Hi there, readers. Welcome back to Wednesday Words. You may notice today is not Wednesday. 🙂 Yesterday when this was supposed to be mailed to you there were technical issues, so this is a day late. Sorry…
This post is one of those about writing that I told you I’d offer once in a while. Have you ever said to yourself, “I should write about this” when something happened to you? Maybe it wasn’t really momentous or earthshaking, or maybe it was, but somehow it affected you, and now you have thoughts about it that you want to write down. If so, then today’s “On Writing” post may help.
Keep reading for a list of suggested books about how to write memoir that I found useful when I wrote my memoir Undertow.
If you have my most recent book, From the Porch to the Page: A Guidebook for the Writing Life, you can find the list in the chapter about writing memoir. If you don’t have a copy yet (notice I said yet) I’ve included the list below for free. 🙂
From the Porch to the Page also includes helpful books in these other chapters too: “Writing Poems,” “Writing Stories,” and “Travel Writing.”
What is memoir?
In From the Porch to the Page I share that “memoirs are true stories written in the first person about a portion of the author’s life, along with the author’s current-day reflections on that part of their life–hopefully after a good amount of time has passed. It is that long-view perspective in memoir that gives it richness, depth, and meaning.”
Currently, I’ve got a little essay going about my maternal grandmother, Nana, so I’m working with that material as a mini memoir. What prompted that? I found a draft I wrote a long time ago about Nana that was prompted by studying a couple of photographs I have of her.
If you want to do something like that, or some sort of other topic from your life, don’t wait. Seize the day. Seize the pen. Seize the laptop and begin writing. The journey to a completed memoir begins with the first sentence.
Speaking of sentences, if you love them, then no matter where you are in your journey, even if you’ve never written a story or essay before, you can begin to write.
Books I recommend for writing memoir
Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art by Judith Barrington
Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson
The Business of Memoir: The Art of Remembering in an Age of Forgetting by Charles Baxter
The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts
The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory by Patricia Hampl
Your Life as Story: Discovering the “New Autobiography” and Writing Memoir as Literature by Tristine Rainer
A cousin of mine, Gene McKinney, taught drama at Trinity College in San Antonio. Gene has passed on now, but several years ago I visited him in his office on the campus and suggested he write a memoir (or autobiography). He pointed to his book shelf where there were copies of about sixty or more plays his students had written. “Those are my memoir,” he said. Fortunately, there are accounts of his life in other places, but, for many the memoir of our life is written in the lives of the people we influence. But, having said that, one of my passions is genealogy, and how grateful I am for those who leave a record of their lives that’s more than the few dates one can find on Ancestry.com.
Robyn Allers
Thanks for the “nudge!”
Charlene Edge
My pleasure. I needed it, too!
john arnett
A cousin of mine, Gene McKinney, taught drama at Trinity College in San Antonio. Gene has passed on now, but several years ago I visited him in his office on the campus and suggested he write a memoir (or autobiography). He pointed to his book shelf where there were copies of about sixty or more plays his students had written. “Those are my memoir,” he said. Fortunately, there are accounts of his life in other places, but, for many the memoir of our life is written in the lives of the people we influence. But, having said that, one of my passions is genealogy, and how grateful I am for those who leave a record of their lives that’s more than the few dates one can find on Ancestry.com.
Charlene Edge
Fascinating. Thank you, as always, for your thoughtful comments.