Building a narrative arc in a food memoir

{ how I wrote my memoir: part 4 }

Procrastination comes naturally to me, but I’ve come to embrace is as part of my creative process. Learning to understanding my neurodivergent brain has lead me to be kinder to myself, but it’s also given me permission to celebrate moments I conquer big tasks. Having managed to write an 85,000-word memoir in five months was a huge achievement for me. I knew that I’d taken on a huge commitment of writing a lofty narrative piece because frankly, I’d never written something so deeply personal and so very long. Knowing the the story I wanted to tell offered direction and clarity. Without that I do think it would have been near impossible to craft a personal story into a story with a narrative arc.

In this, the last in the series ‘how to write a food memoir’, I share how I built a narrative arch from the chosen phase in my life and then framed it into a ‘story.’ Building a narrative structure from personal story feels complicated and lofty. Putting your life into a story might appear overwhelming but it doesn’t need to be and I’ll share how you can make it manageable. I know, your life feels so vast and impossible to piece together into one neat narrative. But here’s the thing; it’s not your whole life story you’re sharing in a memoir!

In my food memoir, Andaza, I built a story out of fragmented memories and sparks of scenes in my head that were lost behind the dullness of grief, loss and the enormity of life. Sometimes, if I’m honest, I can’t actually recall how exactly I wrote my memoir, but the fact is, you begin with small steps and break down each part of your life until you’re able to achieve a structure that is manageable and interesting to read.

So in this final piece of the puzzle, I share in detail, how you begin to piece a story from real life into a a tidy narrative structure.

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