Writing 'memoir'

I have come to the conclusion that the 'sort of' memoir that I've been working on for approximately eight years is an unhealthy pursuit. And although I have 400 hundred pages completed I am thinking of shelving it.

To go back a bit, this grand undertaking was what started me writing seriously, the three fantasy  books I've subsequently published, the 'fun' writing to take my mind off the 'more important' project.

The background to this story arrived one day in a box sent from my sister-in-law and brother who had been cleaning out the basement of the farm where my father spent his last years. No one had known about the journal my father kept while held captive, a POW who had been one of the soldiers on Corregidor when it was taken over by the Japanese. I read this missive through twice, crying every night. I had to bring this to the world's attention.

After several false starts, I devised a fictionalized version,  focusing mostly on the difficulties of a marriage between a shy young woman born to wealthy, socialite parents in Washington, D.C. and an ambitious young man who wanted to bring himself out of the blue collar family he'd grown up in. In the interest of family members who might disagree with my version I changed names and dates and many circumstances that I was privy to. And because there was no one left to consult I had to make things up. I've added in letters from my mother to my father and many of his journal entries, but other than that it is pure fiction.

So, you say, this sounds good, why quit? While writing this blog I've felt the urge to continue, the pull of the story I've created but...these are some of the reasons why I think it's a bad idea:
1. I'm not doing justice to the reality of their lives.
2. Family members will be horrified.
3. I would like to divorce the story from reality but I can't get these characters I've created out of my mind. (and they definitely look like the younger version of my parents)
4. It's too glib.
5. I don't fully understand the history of the time.

Have you come up against anything like this in your writing? And if so, how did you solve it?

procrastination...

As usual I'm writing a blog instead of working on my 'other' writing. My characters are lying on chaise-longues, puffing languidly on cigarettes--"When do you plan to get to us, dahlin'?" one of them asks--Be right there...

Right. I have two-hundred pages written on a fictionalized version of my parents' story--starting with their marriage in 1938...my father was a POW in a Japanese internment camp for three and a half years. And I have his journals. Mostly they are an accounting of food items the prisoners received from the Red Cross, as well as daily musings about what was going on (many seriously horrific)--all in the form of love letters to my mother...Since he never spoke of ANY of this (I was born after the war, my brother before), and my mother died when I was thirteen, I've had to make up the story of her life  to go along with the letters...

Turning my parents into characters in a book has been a very interesting endeavor...Juxtaposing his journal entries with the little bits I know about my mother's life during the same time is the structure I've chosen. I shudder to think what my brother might say if and when this ever gets turned into a real book--My father told me many, (inappropriate for a young girl's ears,) details about his marriage after my mother's death. She had taken up with another man while he was gone--I'm not surprised considering she was 22 when they married and he was away longer than they were together...And I still don't know if she received letters from him--if so they aren't in my bulging file folders...But it was the memory of my mother that kept the man alive and able to cope with the horrors he went through. She was every heroine of every book he had ever read...can't imagine how hard it would be to live up to the pedestal he placed her on.

It took me two weeks to read his journals and I cried every single day. And of course he was not the same man when he came home. In his journals he planned to give up his army career, instead he said he wanted to dedicate himself to my mother and raising animals and growing things...If, of course, he made it out alive...

What happened was of course very different. She wanted a divorce but they didn't get one. And then I was born. They did buy a farm and raised animals but my father also continued with his army career, full tilt boogie--it was who he was.

And so I struggle with honoring their memory as well as being honest with what I know...and...making an exciting readable story out of it all...'good luck' you say sarcastically? Wolf Moon Trilogy came out of my procrastination with this story--I started to do a little fantasy fun writing to break up the emotional exhaustion...hmmm...is there a lesson here?

write-a-thon-

As you can see I have added a badge to my blog page. This signifies my participation in the annual write-a-thon put on by Clarion Foundation. My goal is to finish a book I've been working on for two and a half years--a fictionalized version of the war years when my father was a POW, captured in the Philippines by the Japanese. I have called the story a 'memoir' because my father kept a journal during his time as a prisoner and I have added many of these entries verbatim, but my mother's part is completely made up. I have struggled to be as close to what I knew of her as possible but it's been  difficult to distance myself enough to create an interesting story. I'm about two-thirds through at this point--almost to the end of the journal.

It was after my father's death several years ago when my brother and I found the box in the basement that contained his journal. It had been typed up by an aide, I suppose, with many blank areas that seemed to be parts censored by the Japanese. My father never spoke to my brother or myself of his time as a prisoner other than to say that they ate rats and a lot of rice. The demons that dwelt inside of him were never aired other than anger that seemed focused on events that didn't warrant it. When my mother died accidentally in 1960, my father took a nosedive into depression. I remember a man visiting, a fellow officer who had been a prisoner with my father. They stayed up all night drinking and reminiscing, although the word  'reminiscing' does not do their discussions justice. I could  heard the bellowing from my room on the second floor as I struggled to get to sleep.

In the next weeks my blogs will contain excerpts from my work as well as more background information. I hope these posts will be of interest and welcome any and all comments.

I've added a link to the Clarion Foundation for those who are interested. http://www.theclarionfoundation.org/writeathon/wrtn-writerpage.php?writerID=6941