photo by foto 76
This is important. I don’t want you to talk me down. This book I am writing, day by day, word after word, is not going anywhere. It is coming out of me and that is all I need from it.
I am not in love with the memoir, though I did only last week bring home a stack to lean against my bed for safekeeping. And I opened and am reading Eat, Pray, Love and have found I want to be Elizabeth Gilbert’s new friend. I find her engaging and humble in a way I hadn’t expected. To be honest, I thought this book would compare to the last memoir I finished and I was terrified to break into it, which is why I started Gilbert’s book before Naked; I was working backward.
The ineffable They say to read the books you want to write. I read a lot of fiction; I’m an escapist at heart. With the exception of Frank McCourt, Dave Eggers, Stephen King (I honestly don’t know if On Writing counts here), and Natalie Goldberg (in a manner of speaking) memoir writers haven’t held my attention. Elizabeth Gilbert has grabbed me in the sense that I have been in her berserk world of self sacrifice and holy hell and I want to know how she manages to break out of it. Also, as I said before, I think she’s a friendly.
(Here’s a side note: NOT to downplay women writers, but I just realized that every memoir I have read written by a woman puts a certain amount of attention on one or another form of God. This can’t always be the case, but maybe my list is shorter than I think.)
So anyway. What am I trying to accomplish if not some amazing work of literary brilliance with which to stun and electrify millions of unknowing readers?
Focus.
Every day I sit down to write. Every day this word focus lights up, blinking frantically across the 
page like midnight neon in a Tom Waits’ song. Focus. Focus. I need it bad. The only way to get it is to do. Enter: the memoir. Easy peasy. Or not quite. Whatever. We’re in this for the long haul and I’m not going to bore you with every highlight and lowlight that comes along; I just want you to know, no pressure. We’re taking this one word at a time.
Before you go there’s something that has been nagging me about memoirs and I really would love to hear some opinions on this. All along I’ve had it in my mind that memoirs are written currently about past events, but now I’m noticing a trend in writing events as they occur. Somewhere I read an explanation of a diary as opposed to a memoir, being that a diary is recorded as events unfold. What do you think? Am I being too nit-picky? For the record, what I am writing crosses over from present to past and back again, though I call it memoir for lack of a better word. Hit me up.
“It is coming out of me and that is all I need from it.”
That is, in my opinion, the hallmark of a true writer’s spirit!
Huzzah!
Am I ever glad I found you on Twitter and found your blog here. Anyway . .
I write and teach journaling, personal essay writing, and memoir, and am struck by how closely the three forms are related. All are forms of autobiographical writing, and as such can leap over time (forward and backward) according to the writer’s wishes (just as fiction can). And isn’t that neat?
Even in journaling, we can write about the past, speculate about the future. Anything goes. (The outcome of my memoir-in-progress, My Mother’s Money, is still unfolding, so I have to write it as it unfolds, more’s the pity.)
Now: you can be Gilbert’s BFF, and I’ll be yours. Glad to have met you!
P.S. Like you, I was reluctant to read Eat, Pray, Love. But the moment I finished it, I started again at page 1. A great book.
Hi, Lynette, so glad to have you stop over! If the forms cross over so much, what’s to stop us from getting them all muddled, or, is the label in the end just a label?
I’d be very curious to hear about some of the tools you use to keep you focused and writing your story. Let’s talk!
Hi
I’m obsessed with memoir, not only because I’m writing one and want to see how others have done it successfully, but because it is compelling to know that you’re reading about a person’s real life experience, made universal by the way it’s crafted. (Dinty Moore said (as I recall) “Memoir is the truth told artfully.” I think memoir is an incredibly difficult genre to write well. Not the self-indulgent kind, but the type that demonstrates the author’s quest or struggle to learn something about him/herself. I’m sure you’ve heard by now of Cheryl Strayed’s hot hot memoir, Wild. It’s life changing. I see memoir and journals as very different–one (journals/diaries) is for oneself; one (the memoir) is for the world — so the latter better have something to say. However, journals can be a window into self-knowledge. I am mining my parents’ letters and journals to try to understand what undermined their relationship. It’s taken me literally years to figure out what I was trying to do with their story, and I’ve written tens of thousands of words on the way. I think I’m on the path to both a personal memoir — a quest for understanding — and a way to tell our family’s story–through what I’ve learned from the personal thoughts and emotions my parents recorded over the decades.
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