YOU’VE PROBABLY HEARD the mantra, “Show don’t tell,” a million and one times, and though exposition and summary play important roles in memoir and should not be excluded entirely, a book that is all summary and no scene is a yawner at best. Imagine going to the theater to watch […]
YOU’VE GOT A STORY to tell and you’ve been thinking about writing a memoir. Maybe you’ve already begun writing and have drafted a few scenes or anecdotes from your early life. And you’ve gotten good feedback from your friends or writing group. Or maybe you haven’t started writing, but whenever […]
WHEN YOU CONSIDER summers past, it’s natural for your mind to fly immediately to those of your childhood — those long, hot days of freedom from school and responsibility. I know mine does. I remember playing in the fields near my home, family barbecues and picnics, camping trips, and roller […]
IN MY EXPERIENCE as an editor and writing teacher, people often begin writing their memoir in a linear, this-happened-and-then-this-happened way. Or they try to cover too much ground, explaining a lifetime’s worth of events or relationship dynamics all at once. All of that is okay as a starting point for […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
