What to Read To Learn to Write Memoir

AS A MEMOIR COACH and online memoir teacher, I spend a lot of my time speaking to people about what they read. As a result, it seems to me that the question of what to read to learn to write memoir is as important a question as how to learn to write it. My answers to both might surprise you.

As to the first – what to read to learn to write memoir – my thoughts are these: When writing memoir stop reading memoir. It will drive you crazy to read memoir while writing it, particularly if you are reading the blockbuster bestsellers in an attempt to duplicate them. I know, I know: You’d never think that way, but many people do, scouring Wild for the clues to how she got to that great, wonderful book and Reese Witherspoon movie deal. And right there we have zeroed in on the problem: You are reading for the wrong things. Reading like this you will learn little and then zoom onto the next blockbusting memoir on your list of blockbusting memoirs with merely the same results. Feel familiar?

Let’s change that.

You Might Want to Stop Reading Memoir

Memoir writers are always surprised when I tell them to stop reading memoir. I certainly understand the response, but it’s one I’ve earned – hard-earned, in fact – after years of searching for how to write. But it’s like that great song from the movie Urban Cowboy. It’s looking for love in all the wrong places. And you don’t want to do that. First of all, you haven’t got the time. Your memoir writing cannot sit around forever waiting while you read book after book after book looking for direction. And second of all, it’s a fruitless endeavor since it only begets more obsessive, non-productive reading.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I am all for buying and reading memoir. After all, memoir is the genre within the publishing industry I most ardently support. But I am not all behind reading it for the purposes of learning to write it. And therein lies the distinction.

Have you noticed that as you read while searching for how to learn to write that you get a little more desperate? Have you noticed that you tense and are enjoying the books you are reading less and less? Is your Amazon wish list simply getting packed with more and more memoir? Are you feeling a little woozy for all the things you “must” read before you can write? Well, my dear memoir writer, that’s a good indication that you are looking for love in all the wrong places. Let’s look for love with a new set of eyes.

Get Yourself a Professional

If you are serious about learning to write memoir, the best way to do so is with a trained professional. This means someone who has some serious writing and publishing credentials.  For my own purposes, I would add that it should also be someone who never sends you off on wild goose chases of obsessive writing prompts and exercises, but instead preaches the bare pew, let’s write and get-it-right-the-first-time gospel of writing well. But that’s me. Lots of people love writing prompts and exercises. I genuinely believe that they are a massive waste of time.

Why? Because if you learn to write with intent – studying the form you want to publish in, writing that form and mastering that form – you will publish in that form. Writing prompts give you no such experience, and instead give a false sense of writing well when all they really teach you is to write to a topic rather than to the specifics that mass market publishing requires.

Find a good class, or a good online memoir coach. Both the class and the teacher should have standards that inspire you and goals you’ll need to meet. No one is born knowing how to do this. There are rules to all writing genres that you need to learn. Learning correctly and with someone on whom you can rely will do many things for you. Perhaps the first great boon to your life is that working with a pro will release you back into the world of the joy of reading for pleasure and inspiration and not merely plundering more bestselling memoirs for what they can teach you.

So, What to Read to Learn to Write Memoir?

Read over your head. Period. This means that you should be reading great writing. And you can. Read The New York Times Book Review and select new books from there that interest you. Go to the library and read back issues of The Paris Review (better yet, subscribe to The Paris Review).

Reading a back issue just the other day, I stumbled upon a 2017 interview with the remarkable Ali Smith, in which she talks about her writing routine, saying the following thing about a breathtaking opener for one of her pieces: “If you open the sensitivities of the reader that early, then the sensitivities of the reader are open for the rest of the book.”

Great instruction. And the interview lasts more than 25 pages, delving into the specifics of how to write well. Years ago, I asked William Kennedy, one of the greatest living American writers, for writing advice. Should I get an MFA, I wondered. His reply. “No, read the interviews in the Paris Review instead.” And I have, for more than 30 years, now passing along that advice to you.

Read for Pleasure. Study for Book Structure

If you want to read and study a blockbusting memoir, do so, of course. But take a tip here from me on how to read those books: Ask yourself what, exactly, you can study from someone else’s story and someone else’s book.

The answer? Their structure. Their story is theirs alone, and while it may be a joy to read, no amount of reading and re-reading will inform you on how to tell yours. What will inform you on how to tell yours is to study their structure. Now there is a good reason to go on fact-finding mission into a book. Read for pleasure and then study for structure. It’s your new mantra. How? Let me help you.

Here’s how to execute a good learning experience with a great big, blockbuster – or any memoir that you adore. Read the book all the way through first. Why? So you can enjoy it and absorb the plot. If you are anything like me, you read like a hungry eight-year-old, and merely soak in the plot in the first go. Good. Enjoy it.

And now?

Then go back and re-read it, asking yourself these three questions.

• What is at stake?
• What did she try?
• What worked?

Simple as that. But write down what you observe. Then study your answers a bit. Now go back into the book and see if you can locate the exact moments when you get evidence of these three things.

How many clues to what is at stake are in the book? How many of what she tried and what worked can you find? And where are these three categories of information located? Notice anything about how these three topics seem to break into the distinct three acts of a good memoir?

Don’t know what I am talking about when I refer to the three acts? Read this post about the three-legged stool of memoir and how and why memoir breaks beautifully into three acts.

Are you interested in learning more about the three questions asked above – what’s at stake, what did she try and what worked? Well, you are in luck. I’m interested in explaining more about this to you. Stay tuned for a big announcement on a new course on book structure coming up soon. In the meantime, read well and write better.

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash