the situation and the story

Are you writing a memoir? Read on!

Memoirists are the bravest of writers. They must dig deep into their experiences and hearts to create meaning from the stories of their lives, then expose that tender belly to the world. Publishing a memoir is like stripping off all your clothes, even your skin, and running naked, vulnerable and raw in front of everyone you’ve ever known and lots of people you don’t. It takes guts! Writing of any sort is an act of courage – see my post The Courage to Create, but memoir and all writing inspired by our own emotions and deepest secrets, takes the courage of a child facing a nightmare monster.

Do it anyway!

The world needs more truth. In this age of lies and AI fabrications and hallucinations, only the truth of lived human experience has weight and import. We are all so similar, humans haven’t changed much in what we need and feel in millennia, and yet each of us, like every blossom or leaf on a tree, is different. Unique and original, shaped by all who came before us and every moment that has impacted upon our life stories.

Don’t stay awake all night thinking about your story! Get it out of your head and onto the page 🙂

Capturing that unique spirit and experience of life to share with others is a precious gift. Through sharing the truths of our lives in writing, we connect heart to heart, mind to mind, in a way that can reach across generations and time itself.

Write! Write your truth and don’t be afraid.

Over my work with many memoirists over the past two decades of writing and editing, I’ve learnt I’m not the only one who finds putting my deepest heart on display in my work difficult. I’m essentially an intensely private person. Only a very few of my oldest friends and my siblings, really know all of me. In my writing, I’ve always preferred the disguise of fiction – I like to think of it as a cloak of invisibility. Thrill Seekers is autobiographical fiction, or really, thinly disguised memoir. And most of my writing has followed that same method. I call it the “chicken’s way out”. My Guide Through Grief has snippets of memoir, but mostly I am telling the reader I’ve been through stuff too, so I know what grief feels like. I didn’t write in scenes. I wasn’t brave enough to force myself and my readers to experience those losses again in real time.

You can purchase a copy directly from me HERE – let me know if you’d like me to sign it for you, or someone else.

Writing in scenes allows the reader to feel and experience life events just as you lived them. The imagination is powerful and can’t distinguish between reality and the imagined. Every time we read and feel the emotions stirred in us by a book, we are partaking in the life of those characters. Living other lives than our own. How exciting!

But another aspect to the ‘I’ voice in memoir plays an important role – reflection in hindsight, creating meaning from the chaos of life’s random rollercoaster ride. Both scenes and reflection from ourselves looking back at that scene and creating meaning, seeing patterns, asking questions, examining and releasing, are essential components of memoir writing.

THE TWO ‘ME’s in MEMOIR

a little blonde girl on an old fashioned TV set

PREVIOUS ME – When writing scenes, we must go back and see ourselves as separate from who we are now. Who were you when this experience happened? Can you see yourself from the outside? Often photos are a good way to ease into seeing your past self more objectively. Then we need to create a character from our previous selves, warts, beauty spots and all. A character that is as well painted as every other in our story. More so, as the writer is the protagonist.

Exercise: Close your eyes and remember a scene where you are sitting around a table, eating dinner or breakfast or playing a board game, or having a family or house meeting. Previous You interacting with others. What are you doing? What are you wearing? How do you fit in with the group? Are you speaking? What are you saying? How do you act?

Now try writing that scene in third person, treating yourself as the protagonist.

Glamorous woman showing off her watch - vintage

A glamorous version of wise me now 😀

WISE ME NOW – This is the voice of the writer as you are now, looking back, examining yourself and situations with the benefit of hindsight, creating meaning from the chaos. After writing a scene where you SHOW us exactly what happened and who you were in the past, even if your actions were shameful, then take a pause and shift into Wise You Now to reflect upon the scene, and how it impacted upon you. What questions does it raise? What behaviours do you now see the reasons for? What patterns did this scene create in your life? How does this scene feed into the greater narrative you’re creating? What meaning can you glean?

Exercise: Write a short piece of reflection – a paragraph or two, reflecting on the scene around the table you’ve just written. What did it make you think? Feel? Understand? How did this experience shape you? Can you see a greater pattern? Find some meaning? Ask yourselves questions on the page too. Is this really how it was? How could it have been different? How am I different?

These TWO MEs interweave throughout a memoir and together they create not just a story of your life, but a way of interpreting that life and sharing your hard-won wisdom with others. Vivian Gornick talks about this in her book The Situation and The Story. She says that The Situation is the events of the past we recreate in scenes, but that The Storycomes from the writer’s choice of those events, reflection and meaning creation. See also my post The Benefit of Hindsight.

