Anna Quindlen says that when Barry Jenkins was filming The Underground Railroad, he directed the actors to “Show me yourselves.” In other words, don’t act. Similarly, Quindlen recommends doing the kind of writing where you don’t posture for an audience. Just write the truth. Privately. For yourself. This is … Read More
Category: memoir
“When people write reviews, they are really writing a kind of memoir – here’s what my experience was eating at this restaurant or getting my hair cut at this barbershop.”
Is this book a memoir? The title – The Anthropocene Reviewed and the subtitle Essays on a Human-Centered Planet — offer no clues. However, in the introduction, the author says that he wants to tell us stories about his life so that we can see how he has formed his … Read More
“I learned that writing a memoir is like figure skating: it looks effortless and beautiful from the outside. . .”
“… while in reality, you stretch thy groin so much that you nearly split yourself in half for the whole world to see.” The author, JVN, whose trademarks are joy and kindness, shares what happened after the first memoir was published. Some readers expected JVN to be their source of … Read More
“There is a difference between wallowing and bearing witness.”
Lakin continues, “Think of yourself in the role of storyteller . . . instead of as the victim who has been wronged and deserves retribution or pity . . .” For all the memoirists who are reluctant to write about difficult episodes because they don’t want to come off as … Read More
Ten Years of Writing about Memoir Has Taught Me This
Memoir is the most entrepreneurial form of writing. It attracts inventors who are willing to take risks and use nontraditional skills and interests. Though their goal might be as simple as recording history, or telling stories, or finding meaning, their materials are original. They may use stand-up … Read More
“I’ve spent my whole life studying her . . . because I always want to do whatever I can in any given moment to make or keep Mom happy.”
What happens when a stand-up comedy routine becomes a memoir? In this case, it becomes a best-seller. This book started as a one-woman show about growing up trying to please a mother who was her best friend and controller of everything from showers to diet to wiping after using … Read More
“It’s quite therapeutic going through the archives.”
Some memoirists want to record their history, others wish to tell great stories, and others, like Pamela Anderson, want to make sense of their lives. She is more interested in exploring “Who am I – when I’m alone?” than in the events that made headlines. She looks for answers in … Read More
“When I wrote my book ‘On Writing Well,’ I had a definite model in mind. . . it was Alec Wilder’s book about music.”
A veteran of WWII, William Zinsser was one of the first to give American writers advice that might be described as “touchy-feely.” In his classic On Writing Well, he says that he is most “interested in the intangibles that produce good writing – confidence, enjoyment, intention, integrity.” He … Read More
“I am going to write about all this one day, I told her, and she smiled at me.”
“Remember: Your biggest stories will often have less to do with their subject than with their significance . . .”
William Zinsser continues, “. . .not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation affected you and shaped the person you became.” Zinsser reminds us that readers don’t want to be impressed by your accomplishments. They don’t want to see whining, anger, or revenge. Instead, you should … Read More
“His job wasn’t to recreate reality, but to immerse viewers in a kind of dream.”
When writing stories, the most important thing is to tell everything that happened, right? Well, maybe not. Hart argues that the author’s goal is not to describe the world in all its complexity. Rather, consider the advice offered by David Lean, director of Lawrence of Arabia. He said his breakthrough … Read More
“So I decided to fashion a special kind of collage.”
How would a dissident playwright, who spent five years in prison before becoming the first president of Czechoslovakia, construct a memoir? If you imagine a creative architecture not seen before, you are right. It’s an engaging mix of observations, flashbacks, interviews, commentary, and memos to his staff at Prague Castle. … Read More
“Everything was pulled tight as a snare drum, so expertly smoothed that you could easily spot the century’s worth of patched holes and tears.”
Perhaps nobody is surprised that the British and the American reviewers of Spare by Prince Harry see things differently. For example, the New Yorker describes Harry’s mended bedding in Balmoral Castle as “a metaphor for the constricting, and quite possibly threadbare, fabric of the institution of monarchy” while the British … Read More
“There was the teasing and impossible desire to imitate the petty pride of sparrows wallowing and flouncing in the red dust of country roads.”
Richard Wright, who was born in 1908, describes the “brace of mountainlike, spotted, black-and-white horses clopping down a dusty road through clouds of powdered clay” in his memoir Black Boy. He finds beauty in the “green leaves rustling with a rainlike sound” and in identifying with “the sight … Read More
“Observe, observe perpetually.”
More than 400 years ago, Michel de Montaigne of France invented a new literary tradition of close inward observation. “It is a thorny undertaking,” he writes, “to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind.” Scholars, such as Sarah Bakewell, credit him with being the first to experiment … Read More