Should You Write a Literary Memoir? And How to Write One
So, Should You Write a Literary Memoir?
The truth is, it depends on certain things.
Personally, as a writer, I am a big fan of literary memoir, primarily because of its novel-like style. It gives you the freedom to tell your story through scenes, dialogue, detailed descriptions and creative storytelling.
Done well, a literary memoir can read almost like a good novel or literary fiction.
The difference, of course, is that the story is yours.
If you want to write about your or your family life but don't particularly want to produce a chronological account of everything that happened from childhood onwards, literary memoir can be a wonderful way to do it.
You can choose a particular period of your life.
A relationship.
A loss.
A career.
A family story.
A journey.
A year that changed everything.
Or simply one part of your life that you feel has a story worth telling.
What Makes a Memoir Literary?
For me, it is the storytelling.
For exmaple, instead of simply writing:
We moved to London when I was twelve, and I hated it.
You can take the reader there.
What did the new house look like?
What did you see when you first opened the bedroom door?
Who was standing in the kitchen?
What was said that evening?
What did twelve-year-old you think about all of this?
You begin reconstructing the experience as a scene, rather than simply reporting that it happened.
Of course, some of your memory will be imperfect.
You might remember the essence of a conversation without remembering every word spoken thirty years ago. You might remember walking into a room but have to reconstruct some of the details around it.
Literary memoir allows you to use the tools of fiction—scene, dialogue, description, pacing, character and narrative structure—to bring those memories to life, while remaining truthful to the substance of what happened.
Why You Don't Have to Tell Your Entire Life Story in Your Book
This is probably one of my favourite things about literary memoir.
You get to decide what the story is actually about.
Your life might contain fifty years of material.
Your book might concern only five of them.
Or one.
You can move backwards and forwards in time. You can bring earlier memories into a later story. You can leave things out that don't belong to the central narrative.
You're not creating a historical record of your life.
You're creating a book.
And a book needs a story.
So, Should You Write A Literary Memoir?
If there is a period of your life, an experience, a relationship or a story that keeps returning to you, perhaps you should.
You don't need to know the entire structure before you begin.
Start with the scene you remember.
Write it.
Then write another.
Eventually you may begin to see that the individual memories aren't individual at all.
They are connected.
And somewhere amongst them might be your book.
Happy writing
Ghostwriter | Publishing | Mentor
Tamara Forrest-Smith
