Journaling while memoiring
One writer's example of how journaling helped her memoir writing
In my memoir classes, there’s a phrase I talk about a lot: “journaling while memoiring.”
To explain this, I’d love to share an anecdote. Earlier this week I interviewed an Oakland-based writer Susan Kiyo Ito, aka Susanito Says , about her forthcoming memoir I Would Meet You Anywhere, a story about a Japanese-American adoptee’s search and connection with her biological mother, and the heartaches, hardships and heart warms that come of that journey (on the record, this book is beautiful, just splendid and heartfelt and heartbreaking and all the other heart-related things).
I told Susan that as I read and jotted notes along the way, I started a section called “Parts I Cried.”
Some of these parts were really emotional and I started looking at the craft of the thing: how did she capture these moments so beautifully? I zoomed in on the dialogue and asked, How did you capture these interactions so well? Was this dialogue from memory, approximation, or – ?
Her answer gave me smiles. Susan shared that most of her dialogue she took directly from her journals. Despite years of forcing herself to study science for her undergrad degree (can relate), Susan was always a writer. And writers often keep journals.
SO, my point is: Susan was able to pull direct quotes from her journal entries and include them in her memoir. A lot of the most vivid scenes were pulled from moments that she’d written about in her journal the very day they happened. The scenes feel fresh and visual, and the dialogue is realistic and believable.
In conclusion, journaling can have an incredible impact on your memoir (or, life-based novels, essays, etc). And “journaling while memoiring” can be an incredibly useful tool for being able to explore emotions and life’s “scenes” that you may later write about. Journaling is an excuse to write in wild freeform, without having to pay attention to structure, scenes and “rules.”
Susan essentially wrote I Would Meet You Anywhere over the course of about thirty years. She kept thinking she was done with it, or would put it aside for various reasons. I’m so glad she was able to finally finish this book. It’s out November 4, and I know pre-ordering books immensely helps authors, so I’d love to suggest doing just that. FYI, I’ll be using this book in one of my spring memoir classes, so stay tuned!
Love and writing to you all,
Michelle