The Trick of  "Telling" Rather Than "Writing"
 

     "You Should Write a Book!"

"Hey, you should write a book!"  How many times have you heard this after you’ve related some adventure, travel, family history? We all possess life-edifying material that would fill books thick and thin. We have little trouble spinning a great yarn or story. The words just flow because we aren’t concentrating on the telling but on the story.

We usually are successes in the oral tradition, better story-tellers than story-writers. Why? Why is it that the minute we go to paper with our rousing tale, our focus shifts and easy rhythm seems to fall apart?  Instead of keeping the focus on content, we start worrying about the delivery--the writing.

Because we have picked up a false notion somewhere that writing is different from telling. Essentially, it isn’t, especially in a first draft. But we let spelling, punctuation, paragraphs and other "rules" make writing feel like skipping rope in peanut butter. To avoid this paradox, talk your story into a tape recorder. Tell it to a sympathetic listener.

Tell your story without thinking of writing it down and you’ll bring up most of the good stuff. Or, if you remember something important later, you’ll just retell that part or make up a momentary aside to correct it before going on. You can do that on paper too.

How many times in the workshop people begin "filling in" vivid details they left out of the piece they just read aloud. They almost see what’s missing as soon as they get to it, or they can't wait to "explain" it later: "But, see, this dog came out tearing out of the barrel and bit me on the foot and…" Get back to that barrel and look around: that’ll be some of your best material. Write it down! Just don’t get hung up on writing rules (look at the ones at the end of this guide if you need inspiration or a chuckle).

          Turning the Kaleidoscope

Memoir is composite, a series of pieces that fit together, like bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. Reconstructing memory makes you turn these pieces until they fall together in a recognizable pattern. Think about how an abstract painter works: a dab here, a dab there, a passage of paint laid on with a wider brush that unifies them. The picture grows patch by patch. It doesn’t get painted all at once.

Or look at how composers write music. They don’t sit down magisterially at the piano, shoot their cuffs and ripple out a completed silver-toned sonata. They plink and plunk and keep trying different progressions or arrangements. They "draft" a note at a time on a keyboard and make notations on sheet music lines.

You should approach memoir pieces the same way. You can write brief notes, short phrases or even single-word cues (like the artist’s dabs of paint) on a big sheet of paper (wrapping paper or "butcher" paper works fine) in random patterns, adding detail as you discover it.  Write anywhere; write anything--nonsense, drivel, doodling...It doesn't need to make sense yet.

Section off results into categories that relate. Or draw big circles with a felt pen and fill them with details, snippets of story. Then examine and join them with different colored lines as you discover how they relate to each other.  A box or two of multi-colored felt pens is always a handy tool in this endeavor.

          Get the Thread Going

When I had to write a magazine cover story, I’d have reams of paper files, research notes, clippings and photos scattered all over the floor or pinned up on a big, cork-board wall. I’d write a little, get up and browse the notes and quotes. I’d read and look and sip coffee and cogitate until I got the thread going again, then hop back to the pencil draft or bang out notes on the typewriter.

I did a Newsweek cover on "Rock & The Rolling Stones" by spreading different groups’ album covers all over the floor. Then I pasted draft pages to the appropriate album cover as I saw a logical "storyboard" evolve and added draft paragraphs to those. I did the same for a cover on Liza Minnelli (and she asked me later to write liner notes for her next record album, "Liza At the Olympia," in Paris).  Too much material can swamp your creativity.  You can’t carry such a load in your head and see them all at once. You need a way to "display" them, move them around, see relationships between chunks of information. I called the finished stories "floor jobs" or "wall jobs".

Try it my way. Jot major items on separate pieces of paper and arrange them on desk, wall or floor until you perceive a pattern or logical sequence for stringing them together. Note ideas for transitions you may need and log them or jot them down and paste them where they fit. Scissors and glue sticks are indispensable to this process.  Keep adding details or notes to each sheet until you see how they’ll fit together on a page or in a story.

          Perfect Word Processor

Incidentally, I find the perfect word processing tool is still the pencil: compact, cheap, no moving parts, no software, easy to tune up (sharpen). And—best of all—both ends work: use the eraser! The eraser represents editing, the art of trouble-shooting and fine-tuning your writing. This task is at the other end of organizing materials before you write that we’ll discuss and demonstrate frequently in workshop sessions.

Maybe 60% of your work should get finished before you start really writing. Remember, successful writing, like competent house painting, depends most on adequate prep work. Spend plenty of time making notes and noodling your ideas of organizing materials. Whatever you do, go to the actual writing task last.