How to Write a Memoir by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.
The Memoir as Sacred Journey: Lessons from a Life Examined Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. When students ask me how to write a memoir, I usually begin by telling them what not to do. Do not simply write a chronological account of your life. Most memoirs fail because they become catalogs of events: this happened, then that happened, then something else happened. The reader learns what occurred but never discovers why it matters. When I wrote I Just Wanted to Dance with Dionysus!, I approached my life differently. I treated my own experiences as data. I became both the subject of the story and the investigator of the story. Rather than asking, “What happened to me?” I asked, “What does my life reveal about the culture, institutions, and social worlds I inhabite...