How do you know when you’re ready to publish something you feel absolutely compelled to write? For memoir writers, especially, this question is paramount. This week I watched Michele Cushatt interviewed by Emily Freeman of Hope Writers and found answers that helped me move forward with one of my memoir projects.

Another memoir guru, Marion Roach Smith, says that memoir is about something you know after something you’ve been through. And how do we know anything? For writers, that usually means scribbling our thoughts and feelings for sometimes years to get at the meaning that Cushatt says makes our suffering worth it. Yes, until I can clearly express the significance of an incident, a relationship, a trauma, a season of my life, I’m not ready to put down my pen nor file it in my memory as a done deal.

Cushatt’s basic question concerning publishing is: are you still writing for your own catharsis, or are you  writing out of compassion to connect with others who may have suffered as you have? This is not an easy answer because this transition, for me anyway, came in stages.

What I enjoyed so much about Cushatt’s interview was what I’ll call her publishing readiness checklist. If any of the following are true, then you’re not ready to publish:

Are you still volatile on the topic?

Defensive?

Desperate to talk and write about it.

Do you still feel confused or wounded?

Do you need the approval of your reader? What if someone disagrees or can’t connect with your topic?

Are you healed and in a stable place?

I spent years within all these categories. Somehow, I always found a way to include my issues in a conversation. And was I volatile? You bet. And if you disagreed with me, let me tell you a thing or two! And yet I was still so confused about why I felt so broken, bruised, and desperate to have my story published even before it was completely written. I needed someone else, my listener, my reader, to validate me, to say yeah, you’re right. You were the victim and the other guys; they were the villains. If you are where I was, then according to Cushatt wait a while to pursue publishing.

But she adds, even when it’s not time to publish, it’s always time to write because writing is what brings clarity and clarity ushers in healing as we are able to name our hurts, desires and needs to the Lord, the God who sees. In my own experience, until I’m able to surrender my scars to the Lord, I’m not able to forgive. I’ve heard the definition of unforgiveness as drinking poison and expecting your enemy to drop dead. Only when I relinquish those who’ve hurt me to God’s justice, am I able to get well and move on.

This is the moment when you’re ready to think about publishing. Back to Roach Smith, what do I know now that I didn’t know before I went through the episode I want to share? What I learned is my theme. Be sure you can put it in a concise sentence or two.

And who needs to know? They are my audience. This is the harder question of the two for me. Who needs to know? Doesn’t everybody? Yes, but no book is for everybody. Ask yourself perhaps, why did I need to know this? What misconceptions or lies was I living under prior to the incident, that I now see differently? Who might share those misconceptions?  What hurt the most about my incident? See if you can name it in one word. Who else might be hurt by the same word? Why? Now you’re getting closer. This is the reader you can serve. Cushatt suggests creating a kind of avatar. What do they look like, how old are they? Keep them in mind as you move onto the next step.

What is the objective of your book? What are you offering your reader specifically for their benefit? There can be more than one thing, but they must be few, related, and succinct. Cushatt cautions, every  part of your story must meet your objective. If it doesn’t, you’re off the map. A reader who finds him/herself wandering for meaning may lose interest.

Understanding your objective is especially important for a writer of memoir because a memoir contains no overt takeaways but trusts the reader to find them on their own within the narrative. This is why I love to read memoir. No preachy inserts. No pre-digested thinking, only intact story that draws me in until I’m living vicariously with the author, elbow to elbow, thought to thought, feeling to feeling. So, your memoir must be tighter than tight. Every detail pointing toward the epiphanies you hope for your reader. This is a tall order for any author, but it’s what differentiates writing from literature, and literature is what lasts because it connects universally through lyric specifics.

So, thank you Michele Cushatt, Emily Freeman, and Marion Roach Smith. And fellow writers, I hope this moves you, like it did me, closer to publishing worth publication.

I recently read, The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith. In it she emphasizes that a memoir is not about the author. It is about a central theme, and a select portion of the author’s life simply illustrates that theme. Marion explains, “Understanding this essential shift is the difference between writing good memoir and boring our socks off.” Haven’t we all listened to friends who can’t tell a good story because they don’t know how to leave out all the details we don’t care about?

Marion’s insight also releases us from the awkward sense of self-promotion. These carefully chosen episodes from our lives are simply the vehicle God has given us to share his truth. It’s not about us. It’s about Him.

She’s even provided an algorithm to figure out precisely what it is we are exploring. Basically, we are writing about Y by illustrating X through Z. Knowing this helps us identify and refine our theme so we can go back through our manuscript and edit or delete any story lines that don’t compute.

In my case, my Y, or theme, is recovering from shame. My X, or illustration, is how my Leave-it-to-Beaver childhood collided with my Woodstock adolescence, so I no longer considered myself a “good girl.” My Z, or genre, is a memoir, Back to the Garden, a Search for Home, True Love, and God. Set in a time when religion was considered a stale vestige of the establishment, the unlikely resolution to my identity crisis, was discovering Jesus and his mind-blowing mercy for women like me who no longer felt clean or worthy of love.

Marion’s book teaches that by taking the me out of the theme, it becomes universal. And yet the universal is expressed through specifics. Throughout history people have longed for unconditional love, and worth. Every era has its own half-truths and lies that act as land mines. Do your own thing and free love, were mine, but no one escapes this life unmaimed by some kind of shame.

So thank you Hope*writers and Marion Roach Smith for helping me calculate the truth I have to share with my readers instead of boring their socks off.

As a brand-new Hope*writer I was struck by Gary Morland’s piece, “Self-Protection or Saving Lives.” Gary uses the analogy of a lifeguard who sits high above the beach on a lifeguard chair with a red cross flag flying overhead. The lifeguard is trained to help others who are drowning, but if he sits in a beach chair like everyone else, how would those who need his help be able to find him? Gary’s analogy suggests that self-promotion is not about promoting self, but life-saving content.

So far, I confess I’ve been reluctant to get out of my low-slung beach chair, unable to distinguish my message from myself, especially because it comes in the form of a memoir. Because shame is its major theme, I’ve been hesitant to both submit and promote.   

Through Gary’s analogy, however, I see the through line between private comfort, and pride. Perhaps I care so much about what others think that I won’t risk anything on their behalf. From that angle, my timidity is not humble but selfish.

And what if people reject not only me, but the quality of my writing? Then I am not enough in yet another way.  I’ve been so busy defending myself from possible vulnerability, that I’ve been imprisoned by yet another one of shame’s shifting shadows. How ironic! My story is all about the freedom I’ve experienced through Christ’s cleansing blood.

Thanks Gary, for showing me I can’t stay in my flimsy beach chair when others are drowning in the same currents that pulled me under, not if I want to fly Christ’s cross above my writing.

The other day, I was feeling stuck and discouraged. At times, what writer isn’t? So I chatted with a writer friend who asked me these questions: Why did I write? What do I hope to achieve? What do I want? What roadblocks keep me from getting there? It was a rich conversation, as conversations are with those who know and love you, so I share my answers, hoping that as I articulate my self-constructed obstacles, you, dear readers, can recognize and overcome your own.

First and foremost, I write because I can’t not write. The process of putting my thoughts and experiences into words is vital to understanding my life. The more an incident confuses me, the more I need to unspool it. The more something guilts or shames, the more I scrub to get at its stain. The more something hurts, the more I probe to understand what makes that spot so sore. I’m impelled to write out a detailed log until seemingly disconnected facts and circumstances make sense, not only in my head, but in my heart. As a believer, this is one way the Lord has redeemed lost and damaged portions of my life.

My first memoir, Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School is based on the true story of teaching in an urban middle school is a vivid example. That experience left me broken in a way I couldn’t name, damaged in a way I couldn’t define except as failure. Why did it take ten years of written processing, to get to a finished product? That leads me to my next point, what I hope to achieve through my writing.

