Writing the Unexplainable: Crafting Memoir Around Spiritual or Transformational Experience

Putting words to paper is never easy. Conveying experience can often fall flat. Writing a memoir is a deeply personal look into one’s life, a mirror, a reflection. Anyone who has attempted to undertake the task, has something burning within that needs to be told. But with sharing comes enormous vulnerability. It is an unmasking, a ripped bandage against already chaffed skin.

(5 Tips for Figuring Out the Structure of Your Memoir.)

In writing my memoir, drummer girl: A Story of Life After Death, there were many moments when I paused. I had entered a territory that I had difficulty articulating, no less finding words for the unseen, the unspoken. In these moments, these long days of living in the question, I placed my emotional body back into the experience, and from there I could slowly, word-by-word, begin to craft my narrative. The first words to hit the paper were never quite right, but in the writing, these words, these initial sentences began to outline the story and slowly reveal the emotional undertone of the experience. Instead of writing about it, I could then write from it.

Memoirs are difficult because it is not only about the story that you tell but more importantly, the story that is read. Readership needs to resonate with what is on the paper. When I was collating my many entries for drummer girl, I was surprised to find that this was not just a memoir about me, but the story of a pilgrimage. The pilgrim is driven by a force from within, possibly not even recognizable, yet so compelling that one cannot turn away. The ember burns deep. It leads to places for consciously unknown reasons, yet the pilgrim follows. This unfolding journey of life speaks to the evolution of humanity. To be human, we must all meet and overcome obstacles, big or small. That is this life.

I have read a dozen memoirs where the story speaks directly about the author from the author’s experience. Some books I have closed prematurely, the personal story was not that compelling, I could not relate, there was no hook. Everybody loves a good tale; everybody wants to take on the cause, side with the protagonist. A memoir is most remembered by the story it lives within.

Educated by Tara Westover, although about one woman’s struggle for self-invention, is best remembered for the journey she embarked upon and the obstacles she did and sometimes did not overcome along the way. Educated is couched in a universal plot of physical, emotional, and psychological survival. I remember the memoir, I did not remember Tara by name.

Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild captures her impulsive choice to hike the Pacific Crest Trail and the ever-so-many obstacles that she encountered along the way. Interestingly, the crux of these obstacles was self-inflicted. The very thing that drove her on this journey (her ignorance) was the very thing that she continued to stumble over, time and time again. I do not remember all of the obstacles, which were many, aside from her initial pair of ill-fitted boots, but I do remember my anger and frustration over her reckless and unplanned venture into unknown territory.

The underlying theme in my memoir, drummer girl, is about the search to find my truth. At age three, during surgery, I had a near-death experience. There are no words that can aptly describe this experience, because death is beyond time and therefore, beyond language. The experience was more of a felt sense. Even when writing, the words did not adequately describe the experience, they did, however, speak to the audience in common, universal terms. From my words, an inner landscape could take root.

The job of any writer is to paint the clearest picture possible, to stir an emotional response, to build rapport with the reader. Assume intimacy as you slowly rip the bandage: Your wounds should become your readers, however raw, however bloody, however scabbed over. Readers want to feel you, they want to “know” you. This is where the vulnerability sets in. This is the sneak peak of your diary, unabridged. The more vulnerable you feel, the more honestly you have disclosed.

A linear approach to telling your story can become predictable; the reader could lose interest, quickly turning the pages to reach the ending. I have been guilty of this. Because each experience we encounter is built upon where we were previously, it would be most effective to knit a myth that weaves back and forth between the present and the past. We are here today because of our yesterdays and the yesterdays before that. Map the territory, take the reader through the shadows, let them bask in the sunshine, and together create a third thing—their experience of you.

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