How to Write Non-Fiction: The particular challenge of writing memoir
“Writing the self is a tricky, slippery business.”
—Cathy Rentzenbrink, Write It All Down
While every book is a challenge, I found writing memoir to be particularly difficult, from deciding what the shape of the book would be, to writing the first draft, through the editing, and all the way to publication. In this chapter, I’ll go through some of the specific things you might face when writing memoir, or even including aspects of memoir in other types of non-fiction.
Memoir might take longer to write
Before writing my memoir, Pilgrimage, I knew intellectually that it might take a lot more time than other kinds of writing, but practically, I didn’t expect that to apply to me. After all, I’ve written more than forty books. I know what I’m doing!
My non-fiction self-help books usually take a few months to write once I knuckle down to the first draft, and I write pretty clean these days, so my edits are not usually significant.
But actually, I’d been working on some kind of memoir for decades. As I said during an interview with memoir teacher Marion Roach Smith on The Creative Penn Podcast, “I keep walking up to the idea of memoir and then walking away again.”
That’s how it’s been for a long time, and perhaps you know how that feels.
Threads of ideas that emerged in Pilgrimage started in my teenage years, and the idea of walking the Camino de Santiago stemmed from those early days of faith.
The words that eventually became Pilgrimage were written between early 2020 and the end of 2022, over the course of almost three years, and most of them were discarded in the editing process.
I’ve never taken so long to write a book.
I’ve never discarded so many words.
I’ve never wrestled with the material so much, and I’ve never found it so hard to produce a finished book.
But I am so proud of the result.
Pilgrimage is a snapshot of my life, and the time and effort it took was certainly worth it.
Not that memoir must take a lot of time, or that books written quickly are less worthy in any way. It just shows that writing memoir, in particular, is a messy process, and shaping a semblance of your life into a book that others might want to read is a challenge.
Let your memoir emerge.
It cannot be forced into being. It may take much longer than you expect to write — but it will be worth it.
Structuring memoir
I use Scrivener as my primary writing software and I had several Scrivener projects for what eventually turned into Pilgrimage, all started and left unfinished over many years.
The original project was called Untethered, and it was a series of essays about my travels and my search for the idea of ‘home.’ I turned many of those into solo episodes on my Books and Travel Podcast, but I couldn’t find a thread to link them together or a theme to anchor a book I wanted to write.
I started another project after solo walking the Pilgrims’ Way. It was more a travelogue with a day-by-day account of the route and my thoughts as well as practical tips. But once I wrote it down, it seemed pointless. There are enough route guides already and I had nothing new to offer.
I walked the St Cuthbert’s Way the following year, and I kept writing up my journal entries into Scrivener. I wrote thousands of words under chapter headings, some of which made it into Books and Travel Podcast episodes, others which still lie dormant, perhaps never to be used in a published work at all.
After I returned from the Camino de Santiago in 2022, the book I wanted to write solidified in my mind.
I started a fresh Scrivener project and copied and pasted elements from all the old projects into it. I also added transcriptions of various solo podcast episodes and interviews I’d done on other shows, as well as typing up more journal notes from each trip.
In my initial phase of using Scrivener for any project, it is a complete mess. I add placeholder text for everything I can think of, then I organise it and fill in the blanks later. It truly is wrangling chaos, and sometimes I just have to walk away and return when I can see clearly again.
Sometimes an initial chapter was just a brain dump. I added lots of raw notes with no commentary, including practical things that I intended to expand later.
You can see an example here:
www.TheCreativePenn.com/pilgrimageraw1
Those raw notes are also a good example of not knowing what you will consider important until later. They mention ‘the surprising mural by Adam Kossowski’ in Peckham, but there are very few details in my journal. Luckily, I took lots of photos which you can see on Instagram at:
www.TheCreativePenn.com/pilgrimageadam
In the finished book, this mural became part of a chapter, “Walking in the path of history puts life in perspective,” in which I expanded the description and reflected on its meaning. The mural illustrated two thousand years of London’s history, and I included a picture in the limited edition hardback. While I enjoyed the art while walking past, it became even more important in retrospect, representing historical aspects in both a metaphorical and physical way.
