essay about writing memoir

How to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide

Zining Mok  |  January 29, 2024  |  29 Comments

If you’ve thought about putting your life to the page, you may have wondered how to write a memoir. We start the road to writing a memoir when we realize that a story in our lives demands to be told. As Maya Angelou once wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

How to write a memoir? At first glance, it looks easy enough—easier, in any case, than writing fiction. After all, there is no need to make up a story or characters, and the protagonist is none other than you.

Still, memoir writing carries its own unique challenges, as well as unique possibilities that only come from telling your own true story. Let’s dive into how to write a memoir by looking closely at the craft of memoir writing, starting with a key question: exactly what is a memoir?

How to Write a Memoir: Contents

What is a Memoir?

• Memoir vs Autobiography

Memoir Examples

Short memoir examples.

• How to Write a Memoir: A Step-by-Step Guide

A memoir is a branch of creative nonfiction , a genre defined by the writer Lee Gutkind as “true stories, well told.” The etymology of the word “memoir,” which comes to us from the French, tells us of the human urge to put experience to paper, to remember. Indeed, a memoir is “ something written to be kept in mind .”

A memoir is defined by Lee Gutkind as “true stories, well told.”

For a piece of writing to be called a memoir, it has to be:

• Nonfictional
• Based on the raw material of your life and your memories
• Written from your personal perspective

At this point, memoirs are beginning to sound an awful lot like autobiographies. However, a quick comparison of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love , and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , for example, tells us that memoirs and autobiographies could not be more distinct.

Next, let’s look at the characteristics of a memoir and what sets memoirs and autobiographies apart. Discussing memoir vs. autobiography will not only reveal crucial insights into the process of writing a memoir, but also help us to refine our answer to the question, “What is a memoir?”

Memoir vs. Autobiography

While both use personal life as writing material, there are five key differences between memoir and autobiography:

1. Structure

Since autobiographies tell the comprehensive story of one’s life, they are more or less chronological. writing a memoir, however, involves carefully curating a list of personal experiences to serve a larger idea or story, such as grief, coming-of-age, and self-discovery. As such, memoirs do not have to unfold in chronological order.

While autobiographies attempt to provide a comprehensive account, memoirs focus only on specific periods in the writer’s life. The difference between autobiographies and memoirs can be likened to that between a CV and a one-page resume, which includes only select experiences.

The difference between autobiographies and memoirs can be likened to that between a CV and a one-page resume, which includes only select experiences.

Autobiographies prioritize events; memoirs prioritize the writer’s personal experience of those events. Experience includes not just the event you might have undergone, but also your feelings, thoughts, and reflections. Memoir’s insistence on experience allows the writer to go beyond the expectations of formal writing. This means that memoirists can also use fiction-writing techniques , such as scene-setting and dialogue , to capture their stories with flair.

4. Philosophy

Another key difference between the two genres stems from the autobiography’s emphasis on facts and the memoir’s reliance on memory. Due to memory’s unreliability, memoirs ask the reader to focus less on facts and more on emotional truth. In addition, memoir writers often work the fallibility of memory into the narrative itself by directly questioning the accuracy of their own memories.

Memoirs ask the reader to focus less on facts and more on emotional truth.

5. Audience

While readers pick up autobiographies to learn about prominent individuals, they read memoirs to experience a story built around specific themes . Memoirs, as such, tend to be more relatable, personal, and intimate. Really, what this means is that memoirs can be written by anybody!

Ready to be inspired yet? Let’s now turn to some memoir examples that have received widespread recognition and captured our imaginations!

If you’re looking to lose yourself in a book, the following memoir examples are great places to begin:

