Memoir as Medicine

The Healing Power of Writing Your Messy, Imperfect, Unruly (but Gorgeously Yours) Life Story

Nancy Slonim Aronie

• Publisher: New World Library
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781608688081
• Print ISBN:
  9781608688074
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

A wonderfully fresh and frank guide to why and how to write personal stories that will heal, liberate, inspire — and entertain — both writer and reader

Writing has been medicine for Nancy Slonim Aronie. At nine months old, her son Dan was diagnosed with diabetes. Then, at twenty-two, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. During the years she and her husband took care of Dan, and when he died at age thirty-eight, Aronie could not find the book she needed. So she wrote her memoir.

In teaching memoir writing, Aronie has found that everyone has a story to tell and that telling it is important. Sharing “this is who I am, these are the things that shaped me, this is where I am now” allows a kind of magic and healing to happen. Over decades of writing and teaching, Aronie has created a set of prompts, directions, and examples that she shares in Memoir as Medicine. She shows readers how to write through where they have been and into deep understanding, profound healing, and even unexpected joy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Memoir as Medicine
• Halftitle Page
• Also by Nancy Slonim Aronie
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1. In the Beginning …
• Chapter 2. Why Write?
• Chapter 3. Uncertainty
• Chapter 4. You Don’t Have to Start at the Beginning of Your Life
• Chapter 5. If Your House Is Clean, You’re Not Writing
• Chapter 6. However You Begin, Make It Real
• Chapter 7. Sometimes You Have to Be Shaken, Not Stirred
• Chapter 8. Soul Work
• Chapter 9. Write about Someone You Think Is Different from You … but Maybe Isn’t
• Chapter 10. Turning Points and Pressure
• Chapter 11. You Cannot See the Gift in What You Resist
• Chapter 12. Seasoning the Grill
• Chapter 13. Write the Same Thing Several Different Ways
• Chapter 14. Not Everyone Is a Storyteller
• Chapter 15. You Will Not Be in the Room
• Chapter 16. Insights
• Chapter 17. Sometimes Our Stories Begin with a Crack
• Chapter 18. Your Story Will Take Many Turns, from Joy to Pain and Then Back to …?
• Chapter 19. Pay Attention to the Coincidences
• Chapter 20. Don’t Be an Expert: Be an Expert
• Chapter 21. Don’t Shy Away from Taboo Topics
• Chapter 22. Journal, Journal, and Please Journal
• Chapter 23. You Are Not a Reporter
• Chapter 24. Do Not Expect to Be Published: Expect to Be Published
• Chapter 25. Have Two Pockets in Your Skirt, Your Shirt, and Your Jacket
• Chapter 26. Solitude
• Chapter 27. Perspective
• Chapter 28. Grief
• Chapter 29. Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve
• Chapter 30. Write the Blood on the Page
• Chapter 31. Timing and Edginess
• Chapter 32. The One Line
• Chapter 33. Give Your Story Time to Breathe
• Chapter 34. Be an Eavesdropper
• Chapter 35. Use Dialogue
• Chapter 36. Vulnerability above All Else
• Chapter 37. Don’t Trick Your Readers
• Chapter 38. Etc. and So Much More
• Chapter 39. Accept the Possibility of Failure
• Chapter 40. Now Let’s Talk about Success
• Chapter 41. Visualization
• Chapter 42. Can I Just Take All My Journal Entries and Turn Them into a Book?
• Chapter 43. Take a Memoir-Writing Workshop
• Chapter 44. Anger
• Chapter 45. Stories Grow Right through the Cement
• Chapter 46. Write about Something That Shaped You
• Chapter 47. Read, Read, Read
• Chapter 48. Letters: Write Them
• Chapter 49. Essays
• Chapter 50. Write Everything
• Chapter 51. Quoting People
• Chapter 52. What If My Recollections Are Muddy?
• Chapter 53. You Don’t Get to Skip the Pain Part
• Chapter 54. Sometimes You Need an Outside Story to Be the Shift in Consciousness
• Chapter 55. Writing to Heal
• Chapter 56. Read Your Stuff Out Loud
• Chapter 57. You Don’t Need a Writing Studio to Write Your Memoir
• Chapter 58. You Can Write Like This? About Stuff Like This?
• Chapter 59. Too Many Crises Are Gonna Be Too Hard to Swallow
• Chapter 60. Humor
• Chapter 61. Great Writing without Going Anywhere
• Chapter 62. Rewriting Is Actually Where You Start
• Chapter 63. We’ve All Heard the Writing Advice Show, Don’t Tell
• Chapter 64. The Stories We Tell Ourselves about Ourselves
• Chapter 65. How about Serializing Your Memoir in a Blog?
• Chapter 66. Go to the Top
• Chapter 67. Fighting for What You Want
• Chapter 68. Conclusions on Their Way to Endings
• Chapter 69. Endings
• Acknowledgments
• Publication Credits
• About the Author