10 Questions about Memoir
AN INTERVIEW ABOUT MEMOIR WRITING with Alison Wearing
1. Why have memoirs become so popular?
Personal stories connect us. For as long as there has been language, we have gathered together and shared the stories of our lives: the challenges, joys, burdens and triumphs. This is what weaves us together, the sharing of ourselves and our stories.
It used to be that only famous people wrote their memoirs, but in the last several decades, writers began changing the way personal stories were written and it became clear that a person didn’t have to be famous to have a story worth telling, they needed to change the way they told that so that it could be interesting to readers.
That is the work of memoir writing. Learning to tell a personal story in such a way that it can have resonance and meaning for others.
2. Could you talk about what inspired you to write your first memoir?
Like many people, I had been carrying around a story for years. I knew I would write it someday and, eventually, I decided it was time. Or maybe the story decided it was time, because I began to feel a longing to set that story down on paper.
I began with a single memory, a narrow shard of time, a moment when life as I had known it suddenly changed. We’ve all experienced a version of that, perhaps a loss of innocence, but in my case, it was the night my mother told me my dad was gay.
I knew that scene had power. I spent a lot of time swimming around in the sensory detail of that moment: the nightie I was wearing, how I was stretching it over my knees, the sound of my mother unloading the dishwasher, the clanking of cutlery, that kind of thing.
Once I finished that scene, I wrote the next one that came to me. I didn’t write in chronological order. I wrote whatever scene came to me next. I knew the book was done when I stopped feeling that internal stirring of an element that wanted to be written.
3. Many aspiring memoir writers struggle to decide on the appropriate span for their stories. What can you share about the way this particular scope of time appeared right for you?
This is a terrific question, because the most common mistake people make when they set out to write their memoir is that they try to include too much. Waaaay too much. I made that same mistake with the first book I tried to write and after years of having it spill all over the place, I ended up throwing the whole thing into the fireplace.
My first published book, Honeymoon in Purdah, was about a journey I made to Iran. It was a two-month journey, so the constraints of time and place were firmly there before I had even written a word. I did myself such a favour by limiting the story like that because it allowed me to focus and write the book. It wasn’t easy, but at least it was straightforward.
My second book was a memoir about growing up with a gay father in the 1980s. Again, I had a fairly narrow time frame (my childhood) and a single relationship (my dad and me). It was tempting to include all kinds of episodes from my childhood, stories about my mother and brothers, and the many other interesting stories that took place in the decades after my dad came out, but I stuck to the story at hand: my childhood with a gay dad, which was published as Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter.
By the time I wrote my third book, Moments of Glad Grace, I was interested in exploring some pretty large themes and topics – truth, identity, ancestry – but I knew that I needed a narrow, watertight ‘container’ in order to do that. The whole book takes place over one week in Dublin, where my dad and I went to do some genealogical research, but I include all sorts of flashbacks and musings to different times, places and ideas.
4. How to organize chapters — write chronologically or randomly and then piece them together?
This is going to be a frustrating answer, perhaps, but everyone’s different. I know writers who say, you MUST write in order: from the opening scene to the story’s final breath. That may work for them, but in my experience, we don’t often have such crystalline clarity when we set out to write, so much of our exploratory writing is going in search of the real story. Most writers I know agree that often we don’t even know what the story is really about (it’s rarely what we think it is) until we’ve written a first draft or a large collection of scenes.
I always tell people to ‘go where the energy is.’ In other words, write the story that is pulsing in you right now. Once you’re finished that, something else will probably start blinking. Go there. Chances are very good that this is not going to happen in chronological order, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t begin to assemble those pieces in chronological order once you have a number of them.
As I’ve already mentioned, I began writing my first book with the scene that had the most power, the most energy, and then I went from there. This can also be a good way to avoid writer’s block, because the stories and scenes that call to us tend to be the ones we’re ready to tackle, whereas if we’re bound to writing chronologically, we might run up against something that just isn’t ready to be written. And then we feel stuck.
