NOT SURPRISINGLY, I THINK that the best book on how to write memoir is the one I wrote. It’s called The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. The title reflects it contents – a somewhat irreverent how-to on writing what you know and the good that will do you. I love this little book. I wrote it for you, and when it was time to give a title to the book, those words seemed to sum it up best since along with all I know on how to write memoir, I’ve included a little life advice, as well.
After all, you want people to “get” the book right from the title. And that happened right from the pub date when I received a really wonderful boost from Poets & Writers, a magazine I’ve read and adored for more than 30 years. (I once had a t-shirt with their logo, and I remember that I was 21 at the time, so it’s a long love affair). P&W not only featured the book’s video on their fabulous site, but ran a few lines of real praise.
Though perhaps nothing made me quite so happy as getting a great review in Kirkus, that ever-hard-to-please trade magazine read by book stores and libraries as a guide to what to buy. Thank you, Kirkus. I promise to live up to your fine words in all my teaching.
All This and My Sister, Too
On Blog Radio, my sister, Margaret Roach, and I were interviewed for an hour. And early into that interview we realized that of all the wacky things we’ve done together, we’d never been interviewed together, despite having written 6 books between the two of us, as well as countless magazine articles, and having appeared separately on many of the same TV shows, including MARTHA.
My little book on how to write memoir is a much-improved version of the self-published edition entitled Realia, and along with that new title, it got a new publisher, Grand Central, whom I adore, and new pages that include an algorithm for how to make your story interesting to others. Don’t believe me? That algorithm is foolproof, I promise. I hope you’ll check it out in the book.
Is this, in fact, the best book on how to write memoir? Well, I think so. I put my heart and soul into it and hope you’ll enjoy the read.
For more on books on writing, please see my list of The Best Books on Writing I’ve Ever Read.
Meg Waite Clayton says
Great title, Marion. And I’m also a longtime reader of Poets & Writers (though closer to 20 years than to 30)
marion says
Hi, Meg. Lovely to read you here. So enjoying your new book. What a gem. So glad that you share my adoration for P&W. Looking forward to more correspondence with you. Please come back soon.
Andrea says
My favorite memoir-ish book is Natalie Goldberg’s ‘Writing Down the Bones’ that I discovered in a used book shop 20 years ago. I read it straight through in one night and no book has ever resonated with me as much as this book. In a similar vein, it was about writing and living and how each is necessary to the other. I re-read WDTB every year, rediscovering the ways that writing gives strength to my life and understanding in new ways each year that the ease and difficult of life and writing don’t necessarily occur at the same time. My hardest writing is ahead of me and books like these help me know that one day I will write my whole story and it will have been worth it.
Rhonda says
I would love to win a copy!
My most recent memoir was Jennifer Lauck’s Found…loved it.
Am writing my own memoirs and pressing for healing through this process on a daily basis.
Thank you for this opportunity to win…(-:
julia says
Thanks for putting your ideas and thoughts on the page . . .it seems you will make it easier for those of us who wish to follow.
margaret christine says
About 15 years ago, I read ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ by Maya Angelou and it really made an impact on my life. Her honesty in sharing the gritty parts of her life, in concert with knowing, as I was reading, what an amazing life she had created for herself, and the gifts she gives so many, really turned my life around. I refused, from then on, to live as a victim of my past.
What a wonderful giveaway!
Annette Gendler says
Congrats on your book coming out! Here’s my response to your sister’s question on what memoir made a difference to me: “Brother, I’m Dying” by Edwidge Danticat because it showed me how to write a memoir involving big history, and family history, and how that history resonates in the present generation.
Michelle says
I think I would have to say Eat, Pray, Love. My Mother had just died suddenly, and I was floundering…
Robin says
It’s Margaret’s memoir that most recently helped me choose my next path. My youngest child graduated high school yesterday and is leaving the nest in seven days. Margaret’s story nudged me into believing that I can, once again, shake my life up and make major changes. It’s not as easy at 47 as it was when I was 26.
Cynthia A. says
One of my all time favorite memoirs was Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet by Lora Brody. Brody has a wicked sense of humor, is impossibly passionate about two of my favorite subjects (chocolate and cooking), and showed me that you can tell a story with food. She wasn’t the first person to write a memoir with recipes, but she was the first person that I read who had done so.
Brody’s bête noire is so amazingly full of chocolate that if I eat a sliver too late in the evening I won’t be able to sleep that night. Every so often I judge it worth a sleepless night just to nibble some a sliver of her bête noire…
Diana in Wisconsin says
“What memoir that you have read mattered to you, and why?”
“In My Hands’ by Irene Gut Opdyke about a young Polish Catholic girl who saved countless Jews from Hitler. It simply amazed me that this young girl was SO brave and so caring and so strong. She did whatever needed to be done to right this horrific wrong in any small way that she could.
