The ins and outs of the most popular literary genre, the Memoir – By Melinda Carroll
Recently, I finished reading Alice Sebold’s memoir: Lucky, a courageous tale of her brutal rape as a college freshman and the transformation in her life that followed. Typically I read more novels than I do memoirs. I don’t know that I would ever have picked up a memoir about a violent rape if Alice Sebold hadn’t been the author. It’s not that I can’t handle reading about rape or violence, but perhaps it’s the trueness of the subject and the personal connection to the author that changes the reality of the words. In a memoir the author shares a little piece of their soul with you in the telling of their story.
However, I find Sebold’s writing so compelling, so open and enchanting, I couldn’t help myself. She took a horrific story of rape and turned it into a story about her life I could not stop reading. The affect of a brutal rape on a person’s life was never more revealing to me than when Sebold stated: “After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes.”
After having just devoured Sebold’s memoir, I was ecstatic to find a great discussion on memoirs this week over on the Pub Rants blog from literary agent Kristin who participated in a panel at the Backspace Conference entitled: How to Publish a Memoir if You Aren’t Famous. She wrote several blogs discussing memoirs, which turned out to be the most popular genre at the Backspace Conference. She also brought up some great points that I just had to share with all of you writers contemplating writing a memoir.
Kristin writes:
“Lots of people want to write a memoir and it’s also the hardest project to get published by a non-celebrity. And here’s my little rant, very few people actually have stories that are big enough to capture national attention and hence, editor attention.”
What does that mean for those of you writing memoirs? It means that whether you have experienced divorce, or was a child of divorced parents, had abandonment issues, have mental health issues, suffered heartbreak, lived a wild life of sex, drugs and rock and roll, was in the military and went to war, graduated top of your class in college, had cancer, failed in business, lost a child or spouse, was violently attacked, or any other thing that you’ve experienced in your life, millions of other people have experienced them too.
So what sets your story apart from the millions of other similar stories? What makes your story worthy of garnering attention, of being published?
“People need to have a persuasive reason to read your story. Were you famous or associated with someone famous? If not, you have to find a way to tell your story that is so involving and compelling and unique that it grabs the reader from the very first sentence and never lets them go until the end.”
(Read the full blog)
Sebold’s memoir is a perfect example. She masterfully tells a gruesome tale in such an enchanting way that she grabs hold of you from the first sentence. You can’t get away until the very end.
And in case you didn’t know, writing a memoir is not therapy as Kristin explains:
“One of the biggest mistakes I see in query letters for the memoir is writers who spotlight how cathartic and therapeutic the writing of the work was and how they now need to share it with the world.
This is a big mistake. Why? Because writing a memoir is not therapy or shouldn’t be, so this is not a positive thing to spotlight. The truly terrific memoirists (ANGELA’S ASHES and THE GLASS CASTLE come to mind) understand that the writing of the work is an art form and only a certain amount of distance to the subject material can create that necessary objectivity so that the story can be crafted. Key word here is ‘crafted.’
What these memoirists actually understood is that readers aren’t interested in any one person’s therapeutic story; these readers are interested in an inside look to a world they’ve never seen or have never imagined. A world that is unbelievable but true. A world that is unique but resonates with us. A story that captures a universal feeling and the reader senses the connection.That’s what makes the memoir powerful. And if a writer doesn’t understand the difference of what I’m trying to explain here, he/she will probably never have a memoir published.”
(Read the full blog)
In Lucky Sebold understood the difference and crafted a story about her rape that resonates unbelievably with truth and shares a world I hadn’t yet imagined. As a writer you should learn the difference and craft something unique before querying your memoir.
Writing a memoir is also not the same as writing “my memoirs” Kristin explains:
“It makes me cringe when writers announce that they are writing their memoirs. Why? Because that means they are writing their life story (including “I was born in 1940 (or choose a year) in Biloxi, Mississippi--or choose wherever”) which is an autobiography not a memoir.
For publication purposes, if you aren’t famous, there is no market for your “memoirs” and a large publishing house will not buy it.
An autobiography is a chronicle of a person’s life history.
