Tell It Slant Memoir

The course, Personal Essay and Memoir, provided me both new knowledge and the opportunity to experiment with some writing approaches that I had not used previously. The information gained from our textbook, Tell it Slant, contained helpful insights that is applicable to many types of writing. While this information is beneficial, in the long term, the immediate gains came from actually writing a personal essay. Furthermore, we learn more from what we do wrong, or poorly, versus what we do correctly. This is what my experience has been in this course.

Primarily the work done of the personal essay taught me more than anything else in this course did. Candidly, the draft is one I am so unhappy with that I fear even attempting to revive it, but there was a lot learned while drafting it. To begin with, Tell it Slant stated that, "Memoir mines the past, examining it for shape and meaning, in the belief that from that act a larger, communal meaning can

emerge" (Miller and Paola 95). This was the first time I heard such a clear definition about what a memoir is. Armed with that information I made my attempt at creating a draft.
Selecting an event to focus upon, which would have meaning, was straightforward. The death of a friend would be great for this assignment. Although my essay fell short, I still am comfortable that the subject of him dying is a good choice. The fact that he died at a young age from ALS could have added more meaning to the story, although the essay did not take advantage of that. Nevertheless, looking specifically at what the textbook stated about memoirs communicating meaning, it is evident there was not much meaning given in the essay from Steve's death. Failure to make any meaning out of what took place leaves the essay without a message. This led to the question about why I did not communicate any type of significance out of this, and led to a couple reasons.
First, the memorial service, in the essay, took place after this term had started. While others might derive meaning from an event quickly, I am a bit slower when I am working my way through the emotions. As stated earlier, there was nothing of importance communicated in the essay. Furthermore, it is even possible the whole point is that all of this had no significance, which might be the meaning of the story. With my own thoughts not fully formed it comes as no surprise that the story lay flat.
Next, with the death of a friend, the expectation is that there will be specific emotions experienced, but those feelings do not exist. In hindsight, it would have helped to note what our text stated, “Ironically, while creative nonfiction can be a tool of self-discovery, you must also have some distance from the self to write effectively. You must know when you are ready to write about certain subjects and when you are not” (Miller and Paola 159). If I ever decide to write a memoir, in the future, it is necessary to have more time passed before writing about what took place. Considering the need for there to be a passage of time, when writing a personal essay, I can reflect upon a story written earlier this year. That specific story contained elements of a memoir, and there was a lot of time between when I wrote it and the events that took place. One of the events took place five decades ago. That story worked, and ended up published. The one written for this course did not turn out well. Even so, time passing is not the only problem encountered in writing the story used in this course.
Another element experimented with this term was how much time passed in the story. In an earlier English Literature course, we read "The Story of an Hour", by Kate Chopin. Her story took place in a single hour. When our text stated, "Its lens may be a lifetime, or it may be a few hours" (Miller and Paola 95), the thought of writing a story that took place in a short period occurred to me. A memorial service fit the requirement of compressed time. Writing a story, in such a brief period, had not been done previously. While I do not believe that the compressed period created a problem, the issue remains that this was a new approach to writing. The negative impact this had on the essay was a lack of brevity. The story labored on and on, which leads to the belief that the story lost track of where it was going.
The final experimental element in the story was to write in the third person.

Tell it Slant stated, "Though memoir is the nonfiction form most closely associated with an 'I,' it can be written in second or third person (Miller and Paola 95). A couple of reasons influenced me to write in the third person. First, I rarely write from a first person point of view, and never have intentionally used a second person point of view. Familiarity with the third person perspective made me feel comfortable, while writing what was otherwise an uncomfortable story. The other consideration was that the use of third person would allow “other” voices to be included in the story. The initial plan included the use of another voice, to give meaning to what was taking place. In hindsight, it is clear that meaning never developed in the story, which made the use of third person seem cold and distant. This is another problem with my essay, but I also learned that it is easier for me to write a personal essay from the first person point of

view.
Although there are many areas, I am unhappy with about the personal essay that does not mean everything was a catastrophe. While drafting the story the issue of too many characters at the memorial service arose. Each of them added something to the story, but there were so many that it was distracting. The first draft created all of them, which was factually correct. Consideration about what our text stated, “A composite character is a fictional construction” (Miller and Paola 158), had not been done. During a revision, a composite character took the place of several characters at the service. This kept the story moving along at a better pace, which readers appreciate.
Furthermore, understanding how readers want the story to keep moving reaches into other aspects of writing as well, beyond my personal essay. One of these is the discussion of nature. Living at the crossroads of multiple wilderness areas has nurtured my attraction to nature, more than most. Appreciation of John Muir, which gave rise to our environmental movement, is in my soul. Nevertheless, I also struggle reading his books. Our text stated, “In other words, we tend to approach nature writing first and foremost as description. While fine description is dandy, it tends to wear thin after a while” (Miller and Paola 30). I would agree that this is how I feel about Muir, yet at the same time, some of the posts on our discussion board were quite troubling, and my fellow students appear disconnected from nature. Repeatedly there were comments about how any description of nature was “too much”. I nearly enrolled in a MFA program that had a Wilderness Concentration, instead of Lindenwood. Although the love for nature is a major part of who I am, it is not where my writing is concentrated. Being irritated at my classmate’s reaction to nature served a valuable purpose. Between my frustration with Muir, and through hearing my classmate’s struggles, it provided me with some insight into how nature needs described to non-Sierra Club members.
This lesson also applies to how much description to use in setting up a scene. With my personal essay, I wonder about how much description the living room had, and was it too much. The living room had nothing to do with nature, but the information brought out regarding writing about nature applies here. The course subject was about writing a personal essay. However, limiting knowledge learned during the course only to the personal essay would be like limiting the concern of writing too much description to only nature.