DEAR MADMAN

When I first started researching and writing Dear Madman (my forthcoming historical true crime memoir) my intention was for it to be a memoir. But once I started writing, the voice of the murderer demanded to be heard, and what I wrote that first draft, was a novel recreating the events leading up to the crime and its aftermath. I’d tried to hide myself once again, the old “chicken’s way out”.

But after attending workshops with the brilliant, generous and talented Susan Johnson and Kris Olsson, I realised that my Wise Me Now voice was essential to interpret and create meaning from the meaningless murder. In order to share all I’d learned in my research and through the process of writing the recreation, and to reflect upon the intergenerational impact of violent crimes, I needed to be there. Me. No chickening out! Bugger it!

At first, I wrote a separate text – an essay titled “In Search of the Shadow Man and the Nature of Forgiveness”, but eventually I realised the essay needed to be a part of the main story. That I was a character in my book, as much as the murderer was. So I interwove my reflections and insights throughout the fictionalised recreation of events and took the path of courage.

Writing this book has almost killed me. I have carried the story of the murder of my Nana’s sister since I was a child, trying to make sense of it, to find a way to understand why such an awful thing would happen. I am beyond excited that finally this story is written and is being published by AndAlso Books in March 2026. YAY! At last. After beginning to write this book in earnest back in 2010, I can now give this story to others and free myself from it, forever.

So dear, brave memoirist, I understand your hesitance about putting yourself into the story, but you need to be there.

Soon you’ll be off and flying – writing your truth and feeling free!

Have courage. Speak your truth. Write your story!

Have you got any tips for memoir writing and creating a character from yourself? Do share them in the comments. I love hearing from you.

Hope to see you at the launch! (subscribe to my newsletter for more launch details)

Lots of love

Edwina 🙂 xx

My new headshot for the book! What do you think?

Recently I attended Kristina Olsson‘s excellent Memoir Bootcamp at the Queensland Writers Centre. How wonderful it was to be a student again and to learn from one of Queensland’s most celebrated writers. Kris’s book Boy Lost about the loss of her elder brother, has been a model for my own memoir in progress – “Dear Madman” – for many years. Kris has a workshop series coming up at the fabulous Avid Reader bookstore next year – keep an eye on their events.

During the course, I realised I have been trying to avoid an important and necessary element of successful memoir writing, reflection with hindsight.

Kris put us onto Sven Birkerts The Art of Time in Memoir and Vivian Gornick’s Situation and the Story which are packed with useful ideas and examples of memoir writing, including the concept of the Situation and the Story.

There are at least these two layers of time in memoir: the Situation which fleshes out in scenes the events from the past, key events in the section of life we are exploring, and: the Story, the author’s reflection with the benefit of hindsight, seeing patterns and creating meaning from these events.

As Kris told us, “Put your struggle on the page.” The reader needs to see the writer grappling with meaning making, in order for these personal events to resonate with the reader’s own story, their struggles. I now realise I’ve been trying to avoid this, hoping that, as with fiction, the scenes of key events alone would be enough. They’re not.

Much as we like to avoid it, the writer herself is the protagonist in her memoir. A raw and honest portrayal of self is necessary, reflecting on past actions and the meanings we’ve created through a compelling narrative. Helen Garner is a master of self representation in her non-fiction and thinly disguised fiction as well. She shows herself warts and all and we love her for it.

Be brave and put yourself on the page. I worried that my hippy trippy, out-there side may not be palatable to the literary community but Kris and my classmates assured me that they too all had secret inner hippies, and I should not try to hide this part of myself. Perhaps this is what will resonate most with others.

Excerpt from *The Art of Time in Memoir* by Sven Birkerts

As the above excerpt tells us, it is by sharing the most deeply personal, our own inner journey of meaning-making, that we create the universal. And isn’t that what we all want? To reach for a kind of truth all readers will understand, a special wisdom that is beyond individual experience but applies to us all?

To do this, within a compelling narrative that keeps readers turning pages, is the memoirists’ challenge. Perhaps the most demanding of all genres, memoir requires great courage and honesty, exposing our inner selves in the hope that by sharing our personal battles we can create a work of art, a thing of beauty from all that pain.

Go deep memoirists. Go hard or go home. Uncover those buried secrets and bring them to the light. Show us how it’s done.

Are you writing a memoir? Have you been avoiding putting yourself in, like I have? Any hints and tips you’d like to share? Please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Take care, keep smiling and write like a fury!

Lots of love

Edwina xx