If I have a large pile of books next to the bed, I often have a hard time picking which one to read next. So to help with my decision making, I read the review blurbs in paperbacks. The other day I picked up  A Mountain of Crumbs, the memoir by Elena Gorokhova. One of the reviews by Elena Lappin of the New York Times said it could be taught as “a master class in memoir writing.” That caught my attention. I started reading. The first chapter is riveting, full of evocative writing that paints pictures, sets the scene, conveys smells and emotions and sketches out characters in a fulsome way. I thought if I could imitate this first chapter, the book I’m working on would sell.

I always read the acknowledgments in books, too. Usually before I start reading, but sometimes after I’ve read a chapter or two. After the first chapter, I turned to the back of the book and read the section. She mentions a class on memoir writing that she took with Frank McCourt the late author of Angela’s Ashes. Gorokhova mentioned that she had bits and pieces and McCourt advised her to concentrate on the “hot spots” of her life. I took that to mean the situations that were turning points — they either altered the path of her life or her world view.

When I finished reading for the night I grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote down the hot spots of my own life. The story I want to tell, need to tell and that I think will be beneficial to the world at large is all about my most recent years. But when I wrote my list of hots spots, they all occurred in a seven year period between the ages of 8 and 15. That list of events, however insignificant they appear to an outsider, are the little things that changed the way I see the world, that stunned me to the core.

So now I am left wondering if the story is about what happened to me in the last three years, the last decade, or if it really is those hot spots that so changed my world view. If the best memoirs are stories of moving through an event and coming out the other side, what is the event I have moved through? The list from my childhood impacted exactly how I dealt with what life handed me as an adult. I don’t mean to imply that chronic illness, a special needs son and a husband who decides he’s really a woman aren’t life-changing events. But they didn’t change me. Just my life. What altered the person I am are the moments from that list. Those are the things I carry with me day to day, that color the way I see the world and how I interact with it and respond to it.

So what is the story? Really. I want to know: what’s the real story I need to tell and how can I find out?