Recently a reader reached out to me looking for some advice about memoir writing. I’m not a memoirist (yet, anyway) but I am a developmental editor who has worked with a number of writers on their memoirs.
Memoir is a tricky genre. We all have lives and pasts, and we all have stories to tell about ourselves. On the surface it might seem as if this ought to be enough to drive a memoir, but this rarely turns out to be true.
This is because we often make the mistake of assuming that “memoir” is the same as “chronicle,” and that writing a memoir basically consists of sitting down and writing down as much of what happened as you can remember, along with how you felt about it and how it affected you. This is not actually true. That’s a combination of recollection, introspection, emotional processing, and framing your own experience to improve your understanding of it. It can be deeply useful and profoundly therapeutic. But it isn’t memoir.
Memoir is a form of historiography, a specific kind of narrative nonfiction that uses a historical case as a way of making a larger statement about human experience. Because the historical case it uses is the author’s own life, it’s easy for both readers and writers to lose sight of the fact that the author is not really the most important subject in a memoir. The most important subject in a memoir is the type of human experience it concerns, of which the author’s particular version is only one of innumerable examples.
(There are very, very few human experiences that are truly unique. 12 people have walked on the moon. 27 have been to the Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in Earth’s ocean. You get the idea. An experience doesn’t have to be unique to be interesting.)
In some cases there are reasons that the author’s particular version of a human experience is anomalous or arresting, and that can be enough to make the story worth reading. But it is just as often true that the experience is not all that remarkable or unusual in itself (many people experience illness, overcome adversity, have careers, etc.) but the author’s understanding and insight regarding the experience are exceptional. Either can carry a book. In the best cases, we get both.
On the rare occasions that I issue any sort of advice from the editorial perspective for people who are considering writing memoir, I stick to the following two ideas, both driven by my experience as a developmental editor.
First: Therapy is therapy and memoir is memoir. Don’t confuse them. A memoir is a specific kind of narrative nonfiction whose function is to communicate with readers about a genre of experience. Writing to facilitate healing for the writer is a valid and worthwhile practice, but is not the same thing.
Second: The point of memoir is not that you had experiences but what your experience/your insight into your experience has to say to other people about the larger human experience.
There is a third, though I usually don’t bring it up in brief conversation because it’s more difficult to explain. But it is every bit as important, maybe more so.
Third: The success and impact of memoir depends on thoughtful, cogent, and telling contextualization. Context gives meaning and depth to events and reason and resonance to reactions. Context plays structural, narrative, and logical roles in nonfiction and especially in memoir, where it is a crucial ingredient of broadening and universalizing the ideas and emotions of a personal narrative so that they can expand from chronicle to memoir. Context is important for all nonfiction narrative, not just memoir, but it often gets forgotten by memoirists because memoirists carry their own contexts in their heads… and forget that readers don’t share it.
I’ll be teaching about context and contextualization in nonfiction (including memoir) this fall.
If you are working on a memoir or on any other kind of nonfiction project, and would like to come work with me but aren’t yet ready for developmental editing — or are looking for a more budget-friendly option — I hope you’ll consider this course: https://www.writinggrove.com/service-page/worldbuilding-for-nonfiction-writers