HERE’S A LIST of phrases. I love lists, particularly memoir lists, and this one came to me at about 4 AM, right after I had shopped in my head for the Christmas list, baked in my head for the Christmas dinner and generally had exhausted all else. So, this list.

But what is it a list of, exactly?

Can you tell?

Read it through before you look at the last line.

  • About you
  • Reading me your datebook
  • A mere list of hurts
  • An unedited list of complaints against the world
  • A place to seek revenge and nothing but revenge
  • Merely one big book beginning at your birth and ending with what you ate today for lunch
  • An inside joke
  • A liar’s playground
  • A place to make someone else feel inferior
  • A confessional where you go for absolution
  • Self-congratulatory

That’s right, it’s a memoir list I now call, “Memoir is Not.” If you know me, you know how I love my lists.

These are what memoir is not supposed to be, never should be and was never intended to be. At least, according to me.

What can you add?