“I want to write about my childhood, but I don’t remember all the details.”

“How can I write my memoir if I don’t remember a lot of details about what happened?”

I hear this a lot from my clients, and it’s a good question.

How do you write about an event – and make it vivid and real for the reader – if most of the details have faded?

How do you fill in the blanks?

This brings me to a concept that we talk about a lot in memoir writing, which is this:

It’s okay if not every detail is true.

Yes, it can still be considered nonfiction even if you make up a few details.

What matters is the *emotional truth.*

What matters is your interpretation of it. Your imperfect, biased, hole-y memory of it.

*

A memoir is not a recording of what happened. It is the story of what happened, passing through the filter of you and your lived experiences.

Tristine Rainer, author of Your Life As Story (a must-read for any memoirist), makes a distinction between memory and reminiscing. She writes that reminiscing, which is what we do when we look back on our lives, “is richer, more complex, poignant, and resonant than memory.”

“Achieving reminiscence,” she writes, “is reverie, a dreamlike state of relaxation in which you start with the memory fragment you have and, by mixing memory with imagination, dream your past.”

Memoir-writing is the act of dreaming your past.

If you could use some structure, guidance, and support as you dream your past onto the page, check on Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer, and/or reach out to me. I have two openings starting in May for ghostwriting and book coaching clients.