There is a section in The Dawn Wall, a documentary about two record-breaking climbers, where Tommy Caldwell has completed a portion of the route, but his partner, Kevin Jorgeson, keeps failing repeatedly.
I’m not in the midst of a memoir, so my views will be different of course, yet I think I am grasping your deeper thoughts.
I also do not believe one need a road map to begin. It’s rather like the way I build a jigsaw puzzle. Some folks HAVE to build the edge first, to contain the creation of the interior. Nothing wrong with that approach at all! (It’s just not how I would do it, and I find it kinda boring and confining). I seldom build the edges first, unless the puzzle is all one color. And since our lives are certainly not one color, I would not do that with a memoir.
Similar to the way I begin puzzles where I start with one colorful unique area, I would first write (as I do in my essays) about a striking moment in time. Then in the chapter I would add the pieces around that time, but I doubt very much I would reorder these chapters to be sequential in a book unless one piece created the experience for another.
I love that you are writing so that your kids will one day know you deeply. That feels very meaningful. Are you telling them stories from your lived life, colored by your feelings and confusions?
I imagine your life being told like a story Mark Twain might write…. Each adventure giving a bit more insight to your the outcome of the man you’ve become as their dad.
The puzzle metaphor is a good one. You're right -- perhaps some are more adept than others at seeing the pattern from a different angle, working from the inside out instead framing the edges and then working inward. I'll have to think on that. If nothing else, it is an excellent counterpoint to the mountaineer's map!
The essential question I've been butting up against has been whether this is a book about myself as a father, written for other men primarily, or whether it is a book about my life with my children, written largely for them, as in the Charlie Croker example. I've been hitting resistance with the first storyline. Some changes in my life recently have me thinking about whether insisting on some of those harsher arcs (what I've been taught are more powerful and honest forms of truth-telling) is not only too self-serving (no matter how much I've justified it by thinking it would help others or tap into a larger conversation) but also not really helpful to my kids. What if I focus on the core of what we have together instead of all the barriers and obstacles that I had to overcome to get there? That's where I'm leaning.
Off the top of my head, I would imagine your kids being interested in knowing how you came to the choices you have made, your influences, and what you wrestled with in your mind.
I sometimes think about my maternal grandmother, whose husband died in his mid fifties. I wonder how she felt about being totally dependent on her brother in law for financial support, housing, transportation, insurance …. Everything. She never worked outside the home. And she never ever complained about anything.
Is that the type of book you’re writing? Or is it more these are the life lessons I learned, how I learned them, and I want you to learn?
Super questions to consider as we write.
I’m not in the midst of a memoir, so my views will be different of course, yet I think I am grasping your deeper thoughts.
I also do not believe one need a road map to begin. It’s rather like the way I build a jigsaw puzzle. Some folks HAVE to build the edge first, to contain the creation of the interior. Nothing wrong with that approach at all! (It’s just not how I would do it, and I find it kinda boring and confining). I seldom build the edges first, unless the puzzle is all one color. And since our lives are certainly not one color, I would not do that with a memoir.
Similar to the way I begin puzzles where I start with one colorful unique area, I would first write (as I do in my essays) about a striking moment in time. Then in the chapter I would add the pieces around that time, but I doubt very much I would reorder these chapters to be sequential in a book unless one piece created the experience for another.
I love that you are writing so that your kids will one day know you deeply. That feels very meaningful. Are you telling them stories from your lived life, colored by your feelings and confusions?
I imagine your life being told like a story Mark Twain might write…. Each adventure giving a bit more insight to your the outcome of the man you’ve become as their dad.
Just a thought.
The puzzle metaphor is a good one. You're right -- perhaps some are more adept than others at seeing the pattern from a different angle, working from the inside out instead framing the edges and then working inward. I'll have to think on that. If nothing else, it is an excellent counterpoint to the mountaineer's map!
The essential question I've been butting up against has been whether this is a book about myself as a father, written for other men primarily, or whether it is a book about my life with my children, written largely for them, as in the Charlie Croker example. I've been hitting resistance with the first storyline. Some changes in my life recently have me thinking about whether insisting on some of those harsher arcs (what I've been taught are more powerful and honest forms of truth-telling) is not only too self-serving (no matter how much I've justified it by thinking it would help others or tap into a larger conversation) but also not really helpful to my kids. What if I focus on the core of what we have together instead of all the barriers and obstacles that I had to overcome to get there? That's where I'm leaning.
Great questions about your frame of mind.
Off the top of my head, I would imagine your kids being interested in knowing how you came to the choices you have made, your influences, and what you wrestled with in your mind.
I sometimes think about my maternal grandmother, whose husband died in his mid fifties. I wonder how she felt about being totally dependent on her brother in law for financial support, housing, transportation, insurance …. Everything. She never worked outside the home. And she never ever complained about anything.
Is that the type of book you’re writing? Or is it more these are the life lessons I learned, how I learned them, and I want you to learn?