“I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.” – Michelangelo
“Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. “ Michelangelo
“If people knew how hard I worked to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.” Michelangelo
Last week I mentioned that steep learning curve that is writing. As I was creating it, I called my first novel my learning-to-write-a-novel novel. But it turns out that each book is that. Each book demands its own structure, its own style, its own set of images, build, energy—and all of these have to be hewn from raw materials.
I’m trying now to write a memoir. Michelangelo talked about the statue existing in the marble. All the sculptor has to do is chip away until it is revealed. With memoir, that block of marble is a mountain, and all of it must be chipped away to reveal the small, sleek shape of the book itself.
I’m figuring all of this out as I go. I’m reading memoirs and books about writing memoirs, listening to podcast interviews and readings, reading my own writings (often painful) and editing them, and then writing more. Cutting and adding and printing it out and editing it some more. Throwing it at my poor readers.
I thought it might be useful to you if I lay out the key steps I have stumbled upon for finding story. See if they support your own process. These are all fine tips for fiction, too.
THE LIST
- Writing a “because of that” list, going through each step and linking it to the next.
- Stripping out all explanation and musing. (Some will go back in later, but I’m looking for the scenes, the story.)
- Putting in into absolute chronological order, avoiding associative looping through time.
- Making a more fine-meshed filter of my theme and using that to eliminate scenes.
- Working backwards from the final realization to build the structure.
- Making a list of possible scenes.
- Writing the key scenes as vividly as I would a novel.
Any you’d add or change? Any help you get closer to your goal? What are you struggling with? What have you most recently or most powerfully learned?
I would add one more thing: pay attention to what keeps floating up into your mind and write it down. It might not have anything to do with the project, or not this stage of the project, but it might be what the story is really about. This happened to me this week, not with the memoir with my mother, but another piece, about working at French and Women’s Hospital before I left for college. It’s a piece I’ve sniggled a little bit for class, I added something this week. But after adding, and after making some notes to include the next time I wrote, a memory of the windows of the wards I was working in just would not go away. So I wrote it today, it adds another whole layer to what I’d written before. Anyway, the image feels important and essential and I think it changes the plot or gives a counterplot or some such thing.