How to begin a Memoir

Gosh, your whole life: do you start with your diapers? First grade?

Find a structure. Think of three to five conditions of your life for example, as Shakespeare did, and make them chapter headings. Infancy, childhood, youth, young adult, middle and old age.

You can start with the old age and go back or just stick to one category. You could follow a pal or school or your dogs or cars..

Houses make an excellent structure for my story so I'm going to try writing from the Houses I've lived, sticks and bricks which have protected and nourished me.

That first house, for starters, the one where my bedroom ceiling sloped down on one-side to a knee-wall. A knee-wall is a low interior wall, perhaps three-feet high. In my house, two sticky doors in one bedroom wall opened to a very low attic above an end of the living room. The air in this attic smelled like old, dry, raw wood the way a summer cottage at the lake smells when you open it in June for the season.

Inside this dark space my parents parked the battered luggage they rarely used. But one night after a nasty fight where my father's voice rose almost to a shout, Jesus Christ, Sally! and my mother ranted at him about their miserable lives in Middle Haddam, his measley earnings, broken promises, dreams unfulfilled, the usual marital excoriation, I hid with the covers over my head. Suddenly Mom stormed into my bedroom, jerked open those low doors and yanked out a suitcase.

"That's it! I'm leaving!"