5. How to choose the narrative style — essay vs. story arc?
This depends on the personal story you have to tell. Some stories are long-haul projects while others are more focussed and specific. But there is such a range of styles even within these two forms (essay and story) that I’m reluctant to draw a hard line between them. I guess I’m inclined to just say: instead of feeling it as a choice you need to make, follow the voice that wants to tell the story and it will guide you to the story’s form.
6. A memoir is a very personal telling of one's life experiences. How to understand what to write about and what to keep silent about?
Again, it’s different for everyone! Each person or family has a different comfort level about the details of their lives that are being made public, and every situation will merit its own decision. In some cases, that might mean asking permission from certain people, but in other cases, it’s important that the writer feel the liberty to ‘paint her portrait of truth,’ so long as she is willing to face the consequences of that portrait. A memoir is not meant to be cathartic or exposing; it’s meant to be art.
7. In writing a memoir, you're choosing to expose selected chapters of your life. You are in control of that narrative. But the people who you are writing about are not. Do you feel an obligation to protect people? Or do you feel like, no, my obligation is to the truth?
This answer follows on the heels of the last one. It’s true that no one ever signs up to the family member of a memoirist—and most wouldn’t sign up if they were given the option! That said, there is a lot we can do to honour every person’s story within our own. Sometime this means protecting people (or leaving them out entirely) or sometimes it means consulting them. This isn’t necessary, and it isn’t even possible in a lot of cases, but it can be a considerate thing to do.
Let me add a caveat: trying to please everyone is the straightest road to disaster. You can take people into consideration without taking their advice on how they think you should write.
Every time we write about other people, though, I believe we have an obligation to do the same due diligence that great fiction writers do when they create complex, multidimensional characters: get behind them and try to understand their histories, motivations, layers and mysteries. Approach everyone with compassion and curiosity. It’s true that in memoir we paint what we see, but in order to write memoir well, we also need to do the hard work of seeing past ourselves and what we think we know. It’s humbling work.
8. Did you learn any lessons — during writing and after publication of your memoirs — any surprising or unusual takeaways?
One of the greatest writing lessons was the one I mentioned earlier: that limitations are liberating. By that I mean that rather than trying to write ‘everything that has made me who I am’ or ‘all the interesting things I’ve done,’ which is just overwhelming (for the writer and the reader), setting limits around the story, what I call ‘creating a container,’ is actually very freeing. Everyone resists this and it can be difficult to leave things out of a book or writing project, but just because we don’t write about them doesn’t mean they aren’t present.
When I decided to write about Iran, for example, every other journey I had every taken still made it into the book, in that those experiences informed how I saw and moved through that country and how I chose to write about it. Narrowing the focus of a story is also what allows us to plumb its depth. It’s an essential aspect of memoir writing.
9. Any words of advice to aspiring memoir writers?
Think small. Your memoir doesn’t need to be a book. In fact, starting your memoir as a book project might be the very reason you don’t finish it. Here’s what I mean:
If you wanted to take up mountain climbing, would you start with Mount Everest? Well, if you did, you’d probably collapse on day 2. Which doesn’t mean you aren’t capable of climbing it. It just means you weren’t ready. But if you really wanted to be summit Everest, you’d be smart to start by training on smaller climbs, gradually building up your strength, knowledge, technique and experience.
Writing is no different. Tackling a book is overwhelming. So start with short pieces. Learn what it takes to craft a scene or a series of scenes really well. Develop your literary muscles by getting good at dialogue and description, showing not telling, charting the arc of a story or a character, composing taut, excellent sentences. Read a ton. Every great memoir has something to teach you.
10. Do you help people write their memoirs?
I offer a few things that are helpful to people interested in writing memoir: one is a free masterclass in which I go over the terrain of memoir and identify the common mistakes to avoid and the critical elements every good memoir should have. I’ve also done a number of videos on YouTube that can answer common questions. Lastly, I have a 12-week course that guides people, step by step, through the process. And wait, I also offer a short free excerpt of that course! Lots of options.
Alison Wearing is a bestselling, multiple award-winning writer, playwright and performer. She is also a memoir writing coach and the creator/facilitator of Memoir Writing Ink, an online program that guides people through the process of transforming personal stories into memoir.