Even memoirists need to do thorough research
In my previous post, Respect the Truth, I shared one of the tips I presented last month to a group of nonfiction writers. I suggested the foremost consideration before beginning a writing project is understanding why you want to write it. It’s important to know who you want to reach and what you hope to accomplish. There are probably as many reasons as there are authors.
Another important consideration is how and where to do research. I write memoir and personal essay, so you might think research isn’t necessary. The truth is I spend time on research every single day. It may be as simple as ensuring I know the proper usage or definition of a word—Thesaurus.com is my friend! I’ll sometimes email a friend to clarify a point or dig through old journals to find a date or the particulars of an incident (the subject of Things We Keep). Family photos can be great resources for details I’ve forgotten. There are also times when I read online articles to fully understand a principle or a historical event.
Kennedy’s assassination is a watershed event, one that all Americans experienced at the same time and that changed a national attitude on the vulnerability of authority figures. It shaped all of us.
In my first memoir, Mother of My Invention, I describe how I responded to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. I was at Oak Park Elementary School that day and vividly recall observing—dry-eyed and perplexed—the noisy tears of my teacher and classmates. I remember going home to find my father had fallen ill and come home from work that morning. He hadn’t heard the news. As I told him about the day’s events, I burst into tears, as though the enormity of the president’s death had finally sunk in. Kennedy’s assassination is a watershed event, one that all Americans experienced at the same time and that changed a national attitude on the vulnerability of authority figures. It shaped all of us.
To tell this segment of my story, I needed to dig into several historical accounts of the shooting to accurately portray the context. I knew the president had been whisked to Dallas’s Parkland Hospital, where I would work as a research department supervisor several decades later, but not much else. In 1963, I watched the television footage, over and over, of the president and first lady sitting in the back of the convertible before and after the shots rang out. The image is seared in my memory. However, I wanted to confirm what time of day the shooting occurred and when the president’s death was announced to place it correctly into my fifth-grade school schedule. I needed to know exactly when Jack Ruby was killed, so that I could correctly describe the following days, days that flanked my Thanksgiving school holiday. Those are details I didn’t remember. A singular national event impacted my life at age eleven, and my research helped me accurately describe it and illustrate its effects.
One of the most useful courses I took in grad school in the early 90s was called Online Database Searching. (I just researched an online Chicago Manual of Style guide for proper formatting of the course title, by the way.) Almost all my journalism courses required research papers, and I tired of combing through the stacks of academic journals in the back room of the school library. Most digital academic information was housed in subscription databases, only accessible to academic or research institutions. Google hadn’t been launched yet (that came in 1998—just googled the date). I was fascinated by the efficiency of database searching and the convenience of locating information from any computer terminal. I became convinced, long before it was possible, that all information known to mankind would someday be available at the fingertips of anyone with a computer and internet access. This has largely come to pass. Databases like PubMed (medical research data), JSTOR (general academic journals), and ERIC (mostly education resources) are still in use by academics, but more and more public and school libraries are opening databases to patrons. At the same time, the variety of open online databases has expanded.
Over time, cultural trends and traditions impact our lives as well. In addition to academic databases, there are literally millions of records online of 1960s music or 1970s fashion and hairstyle trends (remember the “shag?”—just googled it). Regional current events play into our histories, too. Growing up in southwest Louisiana in a town of around seventy thousand residents provided me and my peers a unique history—all of it accessible in some form today. Yearbooks, newspaper archives, and local histories all provide context for the factors that influence us. All these details, with images, are readily available in various forms.
The integration of Artificial Intelligence in most aspects of day-to-day life has introduced even more accessible information (misinformation?). While there is still a great deal of debate over the appropriate or ethical uses of AI, there are a few undeniable facts. First, as with all technological developments, this one will have unintended consequences. There have already been concerning disruptions in certain job sectors and new security and privacy issues. More will undoubtedly follow.
Despite these cautions, using AI to complete research saves time and has the potential to retrieve information from sources I have no access to.
Trust but verify has always been the best policy. AI models merge reliable as well as unreliable sources, so tracing AI data to its source is more critical than ever. Despite these cautions, using AI to complete research saves time and has the potential to retrieve information from sources I have no access to. And while I never use the text presented by ChatGPT directly, I sometimes get good ideas for concepts to repackage or research further. Searching for a good title for my memoir yielded interesting results and gave me some new ideas. When writing my book proposal, I found some great suggestions for comps. I discovered a couple of books I’d not heard of, but which found their way into the proposal.
Of course, the fact that accurate information is more easily accessed comes with certain obligations. There’s no excuse for not knowing the facts of a historic event that anyone can easily find. Misreporting the circumstances of an event is the surest way to lose credibility with your readers. The context of the events you’re recording, whether personal or public, makes your personal story richer. Just as analyzing my emotional responses to a national trauma when I was eleven provided deeper understanding of the story I wanted to tell, readers of your stories need to know the background to better relate to what you write. Nonfiction writers, even memoirists, need to be willing to dig deep, not only into their own histories, but into the history we all share.
Janice Airhart 