What I Got Wrong About Memoir and What I Now Understand About the Genre

Photo by Kalle Kortelainen on Unsplash

Today’s post is by writer, teacher, and editor Ronit Plank.

Before I was a memoirist, instructor and editor, I was a fiction writer with absolutely no desire whatsoever to write a memoir. Many reasons kept me away. First, I didn’t see a need to revisit the facts of my confusing and difficult childhood and preferred to mask my unresolved experiences in the fiction I wrote. Second were the slew of negative biases about memoir that had somehow seeped into my subconscious from our culture before I had ever studied or read the genre deeply.

I mistakenly believed memoir was whiny and navel gazey, that it had no plot, and I was certain that no one would care about my story; others had lived through far worse. But then, six weeks into an MFA fiction program at Pacific University, I struggled to find new ideas and material that interested me. So, with my program director’s blessing I jumped the tracks and joined the nonfiction cohort. Yet even then I resisted memoir, preferring instead to think of myself as a personal essay writer. Because, as I actually said to a classmate, “memoir seems too easy.” I could not have been more wrong.

When I began writing memoir, I discovered that looking at what we’ve endured with fresh eyes and trying to understand it in a new way is compelling work. My story was not as simple as I thought, nor were the reasons for what had occurred in my life. I began to learn for myself how demanding and gratifying writing memoir can be. In the years since I published my very first essay and then my memoir When She Comes Back, I’ve interviewed hundreds of memoirists on my podcast Let’s Talk Memoir. I’ve continued to grow and learn as both a person and a writer because of this genre.

In celebration of National Memoir Writing Month, here is a debunking of some of the most pervasive memoir misconceptions to help fortify you as you excavate your story.

Misconception #1: Memoir is whiny.

I used to think memoir was navel gazing, the writing equivalent of pouting and blaming others. I may have decided this because of how I was raised, thinking that I was supposed to “be strong” at all times. I believed I had to suck it up and handle hardships on my own. I worried that it was weak to dwell on past events, which is what I thought memoir was about. But memoir is not an exercise in finger pointing or self-pity. Reconsidering the story you’ve told yourself for years and recognizing your own habits and tendencies is courageous. Just as healthy relationships grow with honesty and accountability, so does memoir.

In my Let’s Talk Memoir interview with Kelly McMasters, author of The Leaving Season: A Memoir in Essays, she says, “Often, the hardest things are what I’m driven to writing about and figuring out because they’re full of questions,” and that’s a rich place from which to draft your memoir. Curiosity is a cornerstone of memoir writing as is vulnerability. And vulnerability is not a liability; it is a form of strength. It takes guts to see how you have played a part in what has occurred in your life. As memoirist Abigail Thomas says, “The more vulnerable you are the stronger you become.”

The power of a memoir lies in the ability of a memoirist to see herself clearly, to recognize the part she played in the events she has captured. It is the opposite of woe is me or why me? It’s more of a how come and what’s next? When we home in on the particularity of our story we help speak to the universal and that is what helps us reach others. As Sara Weiss, nonfiction director at Ballantine Books shared with me on the podcast, “The best part of memoir is that it’s a way to learn about the world and it’s a way to learn about yourself through someone else’s experience.”

Misconception #2: Memoir has no plot.

Perhaps one of the most striking differences between memoir writing and fiction writing is that in fiction the writer often has a very strong sense of the plot even in the earliest stages of drafting their manuscripts. But in memoir we learn what our story means as we work on it, sometimes discovering pivotal connections in much later drafts. In memoir, the more you dig and dust off the relics from your history you can’t seem to let go of, the closer you look at the memories that snag, the better the chance you will uncover elements that become frameworks of your plot.

In memoir the tension the reader feels comes not merely from physical action but from witnessing a dynamic mind at work, from the memoirist’s search for meaning in what they’ve lived through as well as the structural choices they make in their manuscripts. Paul Lisicky who joined me on the podcast to talk about his latest book Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell, shared that even when he’s writing about himself, “I’m writing for the reader and I think that paradox, that attunement to the reader, helps me as a writer to be a little more vulnerable, to be a little more awkward and uncertain, and it helps me to express a sense of process on the page.”

Inviting readers to witness your journey of self-discovery as you tease out patterns in your behavior and relationships helps provide the momentum that drives your narrative forward. By taking time with your material and leaning into parts of your story that are ripe for reexamining, you will uncover facets you hadn’t seen before. That fresh insight helps heighten the tension in the work and keeps the reader turning the page. Memoirists can absolutely keep plot in mind while writing, with an abundance of tools available. Scene selection, chronology, reflective voice, and structure help strengthen narrative arc and infuse the manuscript in vital ways.

Misconception #3: The world doesn’t need our memoir.

Confronted with the myriad hardships in our world, it’s easy to question the decision to add our voice to the chorus. But the more room we make within ourselves, the more room we have. When a child gets hurt, we take care of the child. We don’t push them away and tell them other kids have it worse. That would only teach them not to have empathy for others or for themselves.

There is no limit to the compassion in the world, there’s room for us all, and readers of literature care about people. They are interested in their experience. Writers give them that experience. “Memoir is not just a meaningful genre,” says Brooke Warner, memoirist and founder of She Writes Press. “I think it’s a genre that saves lives. I think it’s a genre that changes the culture.”

People might read a memoirist’s story and see that they are not alone, or feel a call to action, to pay attention and look for meaning within themselves, try to better comprehend the people they are close to. As Camille Dungy, author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden shared in my conversation with her, “Every time I am true about any aspect of who I am and how I move through the world I have a better chance of building a connection with somebody who honors me with the time to pick up my book.”

Writing memoir is not a competition for the worst or saddest story. Memoirists are charged with looking at their lives to find pattern and achieve some kind of understanding, not to out-pain other memoirists. People read memoir to glimpse a mind at work, very hard at work in most cases, trying to piece together what happened during a period of time and why the memoirist is still thinking about it now. It’s a memoirist’s response to what they’ve gone through that is interesting. When faced with trouble in their lives, why does one person leave, while another digs in? Why does one person blame herself, and another person blames others? It is the memoirist’s unique insight that creates the point of view and voice that make memoirs captivating.

No one but you knows what it was like to be you, and no one knows what it is like to be you, looking back to the beginning to figure out what you didn’t know then. That’s why no two memoirs are the same even if they are both about mothers who leave or marriages that break up or the ravages of chronic illness, or whatever your story might be. At its best memoir writing is a courageous journey of self-discovery. Writing with vulnerability, curiosity, and complexity will empower and transform you and it can empower others.

So get cracking, we need your story.