The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life

“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”

Try not to overexplain: “… I said nervously because we were just reunited after thirty-five years.” Instead, show your nervous joy by whipping off your bifocals and shoving them into your bra—if that’s what you did. If you did not, you did something else that communicated nervous joy, and you remember it, because now you’re a writer, and that’s wha

How it happened is not what makes it interesting. That it happened at all—why it happened and where you go from there—is interesting.

When writing about our own animals (as well as our husbands, wives, and children) we’d be well advised to avoid any karmic-sounding sentences that make any grand conclusions. Keep it simple; let the reader make her own.

“But it’s a lovely sentence,” someone will whine, defending their darling when I edit it out. And that’s the problem. It may be, but understanding that writing is not about those single flourishes, and instead is about the piece as a whole, is the first step toward learning how to commit the perfect murder—a good final edit.

So those are the three rules of memoir. They ask you to tell the truth by making every page drive one story forward and have a context the reader can relate to.

So be hospitable to your reader, and provide us with more than the bare-bones facts, foregone conclusions, or mere lists of emotional responses to the events of your life.

It’s the same with your own tale. Of course it’s of value to you, but how are you going to make it of value to me as well? Here’s how: Make it small. Make it rare. Make it a first for me as a reader, and I’ll remember it forever.

So when one of those grand-piano sentences awakens you in the middle of the night, maybe it’s telling you what the piece is supposed to be about—that dogs change people in ways that people cannot change one another—and not meant to be shoved whole into the piece. Instead of using the line, show us what that idea looks like. Illustrate that ethic th