When I think of it (and I recommend it often) ANY trouble I’ve had in life pales in comparison and my fondest hope is that if I’m ever confronted with this type of evil, I will act as Irene so bravely did!
Kay says
Three dog life by Abigail thomas
Judy from Kansas says
Boy, where to start? 60 years ago Miss Ulysses of Puka Puka by Johnnie Frisbie was the beginning of my love of the Pacific islands. Then maybe 50 years ago Dale Evans’ Angel Unawares. Anne Lindberg’s A Gift From the Sea and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings were hugely important and this month I finally got to read and enjoy And I Shall Have Some Peace There.
Pat says
I have just finished Paul Auster’s memoir, The Invention of Solitude, and I found it profound. Initially, it addresses dealing with material possessions after his father’s death, but that leads to other matters and family history, before unknown. Eventually, Auster writes of what it is to be a translator and a writer. His exploration of solitude is fascinating. I know I need to sort things out and writing is the way to do it. I am reluctant to start. Discovering my truth may require drastic changes.
Mary says
I am reading memoirs about falling in love with and marrying someone from another country. “The Natural Laws of Good Luck” and “The Butterfly Mosque”—I am also writing a memoir of falling in love with and marrying a doctor in Cuba and our 8 year plus journey to be together. These memoirs have been guides to writing and living through the perils and joys of cross-cultural marriages.
Wendy says
the book that I read almost 20 years ago changed my life forever!
Thr Struggle for Animal rights by Tom Regan
I have it right on my desk today and refer to it often.
Lisa Carter says
Blue Suburbia by Laurie Lico Albanese was stunning — tiny little pieces that pack an emotional wallop, seemingly disparate stories that together form a life.
Thank you for this opportunity to win The Memoir Project!
Broken Barn Industries says
One of my favorite quotes is from Czeslaw Milosz: “When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.” Has that been true for your family as a result of your books? It seems so harsh a price to pay for writing the truth as you remember it. Alice Koller’s Stations of Solitude showed up in my life at exactly the right time- my marriage had failed and my children were leaving home. I needed to learn how to be alone after many many years of never having enough time to myself.
Kathy says
On Writing by Stephen King because he’s practical and funny.
Mia says
Pat Montandon’s “Oh The Hell Of It All”, because that”s what I am reading now! Marion, the book looks interesting, would make a perfect summer project for me!
Carol Wong says
My favorite memoirs are ‘Where’s my Wand” by Eric Poole, “Madame Secretary” by Madeline Albright, ‘Look Me in My Eye” by John Robison, ‘On Writing” by Stephen King,’The Diary of Anne Frank’ by Anne Frank, ‘The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls’.,
“Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.
Of the above, “Diary of Ann Frank” mattered to me the most because I was the same age as Anne Frank went she wrote it. I felt so close to her because even though she was hiding in an attic and I had freedom to go anywhere that I wanted, we were going through some of the same pains of growing up.
CarolNWong(at)aol(dot)com
Tia says
As I said on your sister’s blog, my favorite memoirs: Operating Instructions: A Journal of my Son’s First Year by Anne Lamott and Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. Lamott’s was given to me when my first child was born, and I appreciated her honesty and non-Mary-Poppins approach to childrearing. And Glass Castle haunted me for weeks after I read it. I wanted to jump in the book and call Child Protective Services or wisk those children away (when I read this one I had 3 kids and out of the baby stages).
Suffice it to say, the memoirs that stick with us usually strike a chord with our own experiences.
I’m all about family, and co-authored a coming of age tale (based on our real life but fictionalized) with my mother, so I feel drawn to your relationship with your sister.
Hope to win a copy! But, more than that, I’m glad to have been introduced to both of your blogs and stories.
Anjuli says
Definitely want to win! :)
As far as which memoir I read which impacted me- it was Cheaper by the Dozen. The reason it mattered to me? Imagine a 12 year old reading this wonderfully fascinating tale of a family so full and so humorous. When I turned the final page, I was determined to get my hands on as many REAL life stories as I could find. Although I’ve read many memoirs over the years- this one mattered the most since it whet my appetite for all memoirs.
Anna says
“The Woman Warrior” by Maxine Hong Kingston. This book broadened my understanding of how memory, dreams and fantasy interweave. Her writing in simply brilliant.
stephanie cavanaugh says
Anything by David Sedaris because his books make me laugh until my gut aches. (And I sure would like to win one of these here (dem dere?) books because clearly–and here I contemplate my vast and extraordinarily limp readership– I’m writing up the wrong tree).
marion says
ENTRIES FOR THE GIVEAWAY ARE NOW CLOSED, but your comments about memoirs you have loved are always welcome (even if they don’t count in the drawing). Winners are being chosen at random and will be emailed!
Thank you all for such a great response — Marion and Katrina and I want to make a booklist from these suggestions as a future post. So more to come…