What to Do When a Memoir Idea Strikes
I was getting ready for bed when the most wild, unexpected, perfect idea dropped into my head: Write my memoir. I’ve been planning to write a memoir someday, knowing that a particular experience unfolding in my personal life is destined for the page—someday. I was blissfully inert in that land of “someday.”
And then this idea struck like lightning: Write a memoir in essays about your grandma.
As soon as this idea lit up in my mind I knew I had to follow through. So I grabbed a notepad and brainstormed all the things I could potentially write about my grandma and my relationship with her. I don’t have a single word written of a single essay at the time this blog post goes live, but when the idea struck, I moved.
Maybe you’ve had ideas drop into your mind, and because you’re not in a season of writing or are new to the craft or think you have to have all everything figured out before you write, you don’t know what to do with that idea. It feels like holding onto water—so let’s reframe this.
Take your ideas seriously
In another season of my life that idea would have sparked in my mind, and in the same breath I would have automated to, Sure, that’s nice. Maybe sometime. But then I would have stayed in the same creative holding pattern, not actually writing anything. When a memoir idea strikes, take it seriously.
It can be easy as writers to have an idea and proceed to completely overthink it until you talk yourself out of it. Here at Bookish Edits I state over and over that you have a story that matters. That means that your ideas matter too, including the ones that surprise you (and TBH scare you a bit too).
When an idea sparks, give it a moment to breathe a little. You’ll be surprised at what you’ll notice and feel when you spend even a minute taking your ideas seriously.
Act right away
The writing process varies from person to person, but this is true for every writer: An idea will stay an idea unless you act on it. You want to start small and follow your intuition. When my idea hit, I found a notepad and brain dumped a couple dozen ideas for essay topics, and a couple of weeks later I started building out the foundation of my memoir by tooling my focus and my ideal reader.
Maybe you want to do a brain dump or mind map. Maybe a very specific idea sparked and you need to find a computer STAT so that you can write while the words are there. However you act on your idea, remember that your efforts can be both small and imperfect. Acting with immediacy is going to take that idea and give it form, even if it’s messy, rough, and indicipherable. Acting when an idea is fresh does just enough to give you something to work with, just enough so that you have something to come back to. It’s the equivalent of planting the seed in the soil; a seed can’t grow if you don’t plant it in the first place.
Trust yourself
A regular writing practice is something that I’m slowly reintegrating into my life this year, and so in the month since I’ve had the spark to write essays about my grandma, I haven’t done much actual writing. I have talked to people about it, written affirmations to keep me in the right headspace, and added it to my quarterly to-do list where I see “Start memoir project!” every day.
I’m not on a deadline, and I’m not in a hurry. If I can take my ideas seriously, then I can also trust my body and my intuition to tell me when it’s time to dive back into the process. Right now I’m feeling that pull to go into my sketched notes and build out more of foundation and structure.
You can trust yourself. You can trust your ideas. You can trust your stories.
What’s next?
Everyone’s writing process is different, and regardless of where you are in writing, you need to reset how you think about yourself and your story. If you need help feeling empowered as a writer so that you can write with more conviction and purpose, then you’ll want to go through my free workshop, Identity: Reset and Realign Your Writing Life. You can join right here!
Take your ideas seriously, act on them, and trust yourself. You’ve got this.
If this post resonated with you, you’ll want to listen to episode 18 of The Memoir Method Podcast, “It’s Time to Write My Memoir.” And if you’re unsure if your idea is worth pursuing, go and download my free mini ebook Should You Write a Memoir.
