You’ve decided to write a memoir—congratulations! That’s an incredibly difficult—and brave—decision. Ultimately, it may also be one of the most rewarding decisions you’ve ever made. There is, however, a lot that needs to happen between this decision and holding that book in your hands, and that extends beyond your editing needs.
Writing a memoir is tough by any standards, regardless of how happy your life may have been. There are unique challenges you don’t run into when writing fiction, such as what to or not to include, how much to change identifying characteristics of the people you’re including, and whittling down the main idea for what your book is trying to communicate. All of this is much more difficult when it’s your own life you’re writing about. There’s a saying about being unable to see the forest for the trees and what it’s getting at is related to perspective: it’s hard to see the big picture when you’re in the weeds.
And when it’s our life, we’re definitely in the weeds.
Then there’s an added layer of challenge when you’re writing a memoir that includes trauma. It’s not just one can of worms that opens up, but a whole cart full of them. You’re required to relive those experiences that you wish you could forget ever happened, you have to figure out how to write about them so that your readers fully understand without being unnecessarily graphic—a balance that is much harder to strike than you might think. You have to not only be in the weeds, but you have to dig down into the dirt and muck and start examining the roots of things. You have to find a way to write with enough emotion to convey to the reader how you felt, but not allow the emotion to take over, leaving you with a messy manuscript that your readers can’t follow.
It’s a lot.
A LOT.
In fact, you may think you understand how difficult it will be, but until you’ve done it, you cannot prepare yourself for it. I wrote on my blog about my own experience with this when working on my memoir, resilient, and how I encountered many moments that I questioned what I was doing and why, and whether or not it was worth what I was putting myself through. (It was.)
Writing a memoir is an experience that will wring you out in a way nothing else in your life does, and you will learn a lot about yourself along the way. But it can come at a price: your sanity. And that’s why it’s important to take breaks as you progress.
A few signs you may need to take a break from working on your memoir include:
- You’re more tired than usual
- You’re more emotional than usual or are experiencing inexplicable mood swings
- You’ve stopped writing to compulsively re-read certain scenes
- You completely dissociate while writing certain parts
- An obsessive drive to work on your manuscript has taken over your psyche
- You’re avoiding working on your manuscript
- You feel a constant need for validation about what you’ve drafted
These are some of the signs that I had to learn the hard way how to recognize so I didn’t get myself trapped in a cycle of retraumatization (when you relive a traumatic experience over and over). I didn’t even realize what was happening at first. It began when I first drafted the chapter about being raped by my boyfriend’s two brothers when I was thirteen. I wrote the chapter, but then I couldn’t leave the chapter alone. It wasn’t that I was compulsively self-editing it… I was compulsively re-reading it. Over and over for days on end. It was all I could think about. My anxiety was through the roof, and I was having nightmares almost every night. When I finally decided to open up about what was happening to my therapist, she explained to me that I was stuck in a loop of retraumatization, something that is easy to do when we have unresolved trauma that we’re revisiting. Most importantly, however, was that the only way to stop the cycle was to stop what I was doing. I had to force myself to take a long break from my manuscript entirely because I wasn’t able to open it without navigating directly to that chapter. It was a cycle that I nearly found myself in many times over after that, but I’d learned to be prepared for the possibility and paid much closer attention to what was happening inside my body (racing heart, scattered thoughts, sweaty palms, easily upset or angered) so I could stop myself before I got stuck again. The whole experience was something I was entirely unprepared for, but I managed to weather through it once I understood what was happening; the key was knowledge.
The same knowledge I’m sharing with you here.
It’s easy to feel like you just want to get it done, but I assure you that your mental health is more important and will benefit from you taking a step back when you recognize signs of overwhelm, PTSD, or retraumatization, like those listed above. Ultimately, your book will also benefit, though this concern is secondary to maintaining mental balance.
One of my editors talks a lot about the differences between writing to process and writing to present in relation to our life experiences. When we’re writing to process, we’re revisiting events for ourselves, working through them to remember as much as we can or make connections we may not have previously noticed. However, when we’re writing to present, we’re voicing our stories in a way that the reader can not only follow what we’ve experienced in a linear way, but there’s a thread of connection flowing through our experiences, both linking our growth and inviting the reader to bond with us. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy to know which phase we’re in as we toil through our own memoirs, and in my experience, sometimes it’s a little of both. That’s why pacing ourselves, taking breaks, and revisiting individual chapters—as well as the whole manuscript—after some time away can be beneficial to identifying if what we’ve written is more of a rough draft for our reference as we work our way through the next draft, or if our manuscript’s message and our intentions are clear to readers. Regardless, though, each draft is a brave act as well as a testament to our strength. Likewise, each break we take from our memoir-writing process is also an act of bravery, because we’re demonstrating that we know our emotional well-being is worth the time. And when we finally reach the finish line, it will be that much more rewarding if we’ve done so without sacrificing our mental health.
Josha Publishing, LLC is a woman-founded, woman-owned, and woman-run company that is passionate about books, stories, and the power of words to change lives. Learn more about us here and remember to sign up for our newsletter to find out about new content, new books, and submissions update.
Taking A Break
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From Your Memoir
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