Why We Write About Ourselves: Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature

by Meredith Maran

He loved the idea that in writing a memoir, you don’t have to keep secrets. You can reveal yourself. There’s a saying in AA, “You’re as sick as your secrets.” There’s an intensely powerful freedom when you decide you’re not going to keep secrets anymore.

You couldn’t separate the writing from living this nightmare.

The boy said, “I read your brother’s story. I’m so sorry you’re going through this. My brother tried to kill himself, and no one in my family wants to talk about it.”

“Art isn’t anecdote, it’s the consciousness we bring to bear on the stories we tell.”

Good writing is built on craft and heart. Another way of saying it is you must do your work and it must cost you everything to do it.

I’ve met women who come to their adulthood, and their mothers are still their mothers, but there’s relaxed, affectionate camaraderie between them. My mother and I have never had that kind of relationship, and I don’t think we ever will.

You’re whittling away at your life to find the story underneath. An outline helps.

You get the most powerful material when you write toward whatever hurts. Don’t avoid it. Don’t run from it. Don’t write toward what’s easy. We recognize our humanity in those most difficult moments that people share.

Sit in a café by yourself, and listen to the people in the next booth. You’re clear about what’s going on. You know they’re fighting about sex, or fidelity, or money. You don’t know who Martha is, but you get it. Apply that to your writing.