Memoir Writing

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Memoir Writing
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Memoir Writing

• Memoir comes from the word, memory
• Memoir can be writing from a diary, a journal, or
  a resume
• The memoir is an important/interesting event in
  ones life
• it is a self-contained story set in an particular
  time and space
• It is one period in the writers life
• An autobiography is the iceberg the memoir is a
  piece of the iceberg.

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Memoir Writing

• Think small when writing a memoir write with
  gratitude and excitement
• No one right way to write a memoir connect
  others with ones reality
• Your product is yourselfso write with honesty
• Use grace, humor, and good language
• Write with love without pity, judgment (avoid the
  revenge, pity party, winding memoirs)

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Memoir Writing

• What makes a good memoir
• art (integrity of intention be true to your best
  self)
• craft (carpentry make a careful literary
  arrangement
• construct a narrative that is tight and orderly)
• A story has many different versions but with
  universal truths memory is variable
• Use humor, the salvation of touchy ideas in the
  memoir but dont keep looking over your
  shouldersjust tell it like you remember

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Ready to Write the Memoir

• Find the old trunk with all the scraps of papers,
  memorabilia you have kept
• The act of writing will tell you what to write
  about
• Begin with a vivid event write one episode with
  a beginning and an end
• Begin on Monday with one memory continue on
  Tuesday with another unrelated memory
• Write preferably at the same each keep this
  structure up for 3-4 months

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Memoir Writing

• Exercise your memory muscles
• One day review all the entries youve written
  first months writing may be stiff but they will
  gradually get better
• Dont be in a hurrytrust the process. If the
  process is sound, the product will take care of
  itself.
• Make yourself available yet dont reveal
  everything
• The most important person in the memoir is you
  dont hide

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Tips for Memoir Writing

• Write about the experience of being an outsider
  write about your immigrant experience
• Explain your culture in a new world
• Example
• Kennedy Frazier writes about readings she did of
  other womens lives she liked the private
  letters of other women to see her through
  learn from their successes

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Tips for Memoir Writing

• Rewriting is an essence of writing rewriting
  makes you more confident
• Dont decide in advance what your memoir will be
  about think a lot before writing talk about the
  what and the how
• Dont fit too many stories under one roof
• Your memoirs dont have to be publishedgeneration
  s after you might value your story

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4 Principles of Writing Well

• Clarity
• Simplicity
• Economy (brevity)
• Humanity be yourself

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References

• See the following books
• Angelas Ashes
• Growing Up
• Speak Memory
• Fierce Attachment
• The Five Boyhoods
• A drinking life
• An American childhood
• Colored people
• Remembrance of Things Past