🎧 The Line Between Reporting and Journaling: A Memoir Writer's Guide

Where facts meet feeling: How to harness both sides of your story

A Behind-the-Scenes look at the moment memoir calls to you, plus an exclusive method for turning raw memory into powerful narrative. Including the "Organized Chaos" exercise that helped create Blackbird

Welcome into Flight School:

Memory comes a calling and you've decided to write about your life. You're spooked, worried, excited, curious, worried again, and then wondering…where the heck does one begin?

My Path Up the Ladder 🪜

It was 1994-95 and I balanced precariously on a ladder against an old arts and crafts house Steve and I had purchased. (Remember Steve from the marriage story?) Not only did I marry him but now we owned a house.

There I was thirty feet in the air scraping bubbling old paint while NPR played on a transistor balanced on the window sill below.

After the initial terror I might topple off (no safety straps back then), the manual labor and repetitive work in the hot sun started to bend time and flip it around. At least it felt that way to me. Long-forgotten memories lifted and then drifted into the most painful losses of the past.

1964, when they were alive, and I had just arrived via adoption looking…befuddled!

My mother died when I was seven, my father when I was nine, and my brother when I was twenty…but up that ladder, I found myself wondering how, why, and most of all what those deaths meant. I had been an investigative reporter for several years and had learned to ask difficult questions, but until I was up that ladder, I hadn’t asked any of myself.

The Questions That Changed Everything

How did my mother die, anyway? I had been told cancer…but my mother never had what appeared to be cancer…didn’t lose her hair or go through any cancer-like treatments. And how did my father die? I was told a heart attack, but really? He was like what? Forty? And what about my brother? Why did he end his life at the age of twenty-three? What was going on there?

I climbed down that ladder, hurried into the house, picked up the phone and ordered up medical records and certificates of death.

Two Paths Forward: The Reporter and the Heart Keeper

I'd learned in newsrooms from Billings to Portland that good reporting means getting documentation and sticking to the facts. A good reporter knew how to step back, seek balance, and see situations from multiple angles. The documents, and the facts, rolled in and I organized the evidence, consulted experts and pulled together a file of relevant data.

But once I knew I wanted to write a memoir, I needed a new way to be with hard truths. I need to be a reporter AND a person. This meant I also needed time to do a lot of raw journaling where emotion could fly without constraint. For nine months, I filled twenty Mead spirals with unfiltered truth. These journals became a safe place to rage and weep and wonder.

Doing both of these things—and at the same time—allowed me to become a more authentic creative writer.

✍️The Organized Chaos Method: Your Turn

Step 1: Ask the Key Question

Before going to bed, ask yourself: "What do I need to remember and explore? What of my past needs my attention?" (Remember The Fisher King Post?)

Step 2: Listen for Answers

When you wake, write what emerges. These should surprise you and be obvious at the same time. That summer camp you attended? That story your mother told you about her first baby? That sexual assault? If you think, "What? No. I'm not going to think about that..." - that's fine. Don't push it. But if you want to continue forward...

Step 3: Follow the Trail

Look at what you've written. What research needs doing? What calls need making? What documents might exist? This is where things become almost magical. Someone might call you first. You'll bump into someone on the street. An email appears. Something greater than you seems to want to help in this process of awakening.

Step 4: The Double Helix

First, write up a factual reporting with a timeline. Keep those emotions at bay. Be your own best reporter.

Then, get a cheap notebook (that you might end up burning, as I did) and let yourself write fast and furious about how all those facts make you feel. Feel BIG. Someone once told me no one ever died of weeping. Your heart is strong. You are built to feel this. Go!

Remember that these two steps feed each other. Reporting gets the story down. Journaling channels the feelings. When you let them out, new questions will arise.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and the methods you’ve tried. Post in the comments and I promise to write back.

~ Jennifer, 🐦‍⬛