A memoir is a story (with a story arc not unlike what occurs in a novel) told through a prism of one particular life experience and it usually focuses on a finite period of time and not the person’s life as a whole. A memoir has crafted scenes that build on one another to reach a pivotal moment. An autobiography has remembrances of important events throughout the author’s life and how it unfolded from that person’s unique, inside perspective. They can be separate from each other and don’t need to build to a climatic moment.”
(Read the full blog)
Sebold’s memoir has a specific story arc starting at the rape and focuses on a certain period of time in her life creating a story so unique I wanted the rest of the unwritten story. So unless you’re Bob Dylan, Jimmy Carter or someone equally famous, I would stick to writing a memoir if you want to be published instead of your ‘memoirs.’
Are you unsure if your work is a memoir or a novel?
According to Kristin:
“I wrote it as a memoir but it could be published as a novel instead.” Is a surefire “kiss-of-death-otherwise-known-as-an-automatic-NO-from-an-agent for any aspiring memoirist.”
Yikes. You’d better learn the difference between a memoir and a novel and not make that automatic NO mistake when querying.
“Although a memoir often shares certain similarities to a novel (as in there are scenes, dialogue, development of characters, and sometimes world-building) a memoir is not the same as a novel. They are two, distinctly different creative processes in how they are crafted and written.So an already written memoir can’t be “published” as a novel or even vice-versa. It’s like saying my nonfiction self-help book can double as a novel. These are two wholly different entities. Apples and Oranges (James Frey, non-withstanding, but even A Million Little Pieces would have to be redone completely to make it stand as a novel because the crafting of a novel is not the same as the crafting of a memoir). Repeat after me: they are not interchangeable.
A memoir is a memoir—not a novel. A novel is a novel and can’t easily be “revised” into a memoir.”
(Read the full blog)
Sebold could have written the story of her rape as a fictional novel. Her novel The Lovely Bones is outstanding! But Lucky is about a violent rape that is extremely personal and changes her forever. Through her searing candor she illuminates what it means to survive: “You save yourself or you remain unsaved.” It’s an unbelievable true account. It’s a memoir that connects the reader to the author in a very personal, powerful way. That connection is what will make the difference for you as a writer.
However, I find Sebold’s writing so compelling, so open and enchanting, I couldn’t help myself. She took a horrific story of rape and turned it into a story about her life I could not stop reading. The affect of a brutal rape on a person’s life was never more revealing to me than when Sebold stated: “After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes.”
After having just devoured Sebold’s memoir, I was ecstatic to find a great discussion on memoirs this week over on the Pub Rants blog from literary agent Kristin who participated in a panel at the Backspace Conference entitled: How to Publish a Memoir if You Aren’t Famous. She wrote several blogs discussing memoirs, which turned out to be the most popular genre at the Backspace Conference. She also brought up some great points that I just had to share with all of you writers contemplating writing a memoir.
Kristin writes:
“Lots of people want to write a memoir and it’s also the hardest project to get published by a non-celebrity. And here’s my little rant, very few people actually have stories that are big enough to capture national attention and hence, editor attention.”
What does that mean for those of you writing memoirs? It means that whether you have experienced divorce, or was a child of divorced parents, had abandonment issues, have mental health issues, suffered heartbreak, lived a wild life of sex, drugs and rock and roll, was in the military and went to war, graduated top of your class in college, had cancer, failed in business, lost a child or spouse, was violently attacked, or any other thing that you’ve experienced in your life, millions of other people have experienced them too.
So what sets your story apart from the millions of other similar stories? What makes your story worthy of garnering attention, of being published?
“People need to have a persuasive reason to read your story. Were you famous or associated with someone famous? If not, you have to find a way to tell your story that is so involving and compelling and unique that it grabs the reader from the very first sentence and never lets them go until the end.”
(Read the full blog)
Sebold’s memoir is a perfect example. She masterfully tells a gruesome tale in such an enchanting way that she grabs hold of you from the first sentence. You can’t get away until the very end.
