Day Seven: Memoir is More Story Than Journal

When I sit down to write a fiction story, I make ten thousand decisions: what to detail, what to leave out; what to hang on the walls and echo through the chambers of story space, what remains silent; what of the laundry list of emotions I should pluck and what those emotions look like on each character in my story.

When Augustine sat down to write his memoir, he made the same ten thousand decisions. His choices were informed by reality, but the fact that they happened does not negate the details and echoes and emotions he carefully selected to tell his story. A huge portion of my job as his writing coach was to teach him to remain in individual memories, to look around, to remember his five senses, to immerse himself in that breath so that he could draw the reader into the page in the same way.

Diaries and journals contain details, but they largely preoccupy themselves with internal thought and the telling of emotion. By virtue of writing the diary, the narrator is an expert. In a memoir, however, the writer must convince the reader of his expertise. A memoir writer uses every tool in a writer’s toolbox because he must. Readers come to fiction ready to suspend disbelief. Readers come to memoirs from a place of challenge: make me care, make me scream or laugh or cry, I dare you.

Because this is the last day of my memoir series, I want to finish an excerpt from THE NATURE OF SHADOWS that, I think, captures Augustine’s essence as I’ve come to know him.

From chapter 16: (In exchange for an education during the day, Augustine secretly takes a job as a night janitor, cleaning up after his classmates):

On a few occasions, I became a one-man show in the empty hallways. Lean on Me was my tune of choice. The lyrics fed me. I was Fred Astaire’s footwork, Al Green’s soul, and the vocal powerhouse of a fully-assembled, cloaked and clapping background choir rolled into one.

Occasionally, this song pops up on a random radio station, and I’m right there in an empty school in Liberia, watching him dance, making joy out of sorrow and light out of darkness. I scream, I laugh, I cry, I care. I am a changed individual because I know Augustine’s story. I hope you will be too.

Thank you for reading.

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