Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (Writer's Craft)
by William Knowlton Zinsser
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 36)
Read in May, 2008
There are a few gems here -- the latter part of Annie Dillard's "To Fashion a Text" and Toni Morrison's excellent guide to the history of African American memoir: "The Site of Memory." The bibliography is also fascinating, to see what writers were reading as they wrote their memoirs. Otherwise, this book hasn't quite made the transition from spoken presentations to published essays, and the product is neither solid craft advice nor strong personal essay.
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Read in April, 2008
recommends it for:
memoir writers, writers, people into writers
This is a good complement to Zinsser's classic "On Writing Well." I was hoping for the magic sauce that would make my life interesting enough to write a book about it and get rich and retire, so I was disappointed. It's really a collection of writings from several very successful memoir writers and each tells, in the writer's own words, how they went about getting their memories down on paper and into a logical, coherent form. It's very well written and interesting. If you're going to ...more
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IN the last two weeks, I just tackled the task of committing the letters of a 25 year friendship to a scripted presentation. I was inspired and educated to read these reflections by major authors - of fiction and nonfiction - of their process of actually writing about their own lives in the first person.
In one selection Annie Dillard reflects that once you commit something of your own life to written text, the act of writing ( and refining), the text-experience can overshadow the original...more
In one selection Annie Dillard reflects that once you commit something of your own life to written text, the act of writing ( and refining), the text-experience can overshadow the original...more
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This isn't a "how to" book. It's basically a book of essays by successful memoir writers. They each tell something they think is important regarding how or why they wrote their memoirs. I found it interesting and comforting that these very successful writers felt and experienced the same things I have, and I gleaned some ideas to try with my own writing.
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Read in December, 2007
Interesting book about writing your own memoir. Each chapter is by a famous author who has written a memoir and the decisions and consequences of having done so. Helpful for anyone considering writing a memoir.
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Good. A book of essays by nine different memoirists including: Russell Baker, Frank McCourt, Annie Dillard, and Toni Morrison. I highlighted something in every essay. Some are better than others.
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