If you are the sort of person who processes and organizes your thoughts through writing and have lost someone you cared about deeply, I highly recommend you turn your loss into literature.
For me, writing a memoir about my best friend from junior high school was a matter of wanting to bring her alive on the page. That, and excavate my complicated feelings towards her. So, these are my tips if you feel inclined to do the same. You don’t have to churn out an entire book. What about an essay?
DON’T: Shine the halo. If you’re looking to humanize the person you lost, you can’t simply highlight her stellar qualities. My suggestion is that, like a teacher giving feedback, you start with the positives. Just move on from there.
DO: Include her flaws, her quirks, her struggles. Be fair. Writing from a place of resentment does not make for compelling reading. Think about the family. You can make your person have dimension without sharing over the top embarrassing details, especially if you believe she wouldn’t want those bits released into the world.
DON’T: Write dense blocks of exposition. Readers need variety. It’s easy to fall into the trap of giving a long-winded story like you might when talking through your memories with someone.
DO: Use the tools that fiction writers use. And memoirists. Like dialogue. Let the reader hear what your person sounds like and has to say.
DON’T: Assume that the reader can picture your person. Actually, this person would be referred to as a character once you commit her to paper.
DO: Describe your person. Physical description. Include mannerisms, character traits, sensory impressions.
DON’T: Limit your point of view to just your perceptions of the person you lost. Remember others lost her too. Get them in on it.
DO: Interview people who knew her. Probe the interviewee for anecdotes. Try to get a balanced view from others.
DON’T: Treat this piece of writing like an objective piece of journalism. I made the mistake in my first draft of glossing over the emotions around the friendship we had.
DO: Try to capture the full spectrum of emotions you experienced. I had to really reach outside my normal range to do this in rewrites. I practically felt as if I could have used an emotion wheel to help me.
If you do decide to write about a person you’ve lost, please share with me. I’m hoping to branch out into having guest blogs.
Or, if you don’t want to share your writing, let me know what you think of the new title for the blog. “Don’t get attached to your title.” An author just told me this last week. I’m working on that. As of now I can’t come up with anything better that I can stomach.
