You might write about: 8 Comments. I didn’t press my daughter and husband who stayed at my side through the difficult first days of my hospitalization because I felt it was too much to ask them to relive the experience. Now in her sixties, she writes about her lifelong struggle, ruminates on whether nature or nurture (or maybe both?) The first lesson to writing a memoir that’s actually good is to realize you can’t write about everything. Since I wrote it for people to learn about TMS, my greater purpose eclipsed my worries about what strangers would think of me. This proved to be one of my biggest obstacles. Martha currently devotes her time as a TMS Patient Advocate to patients and health care professionals throughout the United States. Work through the emotions by reminding yourself of why you wanted to write the memoir in the first place. Martha: There’s an old saying, “Misery loves company” that explains why I wrote a memoir instead of a self-help book. Not only are they helpful for those who are dealing with these issues, they are also great resources for anyone looking to better understand what anxiety and depression can be like. As writers, we use our minds to create something new in the world. Danquah’s memoir speaks to issues of race, immigration, motherhood, and mental health. CS: 3,000 Pulses Later deals with difficult and personal subject matter you have experienced. I had to remind myself to take tea breaks from my computer, walk outside in the fresh air, and sometimes allow myself to cry a bit in order to work through the very personal parts of the book. Martha: What worked well for me was having complete control over the schedule and production values, e.g. I joined up with depression around the age of 8. CS: Did you find that knowing others would be reading and learning about your personal experiences affected your memoir writing process? Did you find that having a more personal and honest book affected your decisions on who to work with? It’s like climbing a mountain or running a marathon. In October 1985, novelist William Styron flew to Paris to accept a prestigious literary award; during this trip, he began to descend into depression. My process was to always meditate before sitting down to write. How to write a memoir. I think by the time the reader gets to the end of the memoir we have both shared an emotional experience, and having the “nuts and bolts” about TMS helps bring them back to thoughts of their own condition with answers as to how they might manage it. Then, at the appropriate time, ask for feedback from people you trust and respect and whose opinions matter to your potential reading audience. CS: Even though this memoir focuses on your personal experiences, you incorporate outside quotes, poems, and even a newspaper ad of other writers at the beginning of each chapter. Angela's Ashes. Be willing to chance that putting yourself out there in the public with a personal story will somehow work itself into a positive notion for your readers, and that you may never know when, why, or how that occurred, but that your story could be a small (or large) part of their own story. Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Angela's Ashes, tells the story of his upbringing in the Irish slums during the era of the Great Depression.Published by Simon and Schuster, this memoir reads like a novel as Frank somehow manages to withstand an unspeakably difficult childhood.. My advice for writers on choosing an editor, contributor/co-author, designer, and printer is to vet them thoroughly before you allow them to touch your book. When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to … To avoid contradicting other people’s experiences, some authors write a very generic description of depression that lacks depth. She described it in the pages of Bravey: Chasing Dreams, Befriending Pain, and Other Big Ideas , her new memoir … They have a heavier emotional context and impact for the most part. Did you have to prepare yourself in any way to begin writing so personally and honestly about your depression and recovery? “Write from the heart. Personal Essay. Did it come at a particular moment or “right time” or was writing memoir something you had been thinking about throughout your recovery? Because it is a memoir of your real life, how did you know when you wanted to write this memoir? I think this is why I kept inserting the adages she left us as her philosophical legacy. I kept finding material in other literature that resonated for me as I went through the cathartic experience of writing the memoir. How did you know that you had gone deep enough by your final draft? How did you overcome them? Merkin has struggled with clinical depression almost her entire life and she has been hospitalized numerous times, beginning when she was a child. She writes candidly and openly about her experiences and treatment attempts, and about ultimately finding her way through with the help of music, meditation, and vigilant mood monitoring. How did you choose this method of publishing? I write as I see it. It was important to make sure the content remained “user friendly” to the audience. I knew I’d gone deep enough with my final draft when I had a sense that I felt absolutely clear and emotionally lighter about the entire journey. When I had such undeniable success with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation my enthusiastic response was, “People need to know about this!”. What was your process like incorporating these more medical and scientific aspects into your personal narrative? I also relied on notes I had taken while I was in the hospital, as well as the video diary I kept during the six weeks I was in TMS therapy. All of us are, to a degree. As a fiction writer, I admit to being very anxious about writing of my own personal matters for others to read. What effect do you think including this specific medical information, such as statistics and clinical studies, has on the reader? 1 Grab the reader’s attention from the off You can’t hit us with everything at once. I used meditation as my go-to salvation, especially when I didn’t think I could write another word because it was either too emotionally difficult, or it was just plain tedious and I doubted my story’s value for all the effort it took to tell it.Try to keep what you’re writing to yourself in a judicious way so that others won’t take liberties of trying to tell your story for you. What advice do you have for writers of any genre on writing about personal or difficult subject matters? 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