I find myself at an impasse with the second book I have in my backlog. When I wanted to write a memoir, I knew I couldn’t write the traditional Point A to Point B type that starts at first memories and ends at current circumstances. Mainly because I don’t remember well enough to do any of that with a certain degree of accuracy.
What I did instead was collect short memories, each one numbered, and compile them without any sense of a timeline. It’s disjointed and chaotic, but so are my experiences. Of course, now that the memoir is complete, I’m wondering if I should have taken a different approach.
I can’t help but wonder how it would be different if I did a collection of essays? Or perhaps pretended to relate the stories to someone else? Like a past version of myself, where I would give advice about situations I had learned from.
Or maybe I should just stick to how it is now and now overthink the format for a book I’ve already finished. Who knows?