• The Year of Magical Thinking , which chronicles Joan Didion’s year of mourning her husband’s death, is certainly one of the most powerful books on grief. Written in two short months, Didion’s prose is urgent yet lucid, compelling from the first page to the last. A few years later, the writer would publish Blue Nights , another devastating account of grief, only this time she would be mourning her daughter.
• Patti Smith’s Just Kids is a classic coming-of-age memoir that follows the author’s move to New York and her romance and friendship with the artist Robert Maplethorpe. In its pages, Smith captures the energy of downtown New York in the late sixties and seventies effortlessly.
• When Breath Becomes Air begins when Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon, is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Exquisite and poignant, this memoir grapples with some of the most difficult human experiences, including fatherhood, mortality, and the search for meaning.
• A memoir of relationship abuse, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House is candid and innovative in form. Machado writes about thorny and turbulent subjects with clarity, even wit. While intensely personal, In the Dream House is also one of most insightful pieces of cultural criticism.
• Twenty-five years after leaving for Canada, Michael Ondaatje returns to his native Sri Lanka to sort out his family’s past. The result is Running in the Family , the writer’s dazzling attempt to reconstruct fragments of experiences and family legends into a portrait of his parents’ and grandparents’ lives. (Importantly, Running in the Family was sold to readers as a fictional memoir; its explicit acknowledgement of fictionalization prevented it from encountering the kind of backlash that James Frey would receive for fabricating key facts in A Million Little Pieces , which he had sold as a memoir . )
• Of the many memoirs published in recent years, Tara Westover’s Educated is perhaps one of the most internationally-recognized. A story about the struggle for self-determination, Educated recounts the writer’s childhood in a survivalist family and her subsequent attempts to make a life for herself. All in all, powerful, thought-provoking, and near impossible to put down.

While book-length memoirs are engaging reads, the prospect of writing a whole book can be intimidating. Fortunately, there are plenty of short, essay-length memoir examples that are just as compelling.

While memoirists often write book-length works, you might also consider writing a memoir that’s essay-length. Here are some short memoir examples that tell complete, lived stories, in far fewer words:

• “ The Book of My Life ” offers a portrait of a professor that the writer, Aleksandar Hemon, once had as a child in communist Sarajevo. This memoir was collected into Hemon’s The Book of My Lives , a collection of essays about the writer’s personal history in wartime Yugoslavia and subsequent move to the US.
• “The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week.” So begins Cheryl Strayed’s “ The Love of My Life ,” an essay that the writer eventually expanded into the best-selling memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail .
• In “ What We Hunger For ,” Roxane Gay weaves personal experience and a discussion of The Hunger Games into a powerful meditation on strength, trauma, and hope. “What We Hunger For” can also be found in Gay’s essay collection, Bad Feminist .
• A humorous memoir structured around David Sedaris and his family’s memories of pets, “ The Youth in Asia ” is ultimately a story about grief, mortality and loss. This essay is excerpted from the memoir Me Talk Pretty One Day , and a recorded version can be found here .

So far, we’ve 1) answered the question “What is a memoir?” 2) discussed differences between memoirs vs. autobiographies, 3) taken a closer look at book- and essay-length memoir examples. Next, we’ll turn the question of how to write a memoir.

How to Write a Memoir: A-Step-by-Step Guide

1. how to write a memoir: generate memoir ideas.

how to start a memoir? As with anything, starting is the hardest. If you’ve yet to decide what to write about, check out the “ I Remember ” writing prompt. Inspired by Joe Brainard’s memoir I Remember , this prompt is a great way to generate a list of memories. From there, choose one memory that feels the most emotionally charged and begin writing your memoir. It’s that simple! If you’re in need of more prompts, our Facebook group is also a great resource.

2. How to Write a Memoir: Begin drafting

My most effective advice is to resist the urge to start from “the beginning.” Instead, begin with the event that you can’t stop thinking about, or with the detail that, for some reason, just sticks. The key to drafting is gaining momentum . Beginning with an emotionally charged event or detail gives us the drive we need to start writing.

3. How to Write a Memoir: Aim for a “ shitty first draft ”

Now that you have momentum, maintain it. Attempting to perfect your language as you draft makes it difficult to maintain our impulses to write. It can also create self-doubt and writers’ block. Remember that most, if not all, writers, no matter how famous, write shitty first drafts.

Attempting to perfect your language as you draft makes it difficult to maintain our impulses to write.

4. How to Write a Memoir: Set your draft aside

Once you have a first draft, set it aside and fight the urge to read it for at least a week. Stephen King recommends sticking first drafts in your drawer for at least six weeks. This period allows writers to develop the critical distance we need to revise and edit the draft that we’ve worked so hard to write.

5. How to Write a Memoir: Reread your draft

While reading your draft, note what works and what doesn’t, then make a revision plan. While rereading, ask yourself:

• What’s underdeveloped, and what’s superfluous.
• Does the structure work?
• What story are you telling?

6. How to Write a Memoir: Revise your memoir and repeat steps 4 & 5 until satisfied

Every piece of good writing is the product of a series of rigorous revisions. Depending on what kind of writer you are and how you define a draft,” you may need three, seven, or perhaps even ten drafts. There’s no “magic number” of drafts to aim for, so trust your intuition. Many writers say that a story is never, truly done; there only comes a point when they’re finished with it. If you find yourself stuck in the revision process, get a fresh pair of eyes to look at your writing.

