This is on Me

So I started writing my memoir last week after some pushing and prodding from Ron and my friend Fog City Writer. Writing a memoir sounded a little daunting to me, so I approached it in my typically nerdy way with some Internet research and a few articles from my Writer magazine.

It's actually kind of fun. Truth truly is stranger than fiction, and it's easier to write about my former neighbor who sits in her garden under a camouflage-patterned banner so nobody can see her than make up a crazy-lady neighbor out of whole cloth. The world is full of weirdos, and many of them like to wander through my life.

The challenge, as I see it (and what do I know, I've only been doing this for a week) is to tease out structure and patterns out of the experiences so you're not just writing "and then this happened and then that happened and then this happened and the bird died ..." Pick a definitive time span. Find themes. Write wicked character attacks that will likely get you sued unless you change the guy's name and give him a goatee and a pet iguana. Figure out what you learned. Figure out how you changed. If you didn't learn anything and didn't change at all, pretend you did.

I'm not precisely sure what I learned or how I changed in the year that I'm memoiring (April 2007-April 2008). I'm still a little high-strung. I don't howl in frustration anymore every time I drop a piece of toast on the floor and that's gotta be a plus. I personally hate the phrase "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Adversity does not always strengthen a person; sometimes it makes said person insecure and twitchy and uptight and prone to irrational behavior even after the adverse conditions no longer exist. Ever hear of post-traumatic stress disorder, Friedrich Nietzsche? I still have problems from a whiplash injury in 1996. No, it didn't kill me, but my neck doesn't feel any stronger. It feels more vulnerable, actually.