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Sara Mansfield Taber

Monthly Archives: October 2012

The Memoir-Writing Process: Possession

22 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Sara Mansfield Taber in Memoir Writing, On Writing

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The Memoir Writing Process

Rarely, while writing my memoir—this is another iteration of obsession—I was as calm as God, solemnly inscribing words as if on tablets.  But usually, writing my memoir was like being possessed.  At certain points when I was working on it, I was in an alternative universe.  During such periods, my husband poked me and said, “You’re not with us.  You’re in a parallel world.”  It was truer than he knew.  I was off with my lover in the thatched hut.  These times, I was just barely able to listen to my children.  It was like they were calling from somewhere far off in a fog.  (It was really me that was in a fog.)  And I couldn’t hear them until I got the day’s burden of memories unloaded from the ship whose cargo hold was bottomless, infinitely re-filling.  A ship that seemed to re-fill to the brim the minute I scooped out the day’s box of k-rations, or slab of death-by-chocolate cake.

Nabokov describes writing as “a private mist.”

When I was irrevocably committed to finish my poem or die, there came the most trancelike state of all.  With hardly a twinge of surprise, I found myself, of all places, on a leathern couch in the cold, musty, little-used room that had been my grandfather’s study.  On that couch, I lay prone, in a kind of reptilian freeze, one arm dangling, so that my knuckles loosely touched the floral figures of the carpet.  When I next came out of that trance, the greenish flora was still there, my arm still dangling, but now I was prostrate on the edge of a rickety wharf, and the water lilies I touched were real…So little did ordinary measures of existence mean in that state that I would not have been surprised to come out of its tunnel right into the park of Versailles, or Tiergarten, or Sequoia National Forest.

The Memoir-Writing Process 3 : Obsession

15 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Sara Mansfield Taber in Memoir Writing, On Writing

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The Memoir Writing Process

I say, memoir-writing, at its most basic, is obsession.  Involuntary obsession is a requirement for the endeavor. (I have my mother’s genes to thank for an obsessive brain that won’t stop writing the book even when I—the more sensible one of me—wants to.)  Writing a memoir is like having a lover waiting, hiding in a hut out in the nearby forest.  Even if you can’t stay, you want to steal in and touch his cheek, even if it can only be for a second.

 

The Memoir-Writing Process 2: Perseveration

08 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Sara Mansfield Taber in Memoir Writing, On Writing

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The Memoir Writing Process

Like all writing, memoir-writing, is perseveration: the same story over and over.  Who was it who said we live the first thirty years and then write about it for the next fifty?

The Memoir-Writing Process 1: Poking around in scars

01 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Sara Mansfield Taber in Memoir Writing, On Writing

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The Memoir Writing Process

A Private Mist

The Memoir-Writing Process:

Why is memoir writing so trying…and rewarding?

Now a few words as to the memoir-writing process.  Writing the memoir is not a matter of riding in a boat, sucking candies and fruits.  As you pole along, sometimes the waters are placid and calm.  More often they are a torrent.

There is regular writing, and then there is the memoir. Both are treacherous. Orwell wrote, “Writing is a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a bout of some painful illness.” Memoir-writing is that, or perhaps a more specific diagnosis would be: a severe attack of homesickness.

Red Smith commented, “Writing is easy.  All you do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.” Similarly, memoir-writing just involves the simple act of digging into an old scar and then poking around in the red, tender flesh.

In the next nine weekly posts, I will consider the perils, joys, and other features of the memoir-writing process.

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Recent Posts

  • How to Publish Your Memoir
  • Global Nomads and TCKS- 26: Reconciliation
  • Global Nomads and TCKS- 25: Everywhere is a reminder of somewhere else
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  • Global Nomads and TCKS- 23: Looking for lost pasts, lost selves…

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