How Do I Start Writing a Memoir When I Have Too Many Stories?

My daughter’s birthday was the subject of a post on my Reflections from a Recovering Perfectionist Substack, and I realized that it only told a very small part of the story. What started as a blog over 25 years ago left out a lot of context, the parts that are hard to sum up if you haven’t followed our journey all this time.

That’s exactly the problem I faced writing my whole book. I had so many stories about her, about our adoption, about parenting a special needs child, and I had to decide which stories actually served the reader’s understanding, not just which ones I wanted to include.

I hear this same thing from so many women who want to write a book. The sheer number of ideas is what keeps them stuck or wondering if they even want to start. Most of these women aren’t short on material. What they’re missing is a filter for what to include. If you’re one of these women, I can tell you that having too much material is a wonderful thing.

Here’s what I recommend

Set aside some time.

Get out some notecards (for me, putting pen to paper helps).

Write down every moment you think might belong in this book, and put one on a notecard.

Keep it short. Include a person, a situation, + emotion.

For example:

• Me. Diabetic kidney disease diagnosis. It’s your fault.
• Me. Emergency management work. Is anyone going to die today?
• My son. Broken knee. Guilt.

Because I know what they mean, but you, as the reader, don’t, I’ll share a little more.

The first scene was the time when I was diagnosed with kidney disease at 21. I knew it was my fault for not being a perfect diabetic. If I had been perfect, I wouldn’t have this horrible diagnosis (and that I was going to die if I didn’t get a transplant).

The second scene relates to my work in emergency communications for a city during fires and floods, and how that connects to living with a chronic illness, because one of my tendencies is to look at things through the lens of whether things are really life-or-death situations.

And the third is a time when my son broke his kneecap while skateboarding, but we weren’t sure if it was broken, so I didn’t take him to the doctor until the next day, and I felt guilty for not knowing and doing something sooner. It repeats a theme in my life of “I should have known.”

Don’t be afraid of missing something; this is iterative. You can always go back and add more cards later. Don’t get caught up in editing or thinking about whether it’s good enough. Just get it out of your head and onto a card.

This might take you an hour. It might take you a week. The point right now isn’t speed, it’s volume.

If you feel stuck, I have to credit Kelly Notaras here. She’s an author and book editor, and I spent a year in a writers’ community she led while writing my memoir. One tool from that program is her 100 moments exercise: write a list of 100 quick memories in 30 minutes. Short and simple. It’s a great way to get your creative juices flowing.

Once you’ve got a pile

Spread them out and start grouping by theme, not by chronological order. Notice which pile has the most cards and what you’re feeling drawn to write about. That’s usually where your book begins, and you start seeing it come together.

The beauty of starting it this way is that once you’ve created your cards and filtered them by theme, you can use them to help you outline the book. When you’re ready, you can physically move them around to create chapters that weave the story together in a way that builds tension. (And in my mind, tension = reader interest = great story.)

Bonus recommendation:

If you have journals, you may want to go through those journal entries and create a card for each one with this structure: a person, a situation, + emotion and the page number or the file name for each one. It’s an excellent way to incorporate previous journaling as inspiration for the scenes in your book.

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This originally published on Substack.