Create the Container: A Method for Writing Difficult Memoir

The book I will publish this year took me 40 years and 5 weeks to write.   

Why did it take so long?

I was 18 and a creative writing major in college when my mother died by suicide, sure she couldn’t live with the medications for her serious mental illness or without them. I knew I had to write about our journeys. I wanted to reveal the truth, too, about the inefficacies of antipsychotic medications, and the truths of my mother beyond her illness.

(The Difference Between Remembering and Writing in Memoir.)

But I didn’t want to write it. I didn’t know how to shape her story and mine from that time into a book. Where would the story start? What should it contain? Did I want to take a chance of falling down a rabbit hole never to return to my much-better present? I couldn’t imagine when I would feel ready to write the book or if I ever would.

Time passed. I turned 30. Then 40. Then 50.

After college, I was a book and magazine editor. In my 30s, I expanded my literary career to specialize in memoir, as an editor, teacher, consultant, and coach. The idea of my book stayed on the back burner.

Twenty years later, a computer glitch caused an unexpected gap in my schedule. The appointment calendar on my website wasn’t working. But I didn’t know that yet. All I knew was that new clients weren't making appointments with me.

I had time on my hands. What should I do with it?

Feeling like a kid who’s just found a dollar on the sidewalk and hurries off to buy a couple of candy bars at the store, I sat down at my desk in front of a blank computer screen. Was it time to take a stab at that memoir I’d always thought I would write someday?

I checked the clock: 9:25 am. I would write until 10 and see what I got. In the first minutes in front of that blank computer screen I knew where I wanted to start the story. The fear of falling down a rabbit hole wasn’t far, but a swell of urgency powered me on.

It was May, and sunset came as a surprise around 6:00 pm. I turned off the computer. I had opened the gates by sneaking up to writing this book instead of planning to sit down and write it.

I continued writing every day, determined and inspired. The fire in me was lit and I wrote fast. The book was my secret; that was the only way I could do it. Five weeks later, I finished the first complete draft—86,000 words.

And then I broke my own writing rule: I looked at page 1 as soon as I finished the first draft. Had I really written the book? Was it any good? I had done it, and it was good. But page 1 needed a few changes.

When my webmaster uncovered the problem with my website and corrected it the week I told her about it, I knew the Universe had smiled on me. Its message? “Write your book.” Now I was in revisions.

During those first months, I knew I was walking in dangerous territory. To write vivid scenes, I had to dive deep into memory to re-create the story into a literary memoir. I had to create scenes, dimensionalize key characters, spend time with them again however uncomfortable it felt. I had no qualms about cutting or developing material, using only what was needed to serve the story. Getting the idea to change the story structure from linear to braided was like a bell going off—it was exactly what was needed.          

But the concerns that had kept me from this project for four decades were right at my side. Writing, I could feel shaky, uneasy, like I was 14 again and it was 1974, not 2019. Could I go into this story from the past and come out just fine again?

I tried to shake the feelings off. They didn’t leave. I couldn’t stop writing or I would never go back to the book.

And that’s when I knew what I had to do.

I created a container to hold me in a creative bubble. I needed to feel open to the muse and safe from fear of the past consuming me when I dove into memories long buried.

To assemble the container, I designated a candle as my writing candle and placed it on an antique table in my writing room. I put flowers—symbolic of my having bloomed from out of this past—in a small vase and set them beside the candle to help ground me in the present. I found a small box of wooden matches to give a clear sense of beginning to my writing time with the sound of the match striking and catching flame for the candle-lighting. Next, without a plan for what I would say, I quietly called in my creative muse, my spirit guide.

I asked for strength. I wanted the words I needed to come easily. The constancy of the flickering flame held my prayer and kept me company for the hours of my writing day.

When I was done writing, I went to the table to stand before the lit candle for a few moments before blowing out the flame. I acknowledged my courage and fortitude turning truth to art. Then I blew out the candle, ready to leave the room and the story, free to return to my life in the present.

I share the three steps for creating a container for you to use when you need to feel solid and grounded in the present for your own writing.

This last step, Step 3—closing the container—is as essential as opening it. Do not skip this step. I learned this the day I left my writing room eager to leave the story behind and forgot to blow out my candle. For 15 minutes, I went about the house—made a cup of tea, did some stretches on my yoga mat—feeling vaguely odd and uneasy. I felt weird, my chest felt heavy. The past had followed me out of the room, and the feeling wasn’t good.

Then I remembered. I hadn’t blown out my candle! I was carrying that part of my past with me; it was too fresh, too nearby. I went back to my writing room, stood before the lit candle to close the container consciously, and felt lighter and ready for the evening ahead as soon as I blew out the flame.

Writing this memoir was the hardest and the best thing I’ve ever done. I hope that you will find the value in creating your own container and can take the steps to write the book or story you’ve avoided sitting down to finish or waited years to start.

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