Write Well: On memoir, life stories, and the bones beneath both

Word of the Week

Retrospect (RET-roh-spekt) —n. a survey or contemplation of past events; a looking back. In retrospect, the day she missed her flight was the best thing that ever happened to her.

From the Latin retro (”backward”) and spectare (”to look at”). To retrospect, literally, is to look backward.

The root spec- runs through more of our vocabulary than almost any other. Once you start hearing it, you’ll catch it everywhere:

• Prospect—to look forward

• Inspect—to look into

• Perspective—the way one looks through (a thing, a moment, a life)

• Suspect—to look from below (with distrust)

• Circumspect—to look around (cautious, careful)

• Spectacle—a thing looked at, often with a negative connotation (“She made a spectacle of herself!”)

• Speculate—to look at a thing and turn it over in the mind

• Spectacles—an old-fashioned word for glasses, things we look through

• Spectator—someone who watches.

For the memoirist or the writer turning a life into fiction, retrospect is the working stance. You aren’t living the events anymore; you’re looking back at them. That distance is the gift. Without it, you’d be writing a journal.

In retrospect, she could see the whole shape of that summer—the lies, the kindness, the slow surrender—but at the time she had only known she was tired.

Q&A

Question: I want to write a memoir, but my life isn’t very interesting. I haven’t survived a war or climbed a mountain or escaped a cult. Can a regular person still write a memoir worth reading?

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