The goal of a voice is to speak not with objective authority but with subjective curiosity.

Neurologist Jonathan Mink, MD, explained to me that with such intense memories as David’s, we often record the emotion alone, all detail blurred into unreadable smear.

The inability to don angel wings—to shirk culpability or justify past sins—seems innate to the voice of every memoirist I revere. The life chroniclers who endure as real artists come across as folks particularly schooled in their own rich inner geographies. A quest for self-knowledge drives such a writer to push past the normal vanity she brings to

A memoirist forging false tales to support his more comfortable notions—or to pump himself up for the audience—never learns who he is. He’s missing the personal liberation that comes from the examined life.

single-note tales seldom bear rereading.

A friend called to say she was going crazy once, and I said, “Who’s noticing that?” You want to get next to that quiet, noticer self as a starting place.

I was a liar. Even though I lived in a place where everyone knew who I was, I couldn’t help but try to introduce new versions of myself as my interests changed, and as other versions of myself failed to persuade. I was also a thief.

Don’t use jargon to describe people. It’s both disrespectful and bad writing. I never called my parents alcoholics; I showed myself pouring vodka down the sink. Give information in the form you received it.

And we’re all doomed to drama; even the most privileged among us suffer the torments of the damned just going about the business of being human.