Should You Write a Memoir?

Many writers are faithful to their genre. They were drawn to novels young, or invested years honing their poetry craft – whatever the genre, they stick with it. I’ve asked some of these genre-loyal folks if they’ve ever felt the urge to stray. Some confess they have. The most common temptation? Memoir. Seems we’ve all got something to say about ourselves.

A basic question first – is a memoir the same as an autobiography? They’re both about you. But there’s a difference: focus. An autobiography recounts your whole life. Unless you’re a scandal-plagued rock star or a member of a scandal-plagued royal family, your whole life might not be that interesting. Mine isn’t. That’s why I went for a memoir with my first book. Thanks to focus, some writers have material for more than one – Joan Didion and Tobias Wolff come to mind.

Focus in a memoir can come from many angles. Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran details how she lost her university teaching position for refusing to wear hijab; to stay connected to students, she started a book group from her home. Blake Taylor’s ADHD & Me describes his personal and academic struggles with his neurological challenges. Jonathan Frey’s A Million Little Pieces shows how he overcame addiction without a twelve-step program. Unfortunately . . . a lot of the book is pure BS, which landed him in hot water (rightfully so – don’t make stuff up in a memoir).

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Why write a memoir? Aside from money, fame, tenure, etc., you could do it if you’ve got a great focus that would resonate with people. Or if your story could help somebody understand you – and people like you – better. Do it if it could shine a light on a reader’s own life or community. When I teach public speaking, I tell students they’ll be more enthused and confidant if their presentation has takeaway value for the audience. I think this also applies to memoir. Sure, it’s about you. But telling a story that offers something to readers just plain feels better. And is definitely more likely to keep their attention.

You probably noticed that all three examples I named have something in common: conflict and challenge. Identify that, too, and you’re on your way to a book that keeps people reading to see how things turn out. That’s always better than an info dump of unconnected anecdotes, however cool each might be: “this happened to me – and then this – and then, believe it or not, this!” Framing around conflict helps readers see what the anecdotes all add up to.

This doesn’t mean you need to pin down a theme and takeaway before you start. Often you don’t really know what your book is about until it’s done (plot vs. theme; what happens vs. what it means). Stephen King has wise words on this. To paraphrase: in the first draft you’re telling yourself the story, and in the second, you sharpen it and tell it to your readers.

Reaching even further afield for memoir advice – my absolutely fabulous dissertation advisor, Robert D. Hume, told all his students this: “If you write the exact book you planned in the proposal, you didn’t learn anything.” Writing isn’t just transcribing from our brains – it’s an exploration that generates ideas and spins out insightful connections.

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Still, even if you ditch your map mid-journey, it helps to have some sense for what type of memoir you could write. Here are a few common (sometimes overlapping) categories:

Survivor Stories – Some people are raised in terribly abusive homes. Some become victims of a crime or suffer the aftermath of a crime against a loved one. Christa Parravani’s Her chronicles the shattering loss of her identical twin, Cara. Being LGBTQ+ in a conservative culture is another challenge, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home chronicles coming out as a lesbian and her complex relationship with her father (more on the graphic novel genre in an upcoming post).

Cultural/Political – These are often survivor stories, too – but for events on a larger stage. Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) fits in here, given the role of the Islamic Revolution in her story. Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime is set against the backdrop of apartheid in South Africa. I’d say war memoirs also land here, such as Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead, Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, and Loung Ung’s First They Killed My Father.

Medical/Addiction – Blake Taylor (ADHD & Me) fits in here. Frey and his Million Little Pieces would, if his book were a 100% real memoir. Others include Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (the living nightmare of locked-in syndrome), Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted (mental illness and forced institutionalization), and Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, a memoir on the impact of Ewing’s sarcoma on her body and her self-image.

Lifestyle/Ethics – Some writers take up a challenge so they can encourage others to do the same. Colin Beavan’s No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet (pause for breath!) points the way to a less destructive lifestyle, ecologically speaking – Beavan goes minimalist, right in the middle of Manhattan. Barbara Kingsolver practices “eat local, and in season” with Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. The title of Maggie Anderson’s memoir speaks for itself: Our Black Year: One Family's Quest to Buy Black in America's Racially Divided Economy.

Immersion – This is one of my favorites, and often overlaps with Lifestyle/Ethics. You step into someone else’s shoes or (warning: two clichés in one sentence) take a challenge that gets you out of your comfort zone. Often there’s a journalistic slant; Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America is a classic. She exposes the fallacy of “work hard enough and you’ll always succeed” by spending close to as year doing minimum wage work.

My memoir All Roads Lead to Austen is immersion, but decidedly on the light side – and that might be more your style. My challenge: travel through Latin America and hunt down readers in six countries interested in sharing a book night on Jane Austen. All in Spanish, which btw I was trying to learn. So how would that turn out? Would Latin American book lovers love Austen? With my faltering Spanish, would I understand them if they did? Naturally, unexpected challenges arose too – some medical, some romantic. That’s all I’m saying on that.

But I will say, Azar Nafisi’s memoir was a huge influence. Instead of six books in one country, I did three books in six countries (Pride and Prejudice in Guatemala and Ecuador, Sense and Sensibility in Mexico and Chile, and Emma in Paraguay and Argentina).

Maybe you’ve already immersed yourself in something exciting, like travel (more on travel narratives in an upcoming post). Write about it! If you haven’t, plan something cool, do it, then write about it. A fun entry in this vein: Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks. Here’s the sales pitch: “Have you ever made a drunken bet? Worse still, have you ever tried to win one? In attempting to hitchhike round Ireland with a fridge, Tony Hawks did both, and his foolhardiness led him to one of the best experiences of his life.” Top that.

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This memoir list isn’t comprehensive, and categories aren’t mutually exclusive. But if you can’t see your story via any sort of frame, you might want to keep it in your diary. Or, write it for personal satisfaction or to share with loved ones. Because if you go the traditional publishing route, you’ll need a log-line to get an agent, and they’ll need one to get a publisher. Even if you self-publish, you’ll need a sound concept to hook a reader. “Here’s a book about me hitchhiking around Ireland with a fridge” sounds a lot better than “Here’s a book about me in Ireland!”

Finally, it’s worth considering why people read memoirs. Fictional characters are fun and all, but many of us want to identify with the writer – to connect with a real live fellow human being. That’s why people were so colossally pissed off to find out Jonathan Frey was lying (full-on, not just ‘embellishing’) about stuff in his book. It made readers, especially those look for support as addicts, feel cheated and manipulated. Don’t do that to readers.

In my memoir I included the ups and downs of my Austen project in Latin America, just in case anybody felt inspired to try something similar. The downs were all true (including the ringworm incident – but enough about that). Too much sunshine and roses would have definitely been misleading. And boring.

Here’s my all-time favorite take on the subject of writing honest nonfiction, from Bill and Dave's Cocktail Hour. These guys are geniuses.

Memoir is a beautiful, flexible, maddening-but-rewarding genre. Whatever your current genre focus has been, I say: give yourself permission to give it a try.

Check back March 15 for a guest post by writer Erika Mailman!