Some Notes on Writing Personal Essays, Books, and Stories

It’s an exciting thought, writing a memoir. You finally get the chance to tell everybody exactly what you think, how you feel, and what you’ve had the privilege of learning through a lifetime of unique experience. Quitting that dead-end job in your thirties and backpacking around Patagonia has to include a valuable message about pursuing happiness, right? And finally sitting on your great aunt’s bedside and learning how crochet in the final months of her battle with cancer is sure to evoke some emotional response with readers. Hell, even taking your kids to a baseball game in the same stadium where you saw your own heroes step to the plate must be a metaphor for the passing of time, the red seams on the ball mimicking the slow revolutions of earth orbiting the sun.

As an editor, reader, writer, and aspiring human being, I truly believe everybody has at least one or two tales worth telling. People have written memoirs about everything from elementary school bullies to all-out racial persecution, from everyday musings and reflections to monumental bucket list achievements. So if you’re thinking about writing a memoir, a personal essay, or any other kind of first-person, creative nonfiction account, trust me, you have the material. Now, all that’s left is to write your story, which is, as I’m sure you’ve realized, anything but easy.

A good personal account is much more about how something is told than what’s actually happening. You could have the most riveting life in the world, but if all you do is describe one event after the next, your writing will fall flat. And while you may have some wonderful advice for your audience, striking the wrong tone could make you seem cocky and turn your readers off. Thus, while writing a memoir is an incredibly rewarding and worthwhile endeavor, it’s also one of the most difficult. But we here at Write My Wrongs are more than willing to help! So before you get too intimidated by the task ahead, here are some tips, techniques and cautionary tales I’ve gathered from my own practice reading, writing, and editing memoirs!

Believe in the Story

This needs to happen before anything else—before you put one dot of ink to paper or touch a single finger to your keyboard. If you’re setting out to write a memoir or personal piece, you must be confident you have something worth writing about. If you’re concerned your meditations on life and your battles through hardship don’t contain any merit, how will you write about them convincingly? And if you try to avoid coming off as pretentious by constantly self-deprecating yourself, why should your readers take you seriously?

This might be easier for some than others. For instance, when William Finnegan started to write his Pulitzer-winning memoir, Barbarian Days, I’m sure it wasn’t hard for him to justify a book about a decades-long, globetrotting surf trip spanning the 70s and 80s. By all accounts, Finnegan lived an enthralling life, not only traveling extensively to discover new surf breaks, but also becoming an important journalistic voice during the unraveling of Apartheid in South Africa. With so much perspective, how could he not write a memoir? And more importantly, how can anyone match something like this?

Annie Dillard’s essay, “Living Like Weasels,” provides an answer. It’s a brief yet beautiful chronicle of her run-in with—you guessed it—a weasel. What might’ve seemed unremarkable to most spurred a novel thought from Dillard. From this chance meeting, she writes, “I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don’t think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular… but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive.”

And just like that, something much less novel than a worldwide surf trip becomes equally as valuable and thought-provoking. As we see from Dillard, it’s up to the writer to draw the meaning out of their experiences, no matter how small they might seem

You’re Only Human

“The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead one week.”

You want to keep reading, don’t you?

This jarring first line, taken from Cheryl Strayed’s “The Love of My Life,” is a wonderful illustration of how, when writing a memoir, the author steps out of real life and begins making footprints on the page. While they remain a flesh-and-blood human, the writer also takes on the more complicated role of becoming a character in a story, and all characters (all good ones, at least) have flaws. Any writer preparing to chronicle their own life must be prepared to confront their own faults head-on. Failure to do so might make them come off as overconfident, boring, or self-congratulatory. Remember, even heroes make mistakes!

Being honest with your readers about your own shortcomings will do several things to enhance your writing. For one, it’ll keep you from coming off as a know-it-all. Finding a balance between humility and confidence is something many would-be memoirists struggle with; readers need to know the reliability and merit of the narrator, but they also don’t want to feel like they’re being gloated at. It’s a tough request, but admitting imperfection makes a narrator seem less like a smug lecturer and more of an accomplice in learning. Readers are more empathetic toward people who, like themselves, are flawed.

Second, it makes you more interesting. Readers are typically more drawn toward complicated characters that emulate real life. It’s why Batman is so much better than Superman—nobody wants to read about a superhero who’s virtually indestructible. When an author comes off as one-dimensionally perfect, the results are catastrophic. Not only do they fail to strike the right tone with their audience, but it’s impossible for readers to make a personal connection, and the story becomes a snooze fest. By making it clear you, too, are a layered and contradictory human being, you’re adding one of the most essential ingredients to your memoir.

Establish Your Background

Often times, a person’s story is inherently tied to where they come from. It sets the basis for the way they speak, the people they meet, the decisions they’re forced to make, and their very outlook on the world around them. Successful memoirs need to link the author’s past and present seamlessly, and there’s nothing that transcends this boundary like the places they’ve called home.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing, Maya Angelou’s first memoir, is the perfect model. Stamps, Arkansas, plays a vital role in young Marguerite’s development. Without Angelou’s descriptions of Momma’s store, the importance of the community church, and the violent segregation between whites and blacks, the story would never be truly complete. The settings in Angelou’s story—from Stamps all the way to San Francisco—are just as important as her supporting characters, which is part of what makes her writing so celebrated!

