If it were, who besides my family would want to read it. Finally, I agree with the idea of getting the feet wet by publishing essays, but it's difficult to figure out where to tell my story beyond literary journals. I'm still working on that writing problem. I am sure I'll never do a memoir. I mean who wants to read one more story about an ex hippie flower child who railed against the establishment, went without a certain undergarment before gravity and childbirth ravaged them and who basically had the best time when sex, drugs and rock 'n roll didn't cause a communicable desease?
So what if I can't hear in one ear and my grandchildren don't understand why grandma is so different? You think for one minute I'd confirm any of it in print? Hell no! Excellent post. I'm wary of memoirs, and tend only to read them when my book club insists. I found eat, pray, love intensely boring and self indulgent. I love the idea of a memoirist putting several years of distance between the events and the recounting. I'm sure that lessens the "then this happened, then that happened" kind of narrative.
Great detail and advice. I'm forwarding your link to the memoir discussion groups I belong to. Expanding the personal to include the universal will involve more readers in "your" story. It helps to have friends. Rebecca—I think all of us who have taught newbies run into this all too often. Mindprinter—You know whereof you speak. Julie—Think screenplay. A screenplay is much easier to adapt from a shorter work than a longer one. If you have a great episode in your life to tell about, it might just make a good film.
Leslie—I love the idea of a graphic novel memoir. Has anybody done that? Cape or no cape, it could be awesome. Fois—Oh, yes. But damn, it was fun. Marnie—Thanks for stopping by. A few decades of aging might be required to make some stories palatable to the general public. Congrats on your success. The travel memoir or essay is a very popular form.
With people who hope to travel to those place for real, or just in their armchairs. My first book is a memoir about my backpacking days around Australia. During that year I kept a detailed diary of my experiences, and I thought it would be such a waste if I didn't try to write a book at the end of it. I published my manuscript as an ebook in April last year after having the work edited.
I still can't believe that I've created something which other people love and tell me they can't wait for book no. Nicely done. Good advice. I have been thinking about ghost writing a memoir. This helps. As long as the client understands that most memoirs don't make a lot of money. People can have grandiose ideas of book profits, if they aren't familiar with the realities of the market. Good luck. I'm glad this helps. Some really good tips here, thanks for this Anne. Thinking of some local celebrities who could have done with this list of does and don'ts lol.
Thanks Emily. Yes, celebrities who don't use ghosts can put out some pretty unreadable stuff. Great article. My husband's life has been bizarre journey through various subcultures and the seedier elements of society. Not only has he survived extreme scenarios that most people never encounter, the details are hilarious. He's a natural story teller, but some of the best stories are dependent on the weird cadre of people he has met. He wants to tell his story as a memoir and has no qualms about offending anyone, but being sued for some of the scandalous details is a real concern.
How can he tell his story with all the oomph and appeal of "truth" without inviting defamation suits? None of the people involved would ever agree to be included, and while names can be changed, the real stories are too good to fictionalize. Have any advice? Anon—He will need to tread carefully. I would change the names of any character who is likely to take offense and do the Dear Abby trick of saying.
And if he's accusing somebody of criminal activity—even a very long time ago—he's treading on very dangerous ground. Most important, remember that a memoir needs to tell a story, not relate a series of anecdotes, so he might do better with a collection or series of funny stories.
I'd advise him to read some of David Sedaris's books and see how he uses funny personal stories in a way that's not libelous. Most people write autobiography instead of memoir—and autobiography can be pretty dull, even when the subject is wildly famous.
Most people prefer to read a story rather than a series of events. So if you can write about one incident instead of a whole lifetime, you're way ahead of the pack. This blog is great. I'm pleased I discovered it. I had my autobiography, Never Ending Circles, published last August but I had in mind a niche audience which were students. So I was surprised when it became popular with local general readers too.
This was partly because they knew me and partly because I had written about things that had effected most people. I'm working on my memoir now and realising that you never stop learning your craft. Look forward to more of your posts.
Best advice I've heard in a long time! I'm one of those medical "cases" LOL and I know I have to work extra, extra hard on the entertaining angle not to the point it shows or is ridiculous, of course! Quick n' easy… Yeah, right! I'm trying! Thanks for honest, straight-to-ya advice. Much appreciated. I missed this one Leslie. Sounds as if you'll have a good book!
Keeping in mind that it needs to be entertaining is half the battle. I want to write up my travel memoirs from my year around the world. If this was yours memoir how would you write it?
Person, theme, style etc? Would you focus on the photo side? I can't seem tho chose my narrative style for it or decide whether to make it a travel guide or memory based photo book. What a great accomplishment and how fun! Trips like yours can often be best done in blog form. That way you can post all the photos and keep the narrative going in a simple linear style. For a book, you need to consider the cost of photos. Big, big bux for print and tough to put in ebooks Basic Kindles only see black and white.
