Blog

Stephanie Davis-Namm, Richard White, Park Plazas & Santa Fe—Why We Write Memoir: A Manifesto for 2020/The Year of Seeing Clearly

Stephanie Davis-Namm, Richard White, Park Plazas & Santa Fe—Why We Write Memoir: A Manifesto for 2020/The Year of Seeing Clearly

I often get queries about how to write a short memoir and make it worth reading. I have decided to share a gnarly situation from my own life to show you how to take the content of your day-to-day and turn it into a short…

Should Your Memoir Have the Shape of a Novel?

Should Your Memoir Have the Shape of a Novel?

If you’re writing a memoir this year, you will—at some point—confront the question of whether your story should read like a novel. The answer to that question is as individual as your writing style and the story you have to tell. Maybe you naturally share…

The Best Memoir I’ve Read, and Why It’s Important If You Want to Sell Your Memoir

The Best Memoir I’ve Read, and Why It’s Important If You Want to Sell Your Memoir

Nearly twenty-five years ago, I happened upon a short blurb about a book in the Quality Paperback Book Club newsletter. That’s going to be a hit! I thought, so I ordered a copy, read it, and watched the world of story roll over in front of my eyes. What was the book? The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr, but the reason I am choosing Karr’s memoir as the best I’ve read may surprise you.

Yes, it told a riveting story in a voice we fell in love with, but something else was going on behind the curtain. The Liars’ Club brought back to life a form of story telling that had always been around—memoir—but had been sleeping in the corner for awhile, at least in terms of publishing

For decades it had not drawn much attention to itself; rather it existed as a category where important people chronicled their important lives, or so the genre was seen by readers, writers, agents, and publishing executives.

Then  along came Karr, and the floodgates opened.

That’s why I single out Karr and The Liars’ Club, not so much because she showed us that everyone has a story and people will read those stories (which indeed she did), but because Karr—along with Frank McCourt and his book Angela’s Ashes, published a year later—changed the game in publishing.

I see her example as an important lesson, a paradigm of what needs to happen again to keep the genre of memoir from miring into a cesspool of celebrity tales and unremarkable writing. Karr illuminated a path to follow, if you’re smart. Likely she didn’t plan what was to come; it was just a convergence of right thing/right time, but still, she showed us a way to capture the market by taking a category (memoir) that hadn’t received much hoo-ha, snatching it back from its slumber, and popping it into the spotlight.

So, the question becomes, if you’re slugging along on a personal story that may be like so many others that have already been published: How can you make yours different by using a form of story telling that has been overlooked, or fallen from favor?

You can make a career out of just such a stroke of genius.

 

How Can I Finish My Memoir by the End of the Year? Three plans for right now

How Can I Finish My Memoir by the End of the Year? Three plans for right now

Many of you have begun your memoir. Many of you are almost done with your memoir. And some of you are still thinking about it and writing it in your head. Here are three strategies for the Return to School spirit you feel in September…

Memoir Writing: Avoid the Fiery Issues of the Day, or Take Sides?

Memoir Writing: Avoid the Fiery Issues of the Day, or Take Sides?

We live in a time of intense political debate. Siloed in our separate value and belief systems we find it hard to talk with strangers because we do not know what they believe, so we side-step controversy and avoid topics that might upset them. But…

How Long Does It Take to Write a Memoir?

How Long Does It Take to Write a Memoir?

When you sit down to write a memoir you may wonder how long it’s going to take to finish the thing. The fact it, there’s no standard time frame. I have encountered several writers who say they worked for fifteen years to get it right—to finalize a solid draft relating personal experience that is filled with universal truth and which tells a story.

Others whip something out in five or ten.

The trouble with memoir is that it’s written from personal experience, and our understanding of the things that have happened in our lives shifts over time as we grow and try to find meaning, and this meaning making shifts, too, with each new tool acquired with age—the tools of writing, self understanding, life experience, and deeper understanding of the people who have  path with us. All these new tools and awarenesses influence the story we compose, and as the months and years pass, the story wiggles into a new form.

Writers with experience have a shorter time of it. They’re not fighting against all the basics of composition that a new writer must hurdle to get a draft on the page, and they are better at revision, but everyone struggles for long months to figure out what material to include, how to make it meaningful, and how to keep the pace moving so that a stranger would want to read the tale.

Very practiced writers could knock out a good first draft in a year if they had already thought about what they wanted to say—and stuck with it—and had little else to do in their life. (A rare situation!) And then they might spend months in revision and editing.


But this would be the rare writer who understood that the passage of time does shift understanding of events and yet she must commit to a vision and hold with it until the manuscript is complete. You might call this laying out a story plan and then following through with it even though some new major understanding might have arisen along the way. (These rare writers see that they may incorporate some small part of this new major understanding, but they will not allow it to completely shift the plan for the story.)

For most writers, though, the experience of writing a memoir goes more like this: you spend years figuring out what to include. Then you spend some more years figuring out what that chosen part of your your life means, and then more months carving an arc from it—creating a story line that shows the narrator changing (in some big or small way)—and then more time lining up the events in such a way that they have momentum and make the reader keep turning the pages. And that’s just a first draft!

So, what I suggest, if you really want to write a memoir, is plan on spending a handful of years on it, and if you really want to write a memoir that sells, plan on spending two handfuls of years on it—and getting some help along the way from an editor, teacher, or educational program with whatever aspects of the compositional process that are testing you, be it the basics of punctuation or your understanding of how to develop character or build a story line that goes some where.

Think of it as the apprenticeship. I’ve never met a writer who didn’t serve one.

Is It Okay to Begin Writing a Memoir and then Turn It Into a Novel?

Is It Okay to Begin Writing a Memoir and then Turn It Into a Novel?

Sometimes the story we begin writing outgrows the boundaries of memoir and branches away from the task of reconstructing real people and lived events and leaps imaginatively into invention—first, invention of little this’s and that’s, and then (oops!) into the invention of bigger this’s and…

Thinking About Truth and Your Family When Writing Memoir

Thinking About Truth and Your Family When Writing Memoir

Concerns about hurting family and friends are some of the most worrisome for memoirists. My advice? Quit obsessing about it and get on with the writing. Plenty of would-be memoirists have stopped themselves before even getting started, due to such concerns, and many who have…

What’s the Biggest Challenge for the Memoirist Today?

What’s the Biggest Challenge for the Memoirist Today?

The biggest challenge facing today’s aspiring memoirist is little different than the biggest challenge facing the memoirist of twenty years ago when memoir underwent its contemporary resurgence: Distraction.

The only thing that’s different is the form of distraction. Once it was television, videos, TiVO, DVDs—in another era, radio, perhaps for the aspiring writer. Name your poison. There’s always some vice vying for your attention. Now, it’s the smart phone and social media—the constant distraction and ability of that combo to lead you away from fine writing and original thinking.

In basic writing terms, we’re talking about the ever-present snarky tone of voice rampant throughout the internet, which can lead memoirists, and all writers for that matter, to think that snark is a catchy/cool, sustainable voice with which to garner an audience. I beg to differ, especially in memoir where it is essential that the voice of the narrator be authentic—and snark, while funny for one second, gets old quickly, and doesn’t convince readers they are in the presence of a thoughtful writer plumbing his or her personal depths for universal meaning—which is what readers of memoir, at root, are seeking.

But on top of that, there’s the challenge to overcome the appalling use of grammar, syntax, language, spelling—the

plethora of invented styles of writing on the internet that may include incorrect spellings, interminable run-on sentences, a complete lack of understanding of the role and use of punctuation. Really, if you want to be a serious memoirist today, you can’t write like that. You must learn the craft of writing—how vocabulary, spelling, sentence structure, punctuation, and the art of story telling work. And you must practice these skills, so that you might manipulate them like a master. In a world of fast news, rampant opinion, and sloppy writing, it’s sometimes hard to remember that there are actually traditions in writing and communication that exist for the simple idea of mass comprehension. These traditions must be learned by any aspiring memoirist.

In terms of message—your content—the challenge for the memoirist today is that you must disconnect long enough to figure out something original to say. Yes, knowing the trends and passions of the reading public can be helpful, but as a writer who wants to be published, you have to be centered in your singular truth. Copying the last retweeted idea isn’t going to cut it.

You, dear memoirist, have to find your ideas. Disconnect. Think independently. Feel your way into your thoughts. Figure out what things mean to you. Read widely. Be quiet. Allow the gift of alone time to teach you what is original. You can’t be quiet and thinking deeply with an electronic device in your pocket, hand, purse, car—you name it—pinging and ringing. Original thought does not come out of a smart phone.

Original thought for the memoirist comes out of a place of self reflection about complicated personal experience, and you can’t hear that original thought if you are in constant relationship with a device loaded with applications, the bulk of which exist to distract you from—for some—the frightening prospect of being alone with yourself.

The challenge is big for the memoirist today—everyone out there can write a memoir, and many of them are, and because of the shifts in publishing, everyone out there can publish that memoir. That doesn’t mean the memoir will be read. For the memoirist who actually wants an audience—outside family and friends—the task is to spurn distraction, listen for original thought, and having mastered the craft of writing, record that which is wholly your own.

Why Do People Read Memoir, and What Are They Hoping to Find There?

Why Do People Read Memoir, and What Are They Hoping to Find There?

     Once upon a time, people who loved stories read novels to find keys for living a good life, for answers to the thorny questions of being human, for understanding why people behave the way to do, or to gain greater awareness of the dark…