The Art of Memoir

way. While an artist consciously constructs a voice, she chooses its elements because they’re natural expressions of character.

As with everything I’ve ever written, I start out paralyzed by fear of failure. The tarantula ego—starving to be shored up by praise—tries to scare me away from saying simply whatever small, true thing is standing in line for me to say.

A friend called to say she was going crazy once, and I said, “Who’s noticing that?” You want to get next to that quiet, noticer self as a starting place.

One reason I send manuscripts out to friends and family in advance is: I often barely believe myself, for I grew up suspicious of my own perceptions. Plus my kinfolk had changed their stories so many times, I was hoping their signing off on pages would finally end my own lifetime’s speculation.

“She felt it was my version of events.” The best memoirists stress the subjective nature of reportage. Doubt and wonder come to stand as part of the story.

I once heard Don DeLillo quip that a fiction writer starts with meaning and then manufactures events to represent it; a memoirist starts with events, then derives meaning from them.

Then allow the memory to play itself. It won’t be video footage, of course, only jump cuts, snippets, an idea here and there, an image.