As I look back over the memoire I'm truly dreading writing my own one. The main reason is that I don't know how I'm going to fill up all that "stuff" that I don't remember without completely making up all of it. I feel like this is a major problem with all the memoire writers. I think this happens to Jon Krakauer a lot I mean he was completely oxygen deprived tried and had almost nothing to eat too. I wonder how hard it was to write this memoir in the sense that all these people he knew died.
I cant imagine how emotionally stressful that must be. Writing the character descriptions for all those people that died up on Everest that he made friends with must have put a heavy toll on him. For me I might have not even been able to talk about it there were some terrible things that happened up on the mountain. The day after the storm a group of Sherpa went up to look for survivors, thy found nobody but Beck Wethers who was completely frosts bitten and presumed dead but when they chipped off his frozen over face mask he was still breathing. They said that he was to long gone to survive, but that night just like he had risen from the dead he some how made it back to camp four and lived. There was another person that had walked straight off the mountain in to the abyss. Just so many horrible stories about peoples demise. Thought I have never been through a event like that I'm still not sure how he dose it.
When it comes down to it I feel like it will be extremely hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yK-OYKFHdE&list=PLJJLNd45FDfj-fkgZsp0ka6XYdAm6J95R
This is a video of a lot of the people that were on Everest and about what happened, I think it has a lot of good interviews and testimonials.
I totally agree with everything you are saying. These are all things i am worried about when i am going to be writing my memoir. I don't know how i am going to remember what i need to remember when it was from so long ago. But I also don't want to have to make up all the details because then i will feel like i am lying about my life. There is also the factor of not wanting to remember things from the past. I know that there are a lot of things that make up who i am today that i don't want to have to remember and write about. I wish you good luck, and i guess we will see how writing our memoirs go.
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ReplyDeleteI completely understand what your saying. It must have been a struggle for him to write this memoir because of all the horrible things that he must have had to relive in order to write his memoir. He would have been so sad while writing about the deaths of people that he had actually known in real life. But, in my opinion you shouldn't dread writing your memoir. I hope that it will be a lot more positive then Jon's memoir.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you are saying. I am also amazed at Krakauer, and how he was able to remember this tragedy. This book was a mixture of many people's memories I think. I'm pretty sure Krakauer interviewed lots of people who survived there and also the families of the ones who died.
ReplyDeleteIt's ok to not remember everything! You should feel empowered to write a detailed scene, even if you don't remember every single detail, in order to write a strong memoir. Also, memories are faulty anyways. I think the stuff we do actually remember isn't necessarily what actually happened. We remember things the way we want to remember them and how we remember something can change over time. Sometimes we overlap memories or we start to remember things differently and that is OK. Don't be afraid to add some detail or dialogue here and there to fill in memory gaps.
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