Guidebooks and manuals
There was a time, more than a few years ago, when I imagined what it would be like to write manuals for a living. Manuals and user guides - documents that tell the story of how something works, whether a physical object or digital product. The idea wasn’t exactly random because I had authored or maintained several technical guides at work, full of arcane terms and detailed scenarios. It’s possible my first credited piece was a manual full of standards and specifications for healthcare transactions. My journey to memoir came through technical writing, of all things.
I just finished writing another guide. I needed a project to occupy the space between composing and revising as I wait for my editor to work through the manuscript. My notebook is restless, it seems, so new work emerges and finds me. There is a practical reason for this guide, and the idea pre-dates the book project. After the paragliding competitions in Chelan last year, I decided a a guidebook was needed, a place where useful details and knowledge about volunteering could live. I’d walked into the event not knowing - there were bullet points and stories, but nothing more substantial existed. Often, this is how I create work for myself: I see something that doesn’t exist, wonder why, and then decide to build it.
Maybe my book, when it becomes that, will be a sort of manual, a guidebook for navigating towards something, through pain and suffering and loss. I think memoirs can be instructional, that seeing someone else’s journey can inform your own, giving perspectives, strengthening compassion. I’ve read many inspiring stories (Lindsay has read even more), but I continue to struggle with the idea that mine falls into this category. Yes, it’s an odd thing to say while working towards publication, but this is the truth. And unsurprisingly, this theme emerges in the manuscript. How much of this wobbly self-doubt remains in the final draft is an unknown.
Here’s a thought I had this morning: more people should write manuals about things they love, subjects they know, work they’ve been immersed in. How-to guides can be thrilling to read, but also to compose. You must sit outside yourself for a while and imagine teaching someone without your knowledge and experience. You will learn something by asking those why’s, describing your processes, simplifying and explaining them on the page.
What sort of manual would you want to write?
I have a vivid memory of the first manual I read, around age 11 or 12 - MS DOS. Perhaps this was the earliest clue I would work with technology later in life. Back in the days of boxy desktops and CRT monitors, home computers came with reams of documentation and I devoured it. I wanted to know how the system worked, so I read the manual. This is still my approach today.
Reference guides can be works of art, beautiful and simple, while profoundly informative. I remember being impressed with the documentation that arrived with my SawStop - it was clear that serious thought went into its creation, and reading it was a delightful experience. Powerful insights appear in unexpected places if you’re really paying attention.
In the manuscript I describe the moments after learning the biopsy results, at the very beginning of everything, how I wanted to read every study, even if I didn’t understand all of the words. I was curious, without being unsettled, which might sound hard to believe, but this scene takes up so much space in memory, I know the feeling.
I find detailed surgical instructions and operative reports equally fascinating as narrative objects. In the decade long journey to better understand my self and the alterations my body has undergone, I’ve read guides on surgical techniques and planning, the sort of pieces residents probably study. And then the transcribed accounts of what actually happens in the OR, in chronological order. These facts and details are something to behold. My hope is to someday research and study this subject more - flap reconstructions of the head and neck. There’s a story there, one I know I could tell, given enough time and guidance.
Recently I learned that a dear friend was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. The disease had been caught early but the whole ordeal was shattering. I am not the sort of person who this should happen to. I’ve done everything right. That’s a rough place to be, unsure of who you are, life disrupted, forced to make choices you never considered. It’s unmooring to face a new reality that breaks apart familiar ideas of who you are.
I haven’t studied enough Buddhist philosophy to articulate it well, but there is something to the idea that one’s identity is a fluid, changeable thing, that becoming attached to a static notion of who you are usually causes suffering. This is another theme I explore in the book - what it means to accept change you cannot control, and how loving yourself sometimes requires letting go of cherished identities. I feel like I’m still learning how to do this, writing a manual that’s mostly for me, but also useful to others, I hope.
I love manuals in the same way I love non-fiction, which is mostly what I read. Learning something new, peering into a discipline or a life, discovering a truth I didn’t know beforehand - I always want more of that feeling.
I’m already scheming up the next manual, which has parallels to the volunteer guide and the manuscript. Maybe it’s a generational thing or a product of my long form attention span, but I tend to believe that some subjects are better explained textually. And good manuals do have visual interest, pictures and diagrams that illuminate the written content. While working on the volunteer guide, I had great fun browsing through hundreds of pictures for the selecting ones that fit the tone and message I aimed to convey, remembering the people who made the experience so life affirming.
There won’t be photos in my book when it goes to press. I hope to paint my characters - friends, people I cherish - with truthful, vivid detail for the reader. I’ve read some guides on how to do this well, mostly books. Soon the writing and revising will start again and the manuscript will become a book that’s maybe also a manual, a new way to understand your life through the prism of another. I look forward to sharing.