I RECENTLY RE-WATCHED Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman’s 2010 TED talk on “The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory,” which is about the difference between what he calls the “experiencing self” (that part of us that experiences life moment by moment) and the “memory self” (that part of us that remembers our […]
I gather together the dreams, fantasies, experiences that preoccupied me as a girl, that stay with me and appear and reappear in different shapes and forms in all my work. Without telling everything that happened, they document all that remains most vivid. ~Bell Hooks YOU’VE DREAMED of writing a memoir […]
AT ITS CORE, writing is about finding meaning in the mundane. That’s why some of the most satisfying and universal personal essays and stories spring out of completely ordinary events. You don’t have to have climbed Mount Everest or overcome a deadly disease to have something interesting to write about. […]
IN HONOR OF MOTHER’S DAY, and in remembrance of my wild and unconventional mother, Jacquelyn Carr, I’m sharing an excerpt from my first memoir, Not the Mother I Remember. The year is 1965. I am ten years’ old. My mother, my eight-year-old brother, Michael, and I are in the middle […]
WHAT IS TRUTH IN MEMOIR? may be the most hotly debated question of all memoir-writing questions. We memoir writers talk a lot about “our truth” and how we define what that means. What is truth after all? Is there one truth or or many? Is truth subjective or objective? Are truth […]
YOU ARE WRITING YOUR MEMOIR. Memories are the basis of memoir, and we all know how fallible memories are. Naturally, you want your memoir to be as truthful as possible, so you set out to research the truth. You choose your methods: Interviewing family members and friends. Going to the […]
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. (MLK) was one of the most famous civil rights activists in the history of the United States, winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent efforts to end racial inequality. His life was tragically cut short at age 39 by an assassin’s bullet, but his contributions to […]
MEMOIRS ARE DRIVEN BY THEME. When you begin writing your memoir, it’s because you want to tell a story about a particular aspect of your life. It could be the discovery of a family secret, going through the loss of a loved one, overcoming an abusive childhood or addiction, or […]
THIS WEEK, I have the honor of hosting Jerry Jenkins, author of more than 180 books with sales of more than 70 million copies, including the best-selling Left Behind series. Twenty of Jerry’s books have reached The New York Times best-seller list (seven debuting number one). This article was originally posted […]
SOME PEOPLE only write their stories when they’ve got nothing to lose. But others write their truth even if they’re risking their reputation, their livelihood or their close relationships in order to do so. Certainly we can see this in books and movies. Take The Help as an example. This […]
THIS IS THE SECOND OF THREE ARTICLES, in which I discuss Sue Monk Kidd’s memoir, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine. As I wrote in the First Impressions post, Dance of the Dissident Daughter is a different sort of memoir — […]
WHAT IS IT ABOUT MEMOIR that fascinates and draws us to it in a way that fiction, while entertaining and enlightening, does not? Why do we love reading such intimate, first-person stories of challenge, struggle, and triumph? Is it, as some would claim, a tabloid-style voyeuristic curiosity? Is is that […]
