You have to live before you can write an interesting memoir!

Writing should at least be interesting.

Unfortunately there are many writers today who really don't have much to say, but they persist in writing. The attitude seems to be that if you publish enough titles, eventually you'll have a big payday, and that's the measure of the worth of a writer nowadays. It's about the celebrity status. The importance of the actual writing has been moved to the back burner.

I also agree that most young people simply haven't experienced enough of life's vicissitudes to write a compelling memoir.

I could be wrong, but I think I've heard it stated that many authors have a very difficult time following up a successful book, and frequently never rise to the level of their "masterpiece" again. (Much like "one hit wonders" in pop music.)

eldragon said:

I believe that most people have a good story to tell, but lately - I have been picking up memoirs and biographys written too early!

Here's the dilemma :


A person has a happy childhood - there's no book there. Unless you had a super interesting childhood because you were in a circus, or maybe you were on a TV show, or something unusually interesting, or - something terrible happened to you - you were molested, or lived in abstract poverty or were held hostage by wild apes............

Unless something unusual happened, there's no book there.


Now - you go from your happy, uneventful childhood to college and graduate with a degree in journalism. So - you think you are ready to write a book?

Make it a novel!

You have had no juicy relationships to write about; you haven't worked a string of meaningless and demeaning jobs ...........you haven't lived long enough to write a memoir! You have no stories to tell yet!


Case in point : I recently purchased the book : Autobiography of a Fat Bride - True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood - by Laurie Notaro. This is her second book - published by Villard Books. (Her first was a best seller.)

The cover is done up with a funny picture - some professional (who probably has a drawer full of un-published manuscripts,) wrote the catchy back page.

I bought the book.


It's not funny. It's supposed to be - but it's not funny. It's a memoir - but there's nothing memorable about it. I read the first 22 pages, and chuckled once.


I've had more ironic experiences on a journey to the local PO.

Do you want to write a book that ends up being left in the seat of a commercial airplane? Do you want to be the author of a book that is read to the second chapter, then put down and left to collect dust?

It seems like that's the goal of too many writers.

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THANK you! I am so with you on this--except for the Laurie Notaro part. :]

eldragon said:

Do you read her books?

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No, I'm just naturally disagreeable. :]

Yes, I do read her books. I Love Everyone and Other Atrocious Lies had me positively rolling on the floor, almost literally. (Note to self: Do not read Laurie Notaro on public transportation.) I've been a devotee ever since.

Kristen

Actually, I don't have it. Are you trying to get rid of yours?

Awww, thanks! Here's hoping you hate it the next time around. :] Please be sure to include a business card so I can pay you back.

Oh no! :]

I had a feeling... I'm glad you've been able to connect with it. When you're done with that one, you have to pick up I Love Everyone. Do not eat or drink while reading that one. It's simply not safe.

Kristen

Back to your first point. I believe a lot of the problem is many people write because they actually like writing. They like typing or feeling their pen slide over the pages.

I think the best books are when the author likes COMMNUINCATING. They have something really important and meaningful to say and they get that message out in as many mediums as possible. Writing for the sake of writing feels a lot like spending the day with a three year old who won't stop speaking because they are enjoying the practice.

expatbrat said:

I think the best books are when the author likes COMMNUINCATING.

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I think this is a good point. My own way of expressing it, or maybe it's just the way I feel, is that the best books are written by those who like to entertain. I know in real life I love to make people laugh -- people can be handsomer than me (rare), smarter than me (very rare), and even sexier than me (in theory only), but if someone tells me that Joe Smith is FUNNIER than me, it's like a dagger to the heart. I'm not sure all of my books (written, partly-written, and entirely unwritten) have much to communicate (some, like the mysteries, surely don't) but I know they all strive to entertain. And not just through humor -- stories of the bizarre, or the kinky, of the cruel, all serve that purpose.
Perhaps the communicate/entertain disctinction is wholly along a non-fiction/fiction distinction. That thought just occurred to me and seems logical enough. Still, I'm not retyping that first paragraph...

I just have to argue--you could make a happy childhood very interesting. Considering if the child is a sociopath and has contempt for his "suburban life" or whatever.
Yeah, I'm wierd.

MarkEsq said:

I think this is a good point. My own way of expressing it, or maybe it's just the way I feel, is that the best books are written by those who like to entertain. I know in real life I love to make people laugh -- people can be handsomer than me (rare), smarter than me (very rare), and even sexier than me (in theory only), but if someone tells me that Joe Smith is FUNNIER than me, it's like a dagger to the heart. I'm not sure all of my books (written, partly-written, and entirely unwritten) have much to communicate (some, like the mysteries, surely don't) but I know they all strive to entertain. And not just through humor -- stories of the bizarre, or the kinky, of the cruel, all serve that purpose.
Perhaps the communicate/entertain disctinction is wholly along a non-fiction/fiction distinction. That thought just occurred to me and seems logical enough. Still, I'm not retyping that first paragraph...

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Thanks for communicating your entertaining perspective.

i write because that's all i think i'm good at

maybe that's why i'm not published yet *scribbles*

A gifted writer can make a happy childhood entertaining. Eudora Welty's "A Writer's Beginning" is a good example.

My childhood was so odd that I can't even begin to put it into perspective yet. There might be a memoir there - but I currently picture it playing out as an absurd, melodramatic TV movie. It wasn't unhappy. There was so much love, strength and hope that just thinking about it all makes me want to gag.

In summary: I was mistakenly "diagnosed" with cancer three times. I made some good friends in the hospital and then they all died. At Christmas one year, some obnoxious kid that no one liked stole all of my candy. He's dead too. I spent additional time in pysch wards and several months wheelchair bound. My father contracted a rare form of epilepsy in the temporal lobe, believed he was God, threatened to kill the family, spent lots of time in a straight-jacket and has detailed stories of the trips he took to Hell to meet his own father. Hell, I guess, looks a lot like it does in that movie "What Dreams May Come". My mother never missed a single day at the hospital, divided her time between each of us, and conducted independent medical research into our illnesses - eventually leading to the proper diagnoses of both. We managed to pull through these rough times with Jesus by our side, and a devote neighbour/faith healer, who one day was discovered dead in her closet with a cut throat only twenty minutes before her three children returned home from school. They spent that evening at our house. That memory lords over all. Anyway, cue the cliched loss of faith and the angstful, teenage descent into drug abuse, alcoholism, and Satanic worship...

Oh yeah, and in the end, love and family conquered all!

Harhar. It's ridiculous. All true - but I can't help but think that it'd take one amazing writer to turn that kind of cranked up nonsense into a good read. Sometimes I wonder why I couldn't have just been beaten and molested by demented, drunken step-parents or something. It would have given me market value.

Um, Rob? You realize that you have to write the story, right?

I mean, you have to. That's a story and a half.

The challenge, of course, is making it somehow cohesive. And I know what you mean about waiting for perspective. That always comes in its own sweet time, I think.

But promise me you're going to write it eventually.

JennaGlatzer said:

I mean, you have to. That's a story and a half.

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That extra half is what keeps me away from it. But yeah - maybe in a few years. At present, I'm fairly certain it would read like bad, bloated fiction, and it's way more responsibility than I'm prepared to take on.

Rob D. said:

That extra half is what keeps me away from it. But yeah - maybe in a few years. At present, I'm fairly certain it would read like bad, bloated fiction, and it's way more responsibility than I'm prepared to take on.

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That's true. You lost me early on. I've known of people misdiagnosed with cancer once, but three times strains credulity.