7. How to Write a Memoir: Edit, edit, edit!

Once you’re satisfied with the story, begin to edit the finer things (e.g. language, metaphor , and details). Clean up your word choice and omit needless words , and check to make sure you haven’t made any of these common writing mistakes . Be sure to also know the difference between revising and editing —you’ll be doing both. Then, once your memoir is ready, send it out !

Learn How to Write a Memoir at Writers.com

Writing a memoir for the first time can be intimidating. But, keep in mind that anyone can learn how to write a memoir. Trust the value of your own experiences: it’s not about the stories you tell, but how you tell them. Most importantly, don’t give up!

Anyone can learn how to write a memoir.

If you’re looking for additional feedback, as well as additional instruction on how to write a memoir, check out our schedule of nonfiction classes . Now, get started writing your memoir!

29 Comments

Thank you for this website. It’s very engaging. I have been writing a memoir for over three years, somewhat haphazardly, based on the first half of my life and its encounters with ignorance (religious restrictions, alcohol, and inability to reach out for help). Three cities were involved: Boston as a youngster growing up and going to college, then Washington DC and Chicago North Shore as a married woman with four children. I am satisfied with some chapters and not with others. Editing exposes repetition and hopefully discards boring excess. Reaching for something better is always worth the struggle. I am 90, continue to be a recital pianist, a portrait painter, and a writer. Hubby has been dead for nine years. Together we lept a few of life’s chasms and I still miss him. But so far, my occupations keep my brain working fairly well, especially since I don’t smoke or drink (for the past 50 years).

Hi Mary Ellen,

It sounds like a fantastic life for a memoir! Thank you for sharing, and best of luck finishing your book. Let us know when it’s published!

Best, The writers.com Team

Hello Mary Ellen,

I am contacting you because your last name (Lavelle) is my middle name!

Being interested in genealogy I have learned that this was my great grandfathers wife’s name (Mary Lavelle), and that her family emigrated here about 1850 from County Mayo, Ireland. That is also where my fathers family came from.

Is your family background similar?

Hope to hear back from you.

Richard Lavelle Bourke

Hi Mary Ellen: Have you finished your memoir yet? I just came across your post and am seriously impressed that you are still writing. I discovered it again at age 77 and don’t know what I would do with myself if I couldn’t write. All the best to you!! Sharon [email protected]

I am up to my eyeballs with a research project and report for a non-profit. And some paid research for an international organization. But as today is my 90th birthday, it is time to retire and write a memoir.

So I would like to join a list to keep track of future courses related to memoir / creative non-fiction writing.

Hi Frederick,

Happy birthday! And happy retirement as well. I’ve added your name and email to our reminder list for memoir courses–when we post one on our calendar, we’ll send you an email.

We’ll be posting more memoir courses in the near future, likely for the months of January and February 2022. We hope to see you in one!

Very interesting and informative, I am writing memoirs from my long often adventurous and well travelled life, have had one very short story published. Your advice on several topics will be extremely helpful. I write under my schoolboy nickname Barnaby Rudge.

[…] How to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide […]

I am writing my memoir from my memory when I was 5 years old and now having left my birthplace I left after graduation as a doctor I moved to UK where I have been living. In between I have spent 1 year in Canada during my training year as paediatrician. I also spent nearly 2 years with British Army in the hospital as paediatrician in Germany. I moved back to UK to work as specialist paediatrician in a very busy general hospital outside London for the next 22 years. Then I retired from NHS in 2012. I worked another 5 years in Canada until 2018. I am fully retired now

I have the whole convoluted story of my loss and horrid aftermath in my head (and heart) but have no clue WHERE, in my story to begin. In the middle of the tragedy? What led up to it? Where my life is now, post-loss, and then write back and forth? Any suggestions?

My friend Laura who referred me to this site said “Start”! I say to you “Start”!

Hi Dee, that has been a challenge for me.i dont know where to start?

What was the most painful? Embarrassing? Delicious? Unexpected? Who helped you? Who hurt you? Pick one story and let that lead you to others.

I really enjoyed this writing about memoir. I ve just finished my own about my journey out of my city then out of my country to Egypt to study, Never Say Can’t, God Can Do It. Infact memoir writing helps to live the life you are writing about again and to appreciate good people you came across during the journey. Many thanks for sharing what memoir is about.

