Memoir Writing Resolutions. Number Two: Be Hospitable

BE HOSPITABLE. I have only one maxim in my office—a little index card that reads, “Be hospitable”— and it has been there through four books, countless magazine pieces, radio essays, blog posts, and op-eds. It’s good memoir writing advice. Why? It works. 

Being hospitable begins with preparing a clean, well-lighted desk to report to each day, and reporting to it each day, at the same time if possible. Even if 45 minutes is all you can allot, allot it, and show up.

Being hospitable requires that you slow down the process, and do some reporting before you being to write. Carry an index card in a pocket, and in your wallet, and the next time you watch Meryl Streep transport herself from one emotion to the next, note the spare gesture she employs. Capture effective dialogue you overhear. When you attend your daughter’s fourth grade piano recital, jot down an impression or two. It’s okay, I promise, since it beats the hell out of all those other parents texting on their Blackberries.

In order to take this good memoir writing advice, I need you to keep notebooks on hand. Lots of them. I keep several running lists in a notebook in my car, from titles of those songs that are the soundtrack of my life, to those new and different things people seem to need to do while driving. At some point, I’ll turn them into pieces, but I can’t use these details later if I don’t have them. And don’t expect to carry these home in your head. Instead, write them down. Get yourself a pack of inexpensive spiral pocket notebooks, and when you do, here’s a tip I learned it from my husband, a fine former reporter and a really great newspaper editor. When taking in a landscape, whether emotional or physical, turn that notebook sideways, like a sketchbook. I know how crazy this sounds, but you won’t care after you see how effortlessly it signals your subconscious that you’re looking for something different. I know it sounds nuts, but this, too, is good memoir writing advice. Turn it vertically and return to reporting the who, what, when, and where of the topic. Go sideways for the why, where you deepen, as well as broaden, your view. Your subconscious loves little cues like this; they help you connect with those screen door slams and childhood survival skills.

Don’t think so? Ever notice how distinct smells send you reeling back 20 years, or the way he wears his hat or sips his tea conjures a long lost love? William Maxwell, the fiction editor of The New Yorker for more than 40 years—he edited John Updike and John O’Hara and John Cheever—was a marvelous fiction and nonfiction writer in his own right. He believed that all you need to write is to remember the slam of your childhood home’s screen door. It’s a do-it-yourself world when writing memoir; we need that screen door of yours to slam just right, and if all it takes is to turn a notebook sideways, I say turn the damn notebook sideways and reap the rewards.