I Couldn’t Put It Down! What Makes a Memoir Compelling? by Elizabeth Garber
Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler with Elizabeth Garber
“A memoir is a work of sustained narrative prose controlled by the idea of the self under obligation to lift from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver wisdom.”~ Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative p.91
I am very pleased to feature memoirist Elizabeth Garber in this guest post about what makes a memoir compelling. Elizabeth is the author of Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect’s Daughter.
My reviews can be found on Amazon, Goodreads, LibraryThings and RiffleBooks.
Welcome, Elizabeth!
Memoirist Elizabeth Garber
I Couldn’t Put It Down! What Makes a Memoir Compelling
I started writing a memoir before I even knew what I was doing. I had been a poet for decades, but suddenly I was inundated with memories and I started writing vivid accounts of my childhood in prose. After months of writing, I realized this was a memoir. I knew I had no idea what I was doing, and that I needed different skills from poetry. When I discovered Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and The Story, I made it my guide. I underlined nearly a quarter of the book, and I reread my favorite sections over and over.
I started reading memoirs avidly. I wanted to discover the territory I had wandered into. I wanted to learn the craft of memoirs by studying from them directly. A stack of memoirs steadily piled up on the bookshelf next to my bed. One day I looked at the pile of memoirs and saw most of them had a bookmark sticking out of the book, some half-way, others three quarters of the way. I actually finished very few. Something was bogging down in the writing that made me put them down.
I wondered why wasn’t I finishing most memoirs? When I began a memoir, I leapt in, like I was on a first date, thrilled to get to know a new person. But often, midway through the memoir, I was no longer fascinated. Actually, I’d grown tired of this person and their life story. Often the writer began to relate a procession of events, ‘and then I did this,’ hurrying us along to more important recent revelations. Like a third date that was going nowhere, I would sigh and put the book down.
But every now and then, there was a memoir that grabbed me, moved me, and compelled me from start to finish. What was it about the memoirs that kept my rapt attention on the story? They are offering me something I needed to know.
How did they craft the writing, touch me emotionally, and lay down a portrait of a life that I wanted to continue to the end?
Over time I developed a series of question that I used to assess if a memoir was compelling. I typed up my list of questions and favorite quotes and put it on the wall above my desk to guide me as I wrote my own memoir. This was my guide as I worked to deepen the exploration of what would bring depth into my writing. I hope these questions and quotes might be of value as you write, explore, and create a compelling memoir.
Is This a Memoir? Questions to Ask Yourself:
Are we off to a strong start?
Is there enough here to engage us for a whole book?
A great memoir is a journey where the writers join with readers to find themselves hidden within the pages. … we can still sense the shadow of self-discovery as it hovers behind us. (Laurie Uttich, p56)
Has the writer established a strong effective voice?
Get the narrator and you’ve got the piece. Who is speaking, what is being said, and what is the relationship between the two. (Vivian Gornick, p161)
What is the “story”?
What happened to the writer is not what matters: what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.” (Vivian Gornick, p91)
Is there a Depth of Inquiry?
The question clearly being asked in an exemplary memoir is “Who am I.” …On that question the writer of memoir must deliver. Not with an answer but with depth of inquiry. (Vivian Gornick, p92)
Is the writer’s craft skillful? Does the writer’s style propel the reader through the story?
Is there a Narrative Arc or 3 act structure that holds the reader’s attention?
Does the Memoir Have Heart?
If these books… represent the new memoir at its best, it’s because they are written with love. They elevate the pain of the past with forgiveness, arriving at a truth about families in various stages of brokenness. There’s no self-pity, no whining, no hunger for revenge…They want us to know… we have endured to tell the story without judgment and to get on with our lives. (William Zinsser, p.5)
Does the Memoir pass the deadly two thirds of the way ‘bogging down’ place?
You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader’s arm, like a drunk, and say, ‘And then I did this and it was so interesting. (Annie Dillard)
Is there a transformation in the narrator’s understanding that has occurred in the span of the story?
Is there a satisfying end?
Memoir is how we try to make sense of who we are, who we once were, and what values and heritage shaped us. If a writer seriously embarks on the quest, readers will be nourished by the journey. (Zinsser, p6)
It is in the combining of craft, structure, and heart, that an alchemy occurs, creating the magic where a story and a life comes alive. You have been invited to write that story. Hold on tight for the ride until you finish writing your memoir.
Recommended Resources:
Dillard, Annie, “To Fashion a Text,” The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative NonFiction (Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1999).
Gornick, Vivian, The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001)
Hampl, Patricia, I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourns in the Land of Memory (New York:
W.W.Norton and Co., 1999)
Uttich, Laurie Rachkus, “Starting After Z: Present-Moment Beginings that Reveal a Memoir’s Ending,” The Writer’s Chronicle, Vol 41, number 3, Dec. 2008
Zinsser, William, ed, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998)
Implosion Synopsis:
Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect’s Daughter, focuses on how her family was caught in a collision between modern architecture, radical social change, and madness in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s in Cincinnati. It delves into the life of visionary architect Woodie Garber and the collision of forces in the turbulent 1970s that caused his family to collapse. Soon after the family’s move into Woodie’s glass house, his need to control begins to strain normal bonds; and Elizabeth’s first love, a young black man, triggers his until-then hidden racism. This haunting memoir describes his descent into madness and follows Elizabeth’s inspiring journey to emerge from her abuse, gain understanding and freedom from her father’s control, and go on to become a loving mother and a healer who helps others.
Available on Amazon, Indiegogo, and Barnes and Noble and can be ordered at your local independent bookstore.
Author’s Bio:
Elizabeth W. Garber is the author of Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect’s Daughter (2018) and three books of poetry, and Maine (Island Time) (2013), a collaboration of her poetry and essays with paintings and photographs by Michael Weymouth. Three of her poems have been read on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac. She received a MFA in creative nonfiction from University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Masters Program. She was awarded writing fellowships at Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Jentel Artist Residency Program in Wyoming. She has maintained a private practice as an acupuncturist for over thirty years in Belfast, Maine.
Elizabeth can be reached at: www.elizabethgarber.com
And https://www.facebook.com/ElizabethGarberWriter/
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Thank you Elizabeth for these valuable tips and resources about memoir writing.
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How about you? How do you approach memoir writing?
We’d love to hear from you. Please join in the conversation below~
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