Autobiography For Memoir: Cocoon for Butterfly
I have an autobiography. I want memoirs. I have a chronological time. I want reflection and takeaways. I have experience I want life lessons.
Fifteen years ago, I wrote a manuscript. I have stopped working full-time to find one thing that everyone is talking about-one thing that is not considered successful, but desire, something I have to do-and writing it down is a cathartic search to find it. My desire to find a place to live, the right home, filled my mind. I did not know this would be the theme of my memoir.
I wrote a poem at the age of fifteen and realized that I had a place in the world. I have something exciting to express when I can communicate my own experiences, draw connections to places and people and homes, regardless of my disconnection. Under the Birch Tree collects 77,000 words to record disconnections that I have found for decades: divorced parents, away from the only home I know, lack of ownership in high school, loneliness in my twenties, rediscovering myself for career change from advertising to banking I do not know how my breakup became antagonistic to the theme of my memoir.
After completing the first draft, I wonder if a memoir is buried under these layers. I was expecting confirmation, so I sent my manuscript to his first professional criticism, affirming my strength - honesty, truth, generosity of feeling - to validate authenticity. Narrative sensitivity to human interaction, something many female readers can tell, ensures that I have an audience. In the end, my perseverance, determination, and victory overcome depression, loneliness and disappointment are met throughout the yard. A good takeaway for me convinced my wish that my readers could persuade me through the final yard.
No, I have no curriculum vitae; this book has no narrative arc with beginning, development, climax, and resolution. I do not know how to start or start by resigning. I threw the manuscript into a drawer in the hope that after a while I will find my answer. I imagine my manuscript like a cocoon, which requires a gestation phase to grow and change, transform into a butterfly, my memoir, ready to fly, ready for a public debut.
In the meantime, instructional self-instruction about crafting and reading other memoirs became my teacher as I studied their structure. Intellectually, I understand everything about memoirs but one's autobiography is not a memoir! I do not know how to apply my knowledge to reverse it. I rewrote, massage the paragraph, and question the purpose of each scene. With each rewrite I can delve deeper into the issue that is hinted at as the beginning of the narrative arc. Immediately, reflections and takeaways present themselves and life lessons are understood. My theme lies in a simple sense; I will find the house through a found connection.
Birth Birth Under Birth Tree will not be the day of publication in June 2018, but when I was younger, found a favorite tree standing up straight and breathing in the greeting near the front door of my childhood home. Over the years, my birch friends haunted me as my first learning connection, which is identical to home.
I learned that sometimes if you start something too soon, you may not see what it really is. I realize now that my life history takes years to cultivate perspective, meaning and to understand my early recording.
Am I born to write memoirs? Is that my passion? I can not say for sure. But all I can say is my memoir, which changed from autobiography, now is a butterfly.