I am a survivor of gun violence, having witnessed my adult son being shot 13 times by police in 2014. I have struggled with writing my memoir because I have a grandson who was 18-months old at the time of the tragedy and was also present, as was his biological mother and other family members. We all struggle with PTSD because of this atrocity. My grandson’s biological mother was instrumental in what happened and I am struggling to write the story in such a way as to not cast blame – thus my dilemma in writing the memoir. My grandson was later adopted by a local family in an open adoption and is still a big part of my life. I have considered just writing it and waiting until my grandson is old enough to understand all the family dynamics that were involved. Any advice on how I might handle this challenge in writing would be much appreciated.

I decided to use a ghost writer, and I’m only part way in the process and it’s worth every penny!

Hi. I am 44 years old and have had a roller coaster life .. right as a young kid seeing his father struggle to financial hassles, facing legal battles at a young age and then health issues leading to a recent kidney transplant. I have been working on writing a memoir sharing my life story and titled it “A memoir of growth and gratitude” Is it a good idea to write a memoir and share my story with the world?

Thank you… this was very helpful. I’m writing about the troubling issues of my mental health, and how my life was seriously impacted by that. I am 68 years old.

[…] Writers.com: How to Write a Memoir […]

[…] Writers.com: “How to Write a Memoir” […]

I am so grateful that I found this site! I am inspired and encouraged to start my memoir because of the site’s content and the brave people that have posted in the comments.

Finding this site is going into my gratitude journey 🙂

We’re grateful you found us too, Nichol! 🙂

Firstly, I would like to thank you for all the info pertaining to memoirs. I believe am on the right track, am at the editing stage and really have to use an extra pair of eyes. I’m more motivated now to push it out and complete it. Thanks for the tips it was very helpful, I have a little more confidence it seeing the completion.

Well, I’m super excited to begin my memoir. It’s hard trying to rely on memories alone, but I’m going to give it a shot!

Thanks to everyone who posted comments, all of which have inspired me to get on it.

Best of luck to everyone! Jody V.

I was thrilled to find this material on How to Write A Memoir. When I briefly told someone about some of my past experiences and how I came to the United States in the company of my younger brother in a program with a curious name, I was encouraged by that person and others to write my life history.

Based on the name of that curious program through which our parents sent us to the United States so we could leave the place of our birth, and be away from potentially difficult situations in our country.

As I began to write my history I took as much time as possible to describe all the different steps that were taken. At this time – I have been working on this project for 5 years and am still moving ahead. The information I received through your material has further encouraged me to move along. I am very pleased to have found this important material. Thank you!

Wow! This is such an informative post packed with tangible guidance. I poured my heart into a book. I’ve been a professional creative for years to include as a writer, mainly in the ad game and content. No editor. I wasn’t trying to make it as an author. Looking back, I think it’s all the stuff I needed to say. Therapy. Which does not, in and of itself, make for a coherent book. The level of writing garnering praise, but the book itself was a hot mess. So, this is helpful. I really put myself out there, which I’ve done in many areas, but the crickets response really got to me this time. I bought “Educated” as you recommended. Do you have any blog posts on memoirs that have something to say to the world, finding that “something” to say? It feels like that’s theme, but perhaps something more granular. Thanks for this fantastic post. If I had the moola, I would sign up for a class. Your time is and effort is appreciated. Typos likely on comments! LOL

thanks. God bless

I am a member of the “Reprobates”, a group of seven retired Royal Air Force pilots and navigators which has stayed in intermittent touch since we first met in Germany in 1969. Four of the group (all of whom are in their late seventies or early eighties) play golf together quite frequently, and we all gather for reunions once or twice a year. About a year ago, one of the Reprobates suggested posterity might be glad to hear the stories told at these gatherings, and there have since been two professionally conducted recording sessions, one in London, and one in Tarifa, Spain. The instigator of these recordings forwarded your website to his fellow Reprobates by way of encouragement to put pen to paper. And, I, for one, have found it inspiring. It’s high time I made a start on my Memoirs, thank you.

Thank you for sharing this, Tim! Happy writing!

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Write a Great Memoir: How to Start (and Actually Finish) Your First Draft

by Joe Bunting | 1 comment

Want to Become a Published Author? In 100 Day Book, you’ll finish your book guaranteed. Learn more and sign up here.

When I first started writing my memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , about a real-life adventure I experienced with my wife and ten-month-old son, I thought it was going to be easy.

