How to Build a Memoir

here's what I know so far

After my memoir proposal was out to publishers, I had a dream sequence of seven glorious meetings, but one lady looked perplexed and a little annoyed. Blonde and severe, she had just one question for me: Where’s the pain, she asked, on our Zoom. She got the family angle, sure. But what about the darkness? I didn’t know how to answer this. I had been pretty clear up-front that I think too many Western publishers traffic in brown pain, and I was hoping to present a contemporary Kashmiri family as it actually is: a little bruised emotionally, but warm, loving, funny. Living rich, full lives. She withdrew her interest.

The editor I chose trusted me to write the book I wanted to write, and explore the writing of in the way I needed to: as though I were feeling my way down the dark hallway of a neglected mansion, stumbling here and there into its dusty rooms. As I wrote, the rooms lit up. The memoir became less of a lighthearted book of essays and something deeper and more true: a testament to and artifact for my family, woven in with bits of poetry, history, bursts of pop culture, and some reporting. It became a thick binder of proof that we were here, that we lost some things, and that we endured. I sometimes wonder if there’s enough pain in the final version for that other lady, or if she’d have made me tone down all the fun stuff. I guess we’ll never know.

My memoir is exactly the book I want it to be. I wouldn’t change one word. But it was hammered out of sheer instinct and an iron will, and a reader’s ability to understand when something wasn’t working, with constant (constant!) re-inspection of what might fix it. I’ve just finished a book tour and a few festival panels and been amazed by the people around me—all MFAs, PhDs, what have you—who can talk about what their work is “investigating,” about “form v. function,” the intersection of this and that, about the distinct choices they made in their writing approach. Whereas I laugh when I am asked about, for example, “humor as a choice.” When I started to share my manuscript, some early readers referred to it working on “a sentence level,” and I still don’t actually know what that means. But nodding as though I understand things (until I do) is a trick I’ve used all my life.

My writing voice is much a part of me as my speaking voice, and I’ve yet to have time to break it all down, or explain how I did it. But I’ve been approached now by so many aspiring writers, especially ones who have an inter-generational story and the urge to share it. I can see it in their faces, because I’ve felt it too: to die without sharing these stories would be a dereliction of family duty. You’d think that because I’ve written a book, I could explain how to write one, but I never learned how to write. I did take one personal essay class at UCLA extension many years ago, but ultimately I was staring down 40, and decided I wasn’t going to die without having written a book. Then I wrote one, as best I could. “It’s just like you to find a way to monetize a midlife crisis,” said my friend Jessica when I sold the thing, but joke’s on her: that’s my next book.

Here’s what I have been able to articulate so far about how I built my memoir:

1. I wrote down all the most memorable stories from my own life, and my family’s. The ones that stick with me, and get repeated at gatherings so that we’ve all memorized the twists and punchlines. The ones that made me laugh, or furious, or ache with grief. I ended up with about twenty-five, which I typed out. Just the bare plots, like a layer of primer.

2. I opened up a file for the first story, and started asking why. Why did this story matter to me? What did I love about it? What did it teach me about other people or life? How does it affect how I live my life today? If there are other people in the stories, how did they remember the same event, how does it affect them now, how do they feel about it all? This reporting step was a lot of fun, and got everyone I know to dust off memories and feelings they either hadn’t thought about in a while or had purposely left in the past because they were painful or uncomfortable, or sometimes simply too suffused with feeling. It’s incredible how much people will talk when they’re being interviewed, instead of prodded for information over Thanksgiving. The added benefit is that if their points of view are represented with empathy, they’re less mad at you. My hottest tip.

3. I read through each piece and made sure the reader knew how I was feeling all along, both emotionally, and with my senses. Then and now. This might seem silly but at times I was at a loss, and referred to the Junto Institute Emotion Wheel, which served as my desktop background for a few years while I had to learn how to describe feelings other than “fine” or “mad. To express sense memory I read and re-read Mary Karr’s Art of Memoir—her emphasis on “carnality” of a moment was key.

I did this twenty-five times. Then I put the chapters in the rough order of my emotional growth, deleted one that didn’t fit with the rest of the book, and I was basically done, other than threading in a grand emotional arc to tie it all together. That was it, three (and a half) layers of writing.

If this sounds simple, it’s because the instructions are, while the process is not—it took years, and so much crying (there’s the pain, publisher lady!). I didn’t write a memoir because I thought my story was any more important or special than anyone else’s. I haven’t won a Nobel Prize or an Olympic Medal (yet?), I am simply a lover of memoir as a window into the human condition, and I do believe every single person on this planet has a story to tell. I’m only just figuring out why mine worked, and I’m happy to share, in hopes that more people tell theirs.

xoxo

Reading (memoir/essay-specific): Colwin, Galchen, Julavits. I go back to these books over and over.

Recs: this face mask if you need to look great immediately, this hair serum that has fixed my buildup issues, these earplugs I wear a full 75% of the time because everything is too much.

Help: I haven’t watched TV in forever, because my standard seems to be “shows that will change my life,” and I’m the pickiest person I’ve ever met. I am looking for TV that will make me laugh—like, actually laugh—and move me. My gold standard is Feel Good - did anyone else watch?