And in case you didn’t know, writing a memoir is not therapy as Kristin explains:
“One of the biggest mistakes I see in query letters for the memoir is writers who spotlight how cathartic and therapeutic the writing of the work was and how they now need to share it with the world.
This is a big mistake. Why? Because writing a memoir is not therapy or shouldn’t be, so this is not a positive thing to spotlight. The truly terrific memoirists (ANGELA’S ASHES and THE GLASS CASTLE come to mind) understand that the writing of the work is an art form and only a certain amount of distance to the subject material can create that necessary objectivity so that the story can be crafted. Key word here is ‘crafted.’
What these memoirists actually understood is that readers aren’t interested in any one person’s therapeutic story; these readers are interested in an inside look to a world they’ve never seen or have never imagined. A world that is unbelievable but true. A world that is unique but resonates with us. A story that captures a universal feeling and the reader senses the connection.That’s what makes the memoir powerful. And if a writer doesn’t understand the difference of what I’m trying to explain here, he/she will probably never have a memoir published.”
(Read the full blog)
In Lucky Sebold understood the difference and crafted a story about her rape that resonates unbelievably with truth and shares a world I hadn’t yet imagined. As a writer you should learn the difference and craft something unique before querying your memoir.
Writing a memoir is also not the same as writing “my memoirs” Kristin explains:
“It makes me cringe when writers announce that they are writing their memoirs. Why? Because that means they are writing their life story (including “I was born in 1940 (or choose a year) in Biloxi, Mississippi--or choose wherever”) which is an autobiography not a memoir.
For publication purposes, if you aren’t famous, there is no market for your “memoirs” and a large publishing house will not buy it.
An autobiography is a chronicle of a person’s life history.
A memoir is a story (with a story arc not unlike what occurs in a novel) told through a prism of one particular life experience and it usually focuses on a finite period of time and not the person’s life as a whole. A memoir has crafted scenes that build on one another to reach a pivotal moment. An autobiography has remembrances of important events throughout the author’s life and how it unfolded from that person’s unique, inside perspective. They can be separate from each other and don’t need to build to a climatic moment.”
(Read the full blog)
Sebold’s memoir has a specific story arc starting at the rape and focuses on a certain period of time in her life creating a story so unique I wanted the rest of the unwritten story. So unless you’re Bob Dylan, Jimmy Carter or someone equally famous, I would stick to writing a memoir if you want to be published instead of your ‘memoirs.’
Are you unsure if your work is a memoir or a novel?
According to Kristin:
“I wrote it as a memoir but it could be published as a novel instead.” Is a surefire “kiss-of-death-otherwise-known-as-an-automatic-NO-from-an-agent for any aspiring memoirist.”
Yikes. You’d better learn the difference between a memoir and a novel and not make that automatic NO mistake when querying.
“Although a memoir often shares certain similarities to a novel (as in there are scenes, dialogue, development of characters, and sometimes world-building) a memoir is not the same as a novel. They are two, distinctly different creative processes in how they are crafted and written.So an already written memoir can’t be “published” as a novel or even vice-versa. It’s like saying my nonfiction self-help book can double as a novel. These are two wholly different entities. Apples and Oranges (James Frey, non-withstanding, but even A Million Little Pieces would have to be redone completely to make it stand as a novel because the crafting of a novel is not the same as the crafting of a memoir). Repeat after me: they are not interchangeable.
A memoir is a memoir—not a novel. A novel is a novel and can’t easily be “revised” into a memoir.”
(Read the full blog)
Sebold could have written the story of her rape as a fictional novel. Her novel The Lovely Bones is outstanding! But Lucky is about a violent rape that is extremely personal and changes her forever. Through her searing candor she illuminates what it means to survive: “You save yourself or you remain unsaved.” It’s an unbelievable true account. It’s a memoir that connects the reader to the author in a very personal, powerful way. That connection is what will make the difference for you as a writer.
Labels: Alice Sebold, Backspace Conference, Bakersfield, creative writing, literary, Memoir, Novel, Noveltown, Pub Rants
This entry was posted by Matildakay, on
Friday, June 15, 2007.
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