After all, by that point in my career, I had already written four books, two of which became bestsellers. I’ve got this, I thought. Simple.

It wasn’t. By the time Crowdsourcing Paris was published and became a #1 New Release on Amazon, it was more than five years later. During that time, I made just about every mistake, but I also learned a process that will reliably help anyone to start and finish writing a great memoir.

My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , as a #1 New Release on Amazon!

In this guide, I want to talk about how you can start writing your memoir, how you can actually finish it, and how you can make sure it’s good .

If you read this article from start to finish, it will save you hundreds of hours and result in a much better finished memoir.

Hot tip : Throughout this guide, I will be referencing my memoir Crowdsourcing Paris as an example. To get the most out of this guide and the memoir writing process in general, get a copy of the book to use as an example. Order your copy here »

But Wait! What Is a Memoir? (Memoir Definition)

How do you know if you're writing a memoir? Here's a quick memoir definition:

A memoir is a book length account or autobiography about a real life situation or event. It usually includes a pivotal experience in your life journey.

A key point to make is that memoir is a  true story . You don't have to get every piece of dialogue perfect, but you do have to try to tell the personal story or experience as best as you remember.

If you're looking to fictionalize your real life account you're writing a novel, not a memoir (and specifically a roman à clef novel ).

For more on the difference between a novel and a memoir, check out this coaching video:

How to Get Started With Your Memoir: 10 Steps Before You Start Writing

This guide is broken into sections: what to do before you start writing and how to write your first draft.

When most people decide to write a memoir, they just start writing. They write about the first life experience they can think of.

That’s sort of what I did too. I just started writing about my trip to Paris, beginning with how I first decided to go as a way to become a “real writer.” It turned out to be the biggest mistake I made.

If you want to finish your memoir, and even more, write a good memoir, just starting with the first memory you can think of will make things much harder for you.

Instead, get started with a memoir plan.

What’s a memoir plan? There are ten elements. Let’s break it down.

Get the memoir plan in a downloadable worksheet. Click to download your memoir plan »

1. Write Your Memoir Premise in One Sentence

The first part of a memoir plan is your premise. A premise is a one-sentence summary of your book idea.

You might be wondering, how can I summarize my entire life in a single sentence?

The answer is, you can’t. Memoir isn’t a full autobiography. It’s not meant to be a historical account of your entire life story. Instead, it should share one specific situation and what you learned from that situation.

Every memoir premise should contain three things:

• A Character. For your memoir, that character will always be you . For the purposes of your premise, though, it’s a good idea to practice thinking of yourself as the main character of your story. So describe yourself in third person and use one descriptive adjective, e.g. a cautious writer.
• A Situation. Memoirs are about a specific event, situation, or experience. For example, Marion Roach Smith’s bestselling memoir was about the discovery that her mother had Alzheimer’s, which at the time was a fairly unknown illness. My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , begins on the first day of my trip to Paris and ends on the day I left. You can’t write about everything, at least in this book. But you can write about one thing well, and save all the other ideas for the next book.
• A Lesson. What life lesson did you learn from this situation? How did your life change inexorably after going through this situation? Again, here you can’t write about everything you’ve ever learned. Choose ONE life lesson or emotional truth and focus on it.

Want to see how a premise actually looks? Here’s an example from my memoir Crowdsourcing Paris :

When a Cautious Writer is forced by his audience to do uncomfortable adventures in Paris he learns the best stories come when you get out of your comfort zone.

One thing to note: a premise is not a book description. My book description, which you can see here , is totally different from the premise. It’s more suspenseful and also less detailed in some ways. That’s because the purpose of a premise isn’t to sell books.

What is the premise of your memoir? Share it in the comments below!

2. Set a Deadline to Finish Your First Draft

Or if you’ve already finished a draft, set a deadline to finish your next draft.

This is crucial to do now , before you do anything else. Why? Because there are parts of the memoir plan that you can spend months, even years on. But while planning is helpful, it can easily become a distraction if you don’t get to the writing part of the process.

That’s why you want to put a time limit on your planning by setting a deadline.

How long should the deadline be?

Stephen King says you should write a first draft in no longer than a season. So ninety days.

In my 100 Day Book program, we’ve helped hundreds of memoir writers finish their book in just 100 days. To me, that’s a good amount of time to finish a first draft.

However, I wouldn’t take any longer than 100 days. Writing a book requires a level of focus that’s difficult to achieve over a long period of time. If you set your deadline for longer than 100 days, you might never finish.

