Thinking About Memoir

Hello everyone and congrats on making it through 30 days of writing!

I wanted to say a word or two about the art of Memoir writing, since I know that a few folks are working on memoirs or memoir-based material. As you probably know, a memoir is very different from an autobiography. An autobiography, in the formal sense, is usually written by someone who is a public figure, a politician, an actor or artist, etc. The subject of a formal autobiography is usually just the story of that person's life, and how they came to be the famous person that they are today. An autobiography is about everything that happened to someone, usually ordered chronologically.

A memoir, on the other hand, is not just about what happened, its also about what it meant. A memoir is about an individual person's relationship to a certain subject matter. For example, Alex Fuller's book Don't Lets Go To The Dogs Tonight, is about her relationship to her family and to Africa, where she was raised. Rick Bragg's memoir All Over But The Shoutin is about his relationship to poverty and how he survived what poverty did to his family. One of the first things to do when you are thinking of working on a memoir, is to write a bit about what relationship is driving the book, and to start collecting the individual stories that bring that relationship to life for your reader.

Its important to note that sometimes you will hear these words used interchangeably, for example, someone famous might be said to be writing their "memoirs" which of course means their autobiography. Or a writer who creates a memoir might include the word "autobiography" in the title, like Lucy Grealy's book Autobiography of My Face, an intense memoir about her relationship with illness, disfigurement and appearance.

Of course all the basic rules for writers always apply when working on text that is centered in the world of memory, (just like work that is centered in the world of the present moment or the imagination) we have to write as if our lives are important and what we have to say has value. We have to acknowledge that we are the only ones who can tell our stories and if we don't tell them then they will go untold. And we have to write as if someone is already out there, listening for what we have to say. If you believe these things, especially in the writing of memoir, then your writing WILL have more power and impact. Remember as you work to take refuge in specificity and uniqueness of expression, rather than taking refuge in abstraction or big words. Make sure we know when and where the stories are taking place and that we can see and hear the people who populate your text.

Learn the skill of using imagination to serve as the mortar between the bricks of your memory, use it to fill in the spaces where you may have forgotten details or conversations. This is very different that using your imagination to invent whole events that never actually happened. Remember that fiction means never having to say your sorry, so if the best way to tell your story is to fictionalize it and to call it fiction (inspired by a true story) then go for it. But if you are choosing to stay in the realm of factual memory, just remember to write fearlessly and edit carefully. Don't try to change all the names of everyone in your past before you even write the first draft of your story. You have the absolute right to write about what happened in your own life and how you felt about it. So don't worry what anyone else will think of the first draft, there will be time and space to make careful choices about who you represent and how, as you go through the drafting process.

And above all, be brave and keep breathing as you write and make it doable. Make a list of everything that you want to include in your book, all the stories that matter most, in the order you want to tell them. This list might change 100 times, but just make a draft of it. This is your working outline for the book. Remember that a good memoir, like a good novel, requires active, interesting scenes. We need action and dialogue, description and visual content. Bring us into your world.

Best of luck with it, and please feel free to add comments here and let us know how the work is progressing. I will add another post soon about writing stories and novels, and of course poetry. Keep at it!
all the best,
Max