I suspect the memoir I drafted last year has been a factor in my current (not great) mental state. While writing it was weirdly easy and even fun, I did hyperfocus on it intensely and now that I'm at a point where revision can happen, I am feeling apprehensive.
My advice is to have a good team of support around you — people you can check in with, people you trust to just listen and not go into problem solving, ideally people who were there for you during the time you are writing about so you don't have to unpack anything.
Even when we've processed a thing via therapy and years have passed since it happened, I think the process of writing it, especially as memoir (accessible to a broader audience from a human experience perspective) is a whole different form of emotional excavation.
Reading has been a helpful way for me to pace so that I can take in other forms of writing and that also helps me answer the ethical questions. With that being said, I also know this can feel like "work". Cats and naps are also very effective!
I’m right there with you, and to add to it, I’ve crowdsourced funding for my book. This means that when it is done and out there I will have some of my closest friends and most distance acquaintances connected in the creation of my trauma book. I imagine them finishing reading and going, “I paid for that?”
I would buy your book! For the advice part, I listen to Chelsea Devantez' podcast Glamorous Trash and she's recently done a whole series about her experience pitching/publishing her memoir.
Very happy to have found you through this post. I’m 30,000 words into my book as well that blends autotheory and autofiction. Sadly I don’t have advice on pacing other than you’ve got this!
This is 💯 relatable. I just finished the second draft of my memoir. Felt like excavating a bullet.
Last werk I started listening to Mary Karr’s ART OF MEMOIR again & this part really resonated:
“In some ways, writing a memoir is knocking yourself out with your own fist, if it’s done right. Nobody I know that’s written a great one has described it as anything less than a major league shit-eating contest. Anytime you try to collapse the distance between your delusions about the past and what really happened, there’s suffering involved.”
I asked friends who also wrote memoirs if it was like that for them and they said it wasn’t. But I think it depends on the story, because it did feel painful because mine is a painful and at times violent story. So I called my therapist, lol. 🥰
Also, thank you SO MUCH for the shout out to my bears piece on Feral Stack! 💕
I have no tips or tricks to offer, just an acknowledgement that we're on the same page here - I read this after waking up from a highly needed anti-anxiety nap and some reading of the Lord of the Rings (which helped a bit but not quite) after trying to type down some words for my book. Words that didn't even have that much to do with depression, trauma or death - but the book does - so that's at least where I THINK that debilitating anxiety came from. All this is to say, I think it's probably good and helpful to share, and to rest. Thank you for telling your truth regardless.
I suspect the memoir I drafted last year has been a factor in my current (not great) mental state. While writing it was weirdly easy and even fun, I did hyperfocus on it intensely and now that I'm at a point where revision can happen, I am feeling apprehensive.
My advice is to have a good team of support around you — people you can check in with, people you trust to just listen and not go into problem solving, ideally people who were there for you during the time you are writing about so you don't have to unpack anything.
Oooh yes, this is helpful. I've been feeling like mental health is definitely not great while I'm writing this. So hard!
Even when we've processed a thing via therapy and years have passed since it happened, I think the process of writing it, especially as memoir (accessible to a broader audience from a human experience perspective) is a whole different form of emotional excavation.
YES, totally. This is what has been coming up for me.
Reading has been a helpful way for me to pace so that I can take in other forms of writing and that also helps me answer the ethical questions. With that being said, I also know this can feel like "work". Cats and naps are also very effective!
I’m right there with you, and to add to it, I’ve crowdsourced funding for my book. This means that when it is done and out there I will have some of my closest friends and most distance acquaintances connected in the creation of my trauma book. I imagine them finishing reading and going, “I paid for that?”
I would buy your book! For the advice part, I listen to Chelsea Devantez' podcast Glamorous Trash and she's recently done a whole series about her experience pitching/publishing her memoir.
thank you and thank you for the podcast rec!
Very happy to have found you through this post. I’m 30,000 words into my book as well that blends autotheory and autofiction. Sadly I don’t have advice on pacing other than you’ve got this!
Awww yay for you! And thank you so much for the cheering! We can do this!
This is 💯 relatable. I just finished the second draft of my memoir. Felt like excavating a bullet.
Last werk I started listening to Mary Karr’s ART OF MEMOIR again & this part really resonated:
“In some ways, writing a memoir is knocking yourself out with your own fist, if it’s done right. Nobody I know that’s written a great one has described it as anything less than a major league shit-eating contest. Anytime you try to collapse the distance between your delusions about the past and what really happened, there’s suffering involved.”
I asked friends who also wrote memoirs if it was like that for them and they said it wasn’t. But I think it depends on the story, because it did feel painful because mine is a painful and at times violent story. So I called my therapist, lol. 🥰
Also, thank you SO MUCH for the shout out to my bears piece on Feral Stack! 💕
Ooooh! I need to read this! Thank you for the rec and for reading!
Seconding reading Art of Memoir. Mary Karr has some real gems of advice on the process.
I have no tips or tricks to offer, just an acknowledgement that we're on the same page here - I read this after waking up from a highly needed anti-anxiety nap and some reading of the Lord of the Rings (which helped a bit but not quite) after trying to type down some words for my book. Words that didn't even have that much to do with depression, trauma or death - but the book does - so that's at least where I THINK that debilitating anxiety came from. All this is to say, I think it's probably good and helpful to share, and to rest. Thank you for telling your truth regardless.