In the instance of my first book, quite frankly I wasn’t sure why I was writing it. There were so many conflicting goals. Did I want to vindicate myself as a teacher? To prove to myself and others that I wasn’t a failure? Did I want to indict an education system that harmed not helped the most vulnerable of its students? Could I point to what was wrong? Did I have a plan to fix it? If not, was I just a whiner? Who wants to read a whiner? And where was God in my struggle? Why didn’t He help me? Help my students? If I wrote the truth, would I embarrass myself and dishonor the God I said I wanted to glorify?

I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to glorify God is to write the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the awful truth because He leads us to and through suffering, the only crucible for the soul. It was my emotional agony, coupled with the Truth of God’s Word, that showed me what was really at stake, my self-worth through a positive identity. Up until my collapse as a teacher, I’d relied on my professional competence as the foundation of my identity. The answer to who am I was a good teacher. Ironically, as a failing teacher, I was in the same category as my minority, under-achieving students who were at the bottom of the heap by the world’s standards. I felt their frustration and anger as it mirrored my own. I fought to prove myself in illegitimate ways just as they did. As long as I clung to my accomplishments, I could not rest in my core identity as God’s beloved child. Knowing this in my head, did nothing to extinguish my pride. I persisted in self-reliance until God stripped me of my laurels and all I had was what Jesus accomplished on the cross in my place, until my spotless new persona as his precious daughter was more real than anything I could manufacture on my own.

I’m done with another draft of my second book, a memoir with the working title: Back to the Garden, A Search for Home, True Love, and God. If I really learned my lesson about my core identity in Christ, and my deepest goal is to glorify God, then what’s keeping me from sending it out? For three years I’ve been writing about God’s mercy despite the peccadillos of my youth. It’s a challenge to record unbecoming incidents without refracting some of their foolish glare. And yet without full disclosure, I shrink God’s grace.

When my friend asked me what I wanted from all my efforts, the self-less answer was that others might benefit from my story. They might find comfort in the fact that they are not alone. They might see there is a living God who cares about them. That his sovereign plans reach far and above any personal disasters large or small.

These virtuous desires are true. But more selfish wishes are also true: I want to accomplish something important. I want whatever talent I possess to be affirmed and applauded. I want to not only be self-published, but also published by a traditional publisher of the highest caliber. I want a skillful editor to help me bring my writing to the level of literature. I want a wonderful agent who will encourage me and teach me how to reach the widest audience. Does that mean I’m not writing for God’s glory but my own? Am I angling for a new professional identity as a writer instead of a teacher? Has acclaim as a writer become my new idol?

Framed in the negative, my hopes are clearly my deepest fears. Either I will succeed and lose my privacy, or conversely, I will be rejected by publishers, and dismissed by the public and critics alike. My tale will miss the mark, too worldly for believers, too Jesusy for readers from the world at large, and none of my efforts will make a whit of difference to anyone. These fears and mixed motives have kept my memoir parked by the side of the road. If I don’t try, I can’t fail. If I’m not vulnerable, I can’t be exposed as less than perfect. Perhaps timidity is another guise for pride.

This then, is my advice to myself: Don’t listen to the voices in your head telling you it’s too risky to be real. You serve an omniscient God who isn’t surprised by your past, present or future, and it’s to Him you must give account. Don’t listen to the voices that say your book isn’t good enough, you’ll be a laughing stock. Who will be laughing? Not your God, not your true friends. If your goals are muddy, so be it. Keep trusting in the process of redemption and the Holy Spirit will reveal anything your heart needs to understand. If you are serving a God who is truly good and truly omnipotent, He can use the worst of you for his best. For nothing, not your worst writing, nor your most excellent writing, can remeasure your worth to the Heavenly Father who adores you. Finally, if you trust that your creator has endowed you with all the abilities you possess, then you are free to run towards your goal, resting in the knowledge that it’s His power that so wondrously works in you—so leave all the results above and write on.