Also set weekly milestones.

In addition to your final deadline, I recommend breaking up the writing process into weekly milestones.

If you’re going to write a 65,000-word memoir over 100 days, let’s say, then divide 65,000 by the number of weeks (about 14) to get your weekly word count goal: about 4,600 words per week.

That will give you a sense of how much progress you’re making each week, so you won’t be in a huge rush to finish right at the end of your deadline. After all, no one can pull an all-nighter and finish a book! Create a writing habit that will enable you to actually finish your book.

Keep track of your word count deadlines.

By the way, this is one reason I love Scrivener , my favorite book writing software , because it allows you to set a target deadline and word count. Then Scrivener automatically calculates how much you need to write every day to reach your deadline.

It’s a great way to keep track of your deadline and how much more you have to write. Check out my review of Scrivener to learn more.

3. Create Consequences to Make Quitting Hard

I’ve learned from experience that a deadline alone isn’t enough. You also have to give your deadline teeth .

Writing a book is hard. To make sure that you show up to the page and do the work you need to finish, you need to make it harder to not write.

How? By creating consequences.

I learned this from a friend of mine, writer and book marketing expert Tim Grahl .

“If you really want to finish your book,” he told me, “write a check for $1,000 to a charity you hate. Then give that check to a friend with instructions to send it if you don’t hit your deadline.”

“I don’t need to do that,” I told him. “I’m a pro. I have discipline.” But a month later, after I still hadn’t made any progress on my memoir, I finally decided to take his advice.

This was during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. So I wrote a $1,000 check to the presidential candidate that I most disliked (who shall remain nameless!), and gave it to a friend with instructions to send the check if I didn’t hit my final deadline.

I also created smaller consequences for the weekly deadlines, which I highly recommend. Here’s how it works:

Consequence #1 : Small consequence, preferably related to a guilty pleasure that might keep you from writing. For example, giving up a game on your phone or watching TV until you finish your book.

Consequence #2 : Giving up a guilty pleasure. For example, giving up ice cream, soda, or alcohol until you finish your book.

Consequence #3 : Send the $1,000 check to the charity you hate.

Each of these would happen if I missed three weekly deadlines. If I missed the final deadline, then just the $1,000 check would get sent.

After I put in each of these consequences, I was the most focused and productive I’ve ever been in my life. I finished my book in just nine weeks and never missed a deadline.

If you actually want to finish your memoir, give this process a try. I think you’ll be surprised by how well it works for you.

4. Decide What Kind of Story You’re Telling

Now that you’ve set your deadline, start thinking about what kind of book you’re writing. What is your story really about?

“Memoir is about something you know after something you’ve been through,” says Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project .

I think there are seven types of stories that most memoirs are about.

• Coming of Age. A story about a young person finding their place in the world. A great example is 7 Story Mountain  by Thomas Merton.
• Education. An education story , according to Kim Kessler and Story Grid, is about a naive character who, through the course of the story, comes to a bigger understanding of the world that gives meaning to their existing life. My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , is a great example of an education memoir.
• Love. A love story is about a romantic relationship, either the story of a breakup or of two characters coming together. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a great example of a love story memoir, as it tells the story of her divorce and then re-discovering herself and love as she travels the world.
• Adventure/Action. All adventure stories are about life and death situations. Also, most travel memoirs are adventure stories. Wild by Cheryl Strayed is a great example, and Crowdsourcing Paris is also an adventure story. (You can apply the principles from our How to Write Adventure guide here , too!)
• Performance. Performance memoirs are about a big competition or a competitive pursuit. Julie and Julia , Julie Powell’s memoir about cooking her way through Julia Child’s recipes, is a good example of a performance memoir. Outlaw Platoon , about the longest-serving Ranger platoon in Afghanistan, is another great performance story.
• Thriller. Memoirs about abuse or even an illness could fall into the crime, horror, or thriller arena. (Our full guide on How to Write a Thriller is here .)
• Society. What is wrong with society? And how can you rebel against the status quo? Society stories are very common as memoirs. I would also argue that most humor memoirs are society stories, since they talk about one person’s funny, transgressive view on society. Anything by David Sedaris, for example, is a society memoir.

For more on all of these genres, check out Story Grid’s article How to Use Story Grid to Write a Memoir .

Three Stories

Note that I included my memoir in two categories. That’s because most books, including memoirs, are actually a combination of three stories. You have:

• An external story. For example, Crowdsourcing Paris is an adventure story.
• An internal