Your hometown is a great starting point for your memoir, so don’t be afraid to go in depth. Your readers need to see, hear, and feel where you come from to have a full grasp of your perspective. “I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles while my older brother went to college” won’t cut it. A memoir needs to include scenes that show not only where something happens, but why it’s important to your individual experience. “My mother never liked going into the city. Even in Westwood, where my older brother lived while attending UCLA, she would grip my hand a little harder as we crossed the street, my knuckles clacking like marbles in her grip,” is much more telling.

Remember, It’s About You

The reason memoirs and personal essays are so enthralling is because they expose their author’s most authentic thoughts and how they transform over time. The events moving your memoir forward—the plot, if this were fiction—are merely the backdrop for demonstrating what lessons you learn, what wisdoms you collect as you make your way through life’s labyrinth of chance, and how you change from start to finish. If your memoir is nothing but an amalgamation of stories with no personal consequences, it won’t be enough. Every memoir needs an intimate and personal touch.

To see what this looks like, I recommend reading The Crossway by Guy Stagg, winner of the 2019 Edward Stanford Travel Memoir of the Year. It’s Stagg’s account of his pilgrimage from Canterbury to Jerusalem sparked by a failed suicide attempt and a fledgling interest in Christianity (Stagg is a nonbeliever). While it would be tempting to simply describe the physical hardships of his trek, he does an excellent job balancing his personal transformation with each leg of the journey. By the end of the book, the author and the reader both arrive in Jerusalem with a clearer understanding of Stagg’s raging internal battles, but more importantly, they’re also able to see just how far he’s come—both physically and mentally. It’s a prime example of how when memoirs get personal, they become much more than autobiographies.

Get Out the Tape Recorder

Or your iPhone, if you’re not a stubborn traditionalist like me. Regardless of the tools you use, interviews are an essential part of the memoir-writing process. Your memory is only so reliable, and relatives, friends, and colleagues are sure to provide you with a clearer picture of your past. It might be hard to revisit certain events, but if you want your writing to be authentic and nuanced, it’s crucial to spend as much time as you can gathering different perspectives on the episodes you’re writing about. Otherwise, the final product will be skewed to your biases, and your readers won’t see the full picture!

Art Spiegleman’s famous graphic novel, Maus, (which, like Barbarian Days, won a Pulitzer) is proof of just how valuable interviews are when writing nonfiction. Maus is the two-part story chronicling Spieglmeman’s father’s struggle for survival as a Jew in Nazi Europe, but it’s also the story of a son unpacking his father’s psyche. Throughout the story, Spiegleman includes episodes from the interviews with his father to reveal their complicated relationship, and the book merges historical narrative with memoir. Without the interviews, not only would Spiegleman not have a true account of his father’s story, but Maus wouldn’t be the intimate, groundbreaking work that’s earned it such consistent praise.

Aside from interviews, it’s also a great idea to do research to fact check important dates and historical events that coincide with your memoir, as well as consult any old journals or diaries you used to keep. This is a surefire way to make sure you’re accurately reporting on the events of your life down to the smallest detail!

Consider the Consequences

Last, but absolutely not least, all writers have to think about the real-life costs of publishing a memoir. The more personal an author gets, the more likely they are to step on toes and share a side of their personality some people might not have seen before.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is an incredibly revealing account of Alison Bechdel’s own life, but it also puts her family and hometown community in a somewhat awkward position. In the book, Bechdel outs her deceased father to the world as a gay man and child predator, shares her thoughts on his possible suicide, and explores her own sexual awakening as a lesbian woman. It’s not hard to imagine how this kind of work could shake some of her other close relationships, and she even references her mother’s reluctance to approve of the memoir at all. On the other hand, after Anthony Bourdain wrote Kitchen Confidential, he was recognized by cooks all around the country as a bearer of truth, and it forever changed his reputation in the world of literature, food, and travel, launching him to celebrity status. If you’re in the midst of writing a memoir, you need to step back and think about how publishing your work will affect not only your life, but the lives of those around you, and decide if you’re ready to face the consequences.

For example, I once worked in tandem with an author in the beginning stages of writing his own memoir, a large portion of which recounted his dependence on alcohol. During interviews, this author told me all about the wild parties he’d been to earlier in his life, and they added a significant amount of material to the book. However, this author was now settled with a wife and children, and had actually had several affairs during his partying years. For obvious reasons, he was reluctant to include this in the book, but excluding the truth presented serious ethical complications as well as diluted the story’s appeal. This author hadn’t fully considered what writing a memoir meant and how it might seriously alter his living situation post-publication.

Need Some Help?

This is a lot to take in, and writing a memoir is no small feat. But you’ve come to the right place! Our experienced editorial staff knows exactly what to look for in a piece of personal nonfiction and can help you craft those with literary value. We know literature—whether it be fiction or nonfiction—is driven by transformation; it’s the magical process of showing how somebody, real or fake, evolves into someone new—like performing alchemy with ink. We know you have something to contribute to this time-honored tradition, and we’d love nothing more than to help you flesh it out and share it with the world at-large!

Written by:
Colin B.
Editor