Then you want a story arc. Look at what works in other memoirs. In Eat Pray Love, her arc was finding herself and love after a bad breakup. What's your reason for the trip? What thwarted you from accomplishing it? This was the year in which the playwright completed Henry V, wrote Julius Caesar and As You Like It and drafted Hamlet, but also a year of great excitement in England - an aging Queen faced the threat of invasion by Catholic Spain, rebellion in Ireland and intrigue at court.
Shapiro's book marries both threads together to create an intimate picture of what life must have been like for Shakespeare and the influences that fed into his writing. Shapiro starts with the winter of and refers to events before and after to illuminate a single year. This could work equally well for family history. The year , for example, is significant for many families as it marked the arrival of West Indian immigrants on the ship Empire Windrush.
Andrea Levy, herself the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, focussed on this one momentous year in her novel, Small Island. Richard Benson, a journalist with The Face, based his book, The Farm, on notebooks he kept during the few weeks when he helped his parents to prepare the family farm in Yorkshire for sale after they reluctantly decided they could no longer afford to live there.
Although the book focuses on a distinct period in time, he widens its scope to reflect back on his childhood, and the importance of the farm in his life. Writing about two or more people whose lives have a natural symbiosis can give the reader more for less. The subjects might share a similar background and context and the interaction between them will give the reader a deeper understanding of each.
This is especially true of family members and in particular siblings. James Fox's The Langhorne Sisters is both a group biography and a family history in which he uses letters and diaries to examine the lives of his great-aunts and grandmother who were born in Virginia, USA, but who made their mark on high society on both sides of the Atlantic.
One of the advantages of group biographies is that there is usually at least one figure who is more flamboyant than the others. He or she can sweep the story along, carrying other characters, who may be less compelling, with them. Nancy Astor, who became the first woman to take her seat in parliament, fills this role in The Langhorne Sisters. In some instances the rivalry and tension between the biographical subjects add a sense of drama to a joint biography whether the figures are Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes or the cousins Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots.
Roland Huntford's joint biography of the polar explorers, Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen, The Last Place on Earth opens with a short description less than a page of the two men embarking on their expeditions before doubling back to outline earlier attempts to reach the South Pole and then jumping forward to look at Scott and Amundsen's biographical roots. His approach allows him to tell both their life stories at the same time as he recounts the race to the pole.
Find a quiet time to write every day — a time when you can get lost in your memories and let your thoughts flow from your fingertips. Some writers prefer early-morning hours, while other write better late at night.
Find a time that fits your schedule and set a regular appointment to write your story. It may be helpful to surround your work area with inspiring items such as family photos, inspirational quotes and your favorite music. Write out a mission statement that describes the inspiration for writing your life story, and refer to it when you feel a drop in your motivation.
After you have written out a particular scene or event, go back and read what you wrote aloud. Check for any awkward phrasing or sentences that are bogged down with too many details. Your story should move the reader smoothly from one scene to the next.
Cutting out unnecessary words and overly long sentences can help your writing flow without being interrupted. Your writing should be descriptive. Available in books and online including on some genealogy websites , these tools present you with a series of questions about your life.
You simply answer them, and the templates arrange your answers into story form. A good dictionary, thesaurus, and word processing program are also indispensable tools when writing an autobiography. Editing and improving your work can be a difficult process, even for a professional writer. Consider having friends and family read a draft — their suggestions could help you finish your autobiography more easily. Before you consider the work finished, you may want to set it aside for a few weeks, then read it with fresh eyes.
Does it say everything you want to say? You are, in fact, hoping to get complete strangers interested in your life. That means you have to think of yourself as a character, and your story as a plot, because a lot of fiction writing craft ideas also apply to memoir. But you are also allowed to combine characters, rename characters, omit events, fictionalize dialogue, compress or combine events, and otherwise manipulate time in the interest of telling a more compelling story. Perhaps the best advice on writing a memoir is to choose which slice of your life you want to work with.
You are not going to win over readers, memoir literary agents, or publishers by telling the story of your life from birth to the present moment. This type of storytelling has long ago gone out of style. You will notice that Cheryl Strayed focused on her hike as the backbone of Wild , even if she did go into other backstory. But the narrative always hinged on the hike. So is yours a self-discovery and empowerment memoir?
A triumph over adversity memoir? An addiction memoir? A relationship memoir? The story of one important event and how it changed your life? You should aim to start with an event that summarizes who you are, and what the crux of your story will be, or your theme. Then pick an outline of events that you want to discuss that all tie into the theme. From there, the focus of writing a memoir becomes letting readers into who you are.
This is done with a lot of interiority or access to thoughts, feelings, reactions, and inner struggle and through carefully chosen flashbacks and backstory that add on to the present narrative. The best way to internalize how to write a memoir is to read in the category.
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