Writing Memoir
Once you decide to try writing memoir, it's important to understand the entire intricacies of a memoir. First, memoirs are not often about a person's entire life but instead, focus on a period of time or a specific aspect of that person's life. These stories also carry an almost fictional quality as they carry a strong narrative and often feature a far greater emotional investment than general nonfiction. In general, memoir writing is about taking a story and events and showing them to be more than simply the sum of their parts.
The next step in writing a memoir is finding your story. What particular experience do you have in your life that you would like to capture and convey to a reader? Finding your story is the biggest part of a memoir as once you've found your purpose, these stories nearly write themselves. The beauty of creative nonfiction is that you're telling stuff that's already happened, so the significance is simply in finding why it matters to tell this specific story.
To help you find the story in your life that should motivate you to write a memoir, think about what makes you interesting. What defines who you are? What are interesting stories that people regularly ask you about or that you tell at dinner parties? When you're able to find the inner soul of your life, or your life around you, you will find it's much easier to identify the story that needs to be told in your memoir.
The next step to writing a memoir is research. Unlike writing a fiction book, where your story is largely generated from your mind, a memoir requires a lot more intimate knowledge about the material at hand. While memoir writing is emotional and structured with a narrative, it is also part of the genre of nonfiction. As such, try and outline the different things that define your story and might need to be looked at in greater depth. These items will largely make up your memoir and will make it easier to write a memoir when you know more about them.
Lastly, take that outline and investigate and research the details in every way possible. Writing a memoir means knowing as much as you can about the material. Talk with other people who experienced the event, read every book available about it. Do anything and everything to capture the material you are writing about. Only then will you truly excel at memoir writing.
Publishing A MemoirThe memoir is an interesting genre, combining the literary style of fiction with the factual basis of non-fiction. As such, when it comes to publishing memoirs, you will often hear contradicting statements about what you have to expect. As a result, you probably should just settle with expecting everything and anything, and keeping everyone's thoughts in mind. |