned by the lack of narrative development, character progression, etc. I went back to the material realising in order to structure it to a readable continuity I must distil, compress - indeed fictionalise.

‘The Urchin's Progress’ – as might be evident from the Preview at the end of this workbook is essentially the ordered run of all those snapshots from the trunk interwoven with many that are pure inventions. And they are all chronological – which was not the original intention.

In another book, ‘Mosaic – lives in flight’, this was to change. You might say here I practiced what I preached.

I had continued to use free-form exploration in teaching as a kick-start to students’ projects and teaching on-line I had been impressed by the clarity and succinctness that the required step-by-step units forced one to bring to materials. Uploaded units had to be precise enough to enable anybody at all to come up with a first draft. So even directions for free-form investigations had to be concise – indeed proscribed.

Following the fashioning of such teaching materials - many set down in ‘Write a Theatre Script in 25 Days (& 10 hours)’ – I began thinking of something I called ‘Make a Mosaic’. It was to be a simple step-by-step process to write a memoir set out on 30 A5 cards, all to be sold in an attractive box for $7.50.

I devised an early template and tested this in workshop in September 2011. Participants were presented with a preamble:

A memoir is not an autobiography, but a series of specific milestones selected from across the entire landscape of a life. So a memoir might be:

·           a memoir of my Dad

·         of train journeys I’ve made

·         places I’ve lived

·         lovers I’ve known

·         my education

·         my struggle with addiction

Workshop participants were asked to choose a subject-title for their memoir. To offer a running example I chose the title – London.

Next participants were asked to come up with 10 different subjects that might be contained within their title.

London produced subjects such as:

·         Schools attended

·         Places lived in the city

·         London theatres

·         Etc.

Participants were then required to take the 10 subjects set down, and give each 2 sub-categories.

Sub-categories produced for the subjects listed above included:

·         Schools attended

1.      journeys to school

2.      teachers at school

·         Places lived in the city

1.      the best

2.      the worst

·         London theatres

1.      My Soho Theatre

2.      The rest

In the afternoon workshop we worked with just the first three of the 10 subjects. Once participants had selected 2 sub-categories for each subject, they were then asked to let 5 snapshots/memories spring to mind for each of the sub-categories and to put down a title for their snapshots/memories.

The sub-category Journeys to School produced the following snapshot titles:

·         Journeys to school

1.      the tea lady on the railway

2.      the café in the market

3.      always being late

4.      the long walk home

5.      the sixth form

The workshop was only intended to provide a skeleton and not to proceed to the next stage, which would be to write on separate sheets, 200 words to describe each of the five snapshots/memories.

Assuming, 10 subjects attached to any title, each with 2 sub-categories and each sub-category giving 5 memories/snapshots, once executed, participants would have a collection of one hundred, 200-word snapshots/memories - giving around 20K words – after which they would be free to add, amend, delete, etc. any way they wished.

Participants were finally told: ‘. . . the order in which the mosaic will be architectured – how the snapshots/memories might be ordered - will not be the chronological order of your writing – the chronological order of the writing doesn’t much matter. The criteria for putting the mosaic together (ordering the 100 prose snapshots) is the next step of the program . . .’

Having not so long before written what had become the fictionalized biography I wasn’t planning a memoir at that time but I did decide to use the methodology with a number of characters I'd already identified as material for a novel – the next book, ‘Mosaic  - lives in flight’.

I asked the characters (as if they were in a workshop), to fill out the template: to give a title to their memoir, a sub-title, to list 10 subjects, the sub-categories, and the snapshot/memories. Each character came up with a title and finally about 100 snapshot/memories – in title form only at this stage. Of course it was me – inhabiting the character . . .

I already knew the exploration I was going to make through this new novel and through these particular character’s lives – an exploration into the need throughout our lives for immortality – the drive to avoid oblivion and death . . .

So next I came up with a broad structure for this unwritten novel that might serve the intended exploration:

 Beginnings/High Hopes/Lost Hopes/No Hope/Endings

This structure was in fact to serve as the criteria for ordering my characters’ snapshots/memories. I selected those relevant character snapshots/memories that fell into any of the categories set out for the novel. Next I wrote their memoirs from the snapshots/memories I'd selected to be included – usually in about 400/500 words.

It produced a wild mosaic of the highs and lows of the lives of 5 characters – but without much linearity between snapshots, and without much evident development continuity. It was interesting in the collage like associations and collisions that occurred, often quite arbitrarily – these five lives rubbing up against each other.

Aligning time frames, ensuring sufficient ‘character development’ to retain a reader required the insertion of a further number of episodes for each character – although still there would remain deliberate 'gaps': the book encompasses 30 years and more with each character's story across that time told in, at most, 50 snapshots/memories. The novel finally came in at 75K.

Was the writing successful in exploring that which I'd set out to explore? Someone read a draft and while saying he thought it was the best thing I'd done, said it was also the bleakest book ever written – ‘it would have depressed Beckett . . .’

Well, at that, bearing in mind the nature of the exploration, I guessed the writing probably had been successful at some level . . . The book will be published in 2015.

The methodology used in this workbook is both that developed from this previous work and the work of so many students over the years.