Finding Your Way Into the Story: Where Memoir Really Begins

The Struggle Every Memoirist Knows

I continue to struggle with finding my way in. Which day holds the most meaning? The most impact?

If you're writing memoir, you know this feeling. You have a decade—or more—of material. Multiple entry points. Countless moments that shaped you. And the blank page asking: Where do I begin?

The "Survivor" Label

Looking back now, I see a decade made up of three hellish first years of initiation followed by seven unlucky ones. You don't have to be an adult to have a really bad year.

I've never liked labeling myself as a survivor, but that's what most people would understand or equate with my experience. In looking back, although it's true there were a few near-death experiences, I don't really see myself as a survivor. I mean, in a way, aren't we all surviving?

Then did I survive a decade, a childhood, my mother, society as a whole? In a way, I suppose I survived all of them.

What Survival Teaches You

By the time I had found my way out of the hell of my childhood, I had come to understand a few basic truths about humanity. I had come up close and personal with hypocrisy, self-destruction, lies, control, rage, mania, loss, and pain.

These aren't the lessons you want to learn young. But they're the lessons that make memoir worth writing—and worth reading.

Understanding the People Who Shaped Us

It's easy to say it couldn't have been any other way for you, your mother was not well. For a long time I felt she held all the answers, but the truth is her body and her mind hold answers that she herself can never articulate.

I imagine sometimes what it would be like to watch her from a distance. Where would she go? I see her trapped along the streets of Jackson Heights or Elmhurst. By my calculation she is sixty-one now. No longer young physically, and yet she probably doesn't see herself as she truly is. I got the impression that delusion has accompanied her always.

This is the work of memoir: trying to understand the people who shaped us, even when—especially when—understanding feels impossible.

The Frustration of Beginning

I'm at the all-too-familiar place of not knowing what to write, where to start, and what structure to go with. I find this infinitely frustrating, and yet I have to begin somewhere.

So on this next draft attempt, the pact I will make with myself is to free-write all I want in this document as a warm-up to the actual memoir writing. In this way I hope to get rid of the cobwebs in my brain that come up when I try to work on my memoir.

What I've Learned About Beginnings

Here's what nearly a decade of working on my memoir has taught me about finding your way in:

There Is No Perfect Beginning

You'll rewrite your opening dozens of times. That's normal. The beginning you need to write first isn't always the beginning readers need to read first.

Free-Writing Is Not Wasted Time

Those "cobwebs" you're clearing? That's not procrastination. That's preparation. Write everything that wants to come out. Sort it later.

Start With What Haunts You

The scene, the moment, the question that keeps circling back—that's probably your entry point. Not the chronological beginning, but the emotional one.

Structure Comes Later

Don't let the question of structure paralyze you before you've written the scenes. Write first. Shape later.

The Meaning Reveals Itself

You don't have to know which day holds "the most meaning" before you start. Write the days that matter, and the meaning will emerge.

Permission to Begin Messy

If you're stuck at the beginning of your memoir, I want you to know: You don't have to have it figured out yet.

You don't need to know:

• The perfect opening scene

• The exact structure

• Which stories to include or exclude

• How to make sense of it all

  
  

You just need to begin. Write the scenes that demand to be written. Clear the cobwebs. Trust that the shape of your story will reveal itself as you work.

Your Beginning Is Waiting

The hardest part of memoir isn't living the story. It's finding your way back in to tell it. But you will find your way. One scene, one memory, one free-written page at a time.