Have you tried anything? What has your experience been like? Do you mind my asking?
What you describe is similar in many ways to my attempts.
I keep a daily journal. I have kept journals off and on since I was around 13. But I burned the one from ages 13-14 when I set out to remake myself. And I think I either shredded or burned the one from ages 14-18 when I set out to remake myself again. The journals from most of my adult life are scattered across various books and in various files here and there. I come across random ripped out pages now and again as I sort through my stuff, but most of them are gone. However, for the past 3 years or so I have faithfully kept a journal of what has been happening to me. I now have 14 of them. OMG. I have managed to read 1.5 of them, but it sends me into a tailspin.
Last year, when I was working with a mentor at the healing program I attended, I decided with her encouragement that perhaps I could be of help to myself and others if I wrote my story. Some of the writing exercises we were given to do channeled my focus enough that I was able to write what some of my parts "say" to me in my inside world. These were the mean parts. It was grueling to translate their communications in my internal world into sentences an outsider could understand. But I did it. And it was very helpful to me. It left my mentor/reader reeling and wondering how I managed to get through the day. That whole experience of writing some of the chaos I hold inside me is what set me on this quest to write this totally fragmented memoir. Because it felt really good to share some of this stuff. I have written an introduction, and I have lots of bits and pieces, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to put them together into any kind of narrative that anybody but me would understand, much less find helpful. And there is so much. I spoke with a writer friend about the work and she said that perhaps it would be more than one book. She's probably right, but that sent me into despair and overwhelm.
The one thing I've glammed onto is to write the scenes of one part talking to another. The challenge with this is that the literary/writer part of me wants to create a scene that "works." But I refuse to do that. Refuse to add in or edit. Insist only on writing what is real in terms of the parts and what they have to say. So it comes very slowly, and when it does, it often sends me spinning off into a bad place because so many of my parts are deeply invested in silence.
So right now, I have to decide a) whether to continue plugging along at this project, b) if I decide to continue, I have to sort out my purpose for it and clarify just exactly what it is I want to communicate by writing the book(s), and c) get over the crippling belief that I have nothing at all to say that anyone else would want to read.
So then I try to remember it as a movie in my head. That comes much more easily. Can actually see myself but I can't describe it in words in a way that is meaningful.
I have sort disjointed movie clips. A bit like some maniac took the film of my life from several different film cameras then went at them with shears and left a gigantic disorganized and disjointed pile on the floor.
I think that one of the biggest challenges with writing is how to get the non-verbal experience into verbal form. This is what I struggle with most, at least. I can write the "story" of one of the movie clips, but it still doesn't feel like it conveys what I want and need it to convey.
I am starting to nightmare again. I am going to keep trying.
This happens to me too when I work on writing scenes. On the one hand, I think it may be a signal to take a rest from the work. But on the other hand, sometimes it is parts communicating in dreams...they are so excited that I'm paying attention and wanting to listen and witness them that they're tumbling over one another trying to get my attention.
So, after this whole long diatribe, I don't have any solutions really, other than wanting to give up the writing plan. But I keep nudging back at it. I just can't seem to leave it alone. No easy answers. Dammit. I want easy answers.
