In 2009 my husband, Hoyt, and I took a 4 1/2 month trip around the world. We planned the itinerary ourselves. Our purpose, a combination of work and vacation, included stays in six countries and also Tibet, an autonomous region in the Himalayan mountains, the former home of the Dalai Lama. Yeah. A trip of a lifetime.
Our third stop was Indonesia, where, on the island of Bali, we stayed in the town of Ubud for two months in a hotel that had an outdoor dining area, like a pavilion, surrounded by tropical flowers and plants in a jungle-like garden. Paradise found.
One morning, a little snail appeared in the foliage near our breakfast table. I grabbed the camera. The photo gallery below is the result: “A snail’s memoir.”
Memoir or Autobiography?
The snail’s photo gallery obviously didn’t capture the creature’s entire life, only those adventurous moments on that warm morning. Ta-da. That’s an analogy for talking about the difference between memoir and autobiography. Since I am writing a memoir, people ask me about the difference.
Memoir
Memoir is a slice of someone’s life told in a story that reads like a novel. Sort of. But there is one HUGE difference between memoirs and novels. The memoir author is writing his or her personal story AND includes reflections on it from a current point of view. Okay, here’s an example. My Balinese snail friend is writing a memoir:
“One day alongside the breakfast pavilion at Hotel XYZ, I was inching my way along a bright green leaf, and all of a sudden this eccentric tourist lady grabbed her camera and spent about half an hour taking pictures of me. I felt shy at the time, since my parents had never prepared me for paparazzi. Now, considering my picture is all over the internet, I appreciate the attention showered on me. Usually I am ignored since all I do is just crawl around in the background, but by capturing me in photos, she has made me feel important and beautiful!”
The word, “memoir,” comes from “memory,” which is tricky. Memoirs (personal stories) give you that one-hand-on-the-elephant perspective of a whole story. By nature, memoirs are subjective, not as objective as journalistic reports, such as an article in the New York Times; however, memoir writers better be darn sure they do the best they can to research whatever facts they report about things, people, and places in their memoirs.
So there’s a THEN and a NOW aspect in a memoir that, if you’re not used to it, may feel odd at first. If what you usually read are novels (fictional stories) or newspapers (journalism) that do not have the THEN and the NOW perspectives woven like threads in and out of each other, then memoirs will give you a new and refreshing genre to explore.
Autobiography
Merriam-Webster: an autobiography is “a biography written by the person it is about.” Unlike memoir, which is only a slice of life, autobiography is nearly the whole pie (yeah, I know what you’re thinking … ha ha it cannot go to the very end!). It’s auto (self) bio (life) graphy (writing). Autobiography has reflection too, otherwise it would be pretty dry reading, but reflection is not as big a feature as it is supposed to be in memoir because the emphasis in memoir is on remembering, not chronicling a life, i.e. I was born, this happened, then this happened, then that happened, etc. Some autobiographies are more artfully written than that, but you get the idea.
What is the book I am writing?
Some of you know I am writing a memoir (not an autobiography) about my seventeen years (from ages 18 – 35) in a fundamentalist cult, The Way International. The book is my take on that portion of my life, including critical events, people, and experiences, as well as my reflections and feelings. It offers readers THEN and NOW.
So, drum roll … my personal story, a memoir, is finished. The publication date is TBD … I am trusting that it will be in 2016 one way or another! I will post progress reports in blog posts like this.
A few of my favorite memoir writing books
The Art of Time in Memoir: Then and Now by Sven Birkerts
Composing a Life by Mary Catherine Bateson
Writing the Memoir by Judith Barrington
Your Life as Story by Tristine Rainer
A Snail’s Memoir
Click on the first picture to begin the slideshow. Enjoy!
See you next time!
John Arnett
Japanese proverb re patience and persistence: “Oh snail, climb Mt. Fuji, slowly, slowly.”
Charlene L. Edge
Hi John,
Love that proverb! Thank you.
Charlene
Steve Phelan
Wonderful news, the snail has a self and is just a little slow on the writing side. Too bad we can’t get this Balinese beauty in time lapse so we can read her dance along the dendron path to harmony.
Charlene L. Edge
Hi Steve,
Thanks for chiming in. She was a lovely little soul.
Charlene