Don’t try to write in linear order or decide what’s important at an early stage. Just get everything down and reorganise later once you can see the scope of the entire book. If you try to impose order too soon, you might miss some of the richest parts.
The importance of vulnerability and emotional honesty
“Be as honest as you dare and as honest as you’re possibly comfortable with, and then a bit beyond.”
—Alastair Humphreys on The Creative Penn Podcast
Although I had published many books, both fiction and non-fiction, before Pilgrimage, it was terrifying to put this book out into the world. I’ve always struggled with fear of judgment and it was in full force as my memoir reached readers for the first time.
But perhaps this emotional honesty is what enables memoir to connect with people in such a deep way.
We bare our hearts on the page, and readers respond.
Memoir requires emotional vulnerability and the sharing of personal stories and insights. As such, it requires more depth from the writer than other genres. I was intimidated by this, especially as my Pilgrimage story includes aspects of depression and suicidal thoughts that I hadn’t shared before.
I’m also British and I’m not an over-sharer in general. I was taught to “pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again,” one of my mum’s favourite mantras when things were difficult. Don’t dwell on the past, just get on with whatever’s next.
But we’re all broken, and the pandemic years in particular beat everyone into the dust. If I hadn’t shared my difficulties, it would not be a memoir but a travelogue or a trip guide.
Memoir demands emotional depth, so I included aspects of physical pain, mental health problems, and even the hormonal rollercoaster of being a woman in midlife. To be honest, I questioned whether to include that section, but my depression and insomnia were so closely linked to my hormones, and were so quickly fixed by HRT, that I included it in the hope it would help others. Since publication, I’ve received many emails thanking me for sharing, so it was worth it.
Of course, there were things I edited out.
Things related to people I love that didn’t serve the story and, therefore, were unnecessary in the book. Other things that I hadn’t processed enough to share at that point.
But I included everything that the book needed.
Writing Pilgrimage also helped unblock some of my resistance to writing in a more vulnerable way, which led to Writing the Shadow: Turn Your Inner Darkness Into Words, a book I struggled with for many years, and finally managed to write. The gifts of memoir are rich indeed.
Character arc in memoir
“We’re not reading your story for what you did, we’re reading your story for what you did with it.”
—Marion Roach Smith on The Creative Penn Podcast
A memoir requires a character arc — and that character is you!
It’s not just what happened. It’s why it matters and how you changed as a result. This transformation is what the reader is seeking in their life, and your story helps them see that change is possible.
When I returned from walking the Camino de Santiago, I realised how much things had shifted for me since I walked the Pilgrims’ Way two years before.
My mental and physical health were transformed, and I felt like I had come home to my husband, Jonathan, and my city of Bath. I had always struggled with the idea of settling and had never found a place I truly felt at home, but something shifted after the Camino, and I stopped wanting to always move on.
A month later, we adopted two British shorthair cats, Cashew and Noisette. You can find lots of pictures of them on my Instagram @jfpennauthor.
This might seem like a minor thing, but we last had a cat, Shmi, in Australia in 2011. It had been over a decade since I felt settled enough to commit to looking after animals again. I had turned a corner in my life and suddenly I saw how the book would end.
I’d been through a transformational character arc without even realising it during the process, and perhaps that is how life works. When we’re in the middle of a difficult time in life, we can’t see the end or reflect upon its meaning. We have to finish the experience in order to truly understand the arc.
So, if you can’t see the character arc and transformation in your story, you might not have finished your journey yet.
Questions:
• What are some of the particular challenges you might face if you’re writing memoir or including aspects of memoir in another kind of non-fiction book?
• How can you prevent yourself from rushing to commit to a shape or structure for the book before you are ready?
Resources:
• Memoir books, interviews and resources — www.TheCreativePenn.com/writing-memoir
• Writing your transcendent change: Memoir with Marion Roach Smith — www.TheCreativePenn.com/marion23
• Raw journal notes in Scrivener — www.TheCreativePenn.com/pilgrimageraw1
• Writing and Marketing Travel Memoir with Alastair Humphreys — www.TheCreativePenn.com/alastair19
• Pilgrimage: Lessons Learned From Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways — Joanna Penn
• Pilgrimage Resources with the articles and interviews I did in the years while I struggled to write the book — www.BooksAndTravel.page/pilgrimage-resources
