Memoirs die because they are not well thought out; writing them is a source of healing, so it’s a bit of a splurge, and because you are in reality writing at least three books at once – but it might not feel like it.

I dare you to go and look at your hard drive; there will be a document called Chapter One – that’s always a great place to start. Or perhaps you imaginatively called it book stuff or the book, or if you are anything like me, any number of names depending on my mood. And if you are lucky enough to have versioned it, you could be in luck.

Then there are the opening and closing ceremonies. You open it. You read the same three paragraphs, scratch your head and gaze vaguely into the distance. Your next action is to close it again. Once in a while you add a paragraph you were pleased with at eleven at night in your journal and embarrassed by at six the next morning while supping your cuppa. Ha, it happens.

And somewhere around four thousand words (more or less), it has died a horrible death.

You will have reconciled with this and probably explained this to yourself already a thousand times. I can see me complaining about time or the weather (it’s very hot in Spain right now), and you currently simply have to finish another pressing project.

The worst yet is the 3 am I can’t do this meandering, and out comes your journal with a new outline and pivot – or is that only me?

Maybe you are nodding your head, we are human and full of doubt and contradictions afterall.

Many years ago I wrote The Journey To Self-Love and a book about the heart chakra and something about self-love. The memoir part took years, and honestly it wandered around with a real direction. It had a purpose – it was for healing, and I, like you, may have had the thought, who was I to teach self-love, and before you knew it I couldn’t write any more of my story – I just couldn’t. I created a course instead, which I am proud of, but it’s a bit old now…

As an aside the course can be rekindled when I get off my bum and write the book…

What actually killed it

You, like me, probably sat down to write your life, and without noticing, without ever deciding to, you began writing three different books at the same time. I had more than that, but we will leave my misdemeanours to another time.

They look like one book while you’re writing them, which is the whole problem. They’re on the same subject; you include the same events, and they’re in the same voice. But they want different things, and they pull in different directions, and a draft can only take so much of that before it throws its dummy out of the pram and stamps it’s little feet.

Another confession from me is that The Journey To Self-love became Rude Awakenings and something else I can’t locate. The point is that it is easy to do.

What books, not memoir, might you be writing?

Book A – the story

What happened.

You have scenes, people, places, events, the day your life changed, standing in the kitchen when you make that discovery (I was in the kitchen), a phone call, the red shoes and the words he or she said to you ten years ago that still cuts you to the quick.

Book A has people moving through a life you lived bit by bit. It has the weather, dialogue that could read as he said, she said, and then there’s a person at the centre who is different at the end from how they were at the beginning. That’s the transformation.

It doesn’t explain itself; it invites you in and trusts you to participate.

Most memoir you love is Book A. We all love a good story, don’t we?

Book B – the teaching

What you learned.

The bit where you stop and turn to the reader. What I understand now is this. What I’d tell you if you were sitting opposite me is this. The five things that got you through your soulless lost nights. The framework you concocted at 3 am – yes, I have had many sleepless nights with incoming downloads and the best method in the world to do this.

Book B is generous. You are giving people a precious gift. And for a great many people it’s the actual reason they want to write at all.

This is a real book and often an excellent one.

Book C – the reckoning

The book you’re writing at somebody.

You pick your target – the ex, mother or father, the git that never said sorry and the colleagues or ‘friends’ who watched it happen and said nothing.

Book C runs hot; it’s on fire, builds a case,  anticipates counterarguments, and it is written to make someone feel something – not the reader – the person this is aimed at who you can’t name or like me you have given them a name which never identifies them in public.

Book C is also where the turning-to-the-reader gets defensive rather than generous. You’d have done the same. Anyone would have done the same.

Nobody sets out to write Book C. Everybody writes some. Blimey, I once had a client who wrote a lot of vitriol and didn’t want to remove it. It was a horrible read.

Why they can’t be the same book

Each one wants something different from the reader, and you can’t ask for three or more things at once.

Book A wants the reader to watch. It needs them close, inside the scene, lost in the story and forgetting they’re reading.

Book B wants the reader to learn. That means pulling them out of the scene and up to the roof, where they can see the pattern.

Book C wants the reader to agree. To be a witness. To be on your side.

So the reader is dropped into a kitchen in 2014, hauled out for a lesson about boundaries, then handed a case to judge. Three times in a chapter. I’m chuckling as my Dickie Quick story starts in the kitchen in 2014.

The reader doesn’t consciously notice. They just stop reading, and they can’t tell you why.

All of this is valid and sometimes necessary for your healing – at least that is what I have found; it was all a part of a process I needed to go through. And perhaps you do too.

So at around four thousand words or even twenty thousand words, you feel the book refusing to gel. You assume that’s you. It isn’t. You’ve built something structurally impossible and then blamed someone or something for it. Dratt that book!

Which one are you writing? Discover more with this – Which book are you writing?
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Dale is the guide and facilitator for Memoir School and The Soul Writers Lounge. Come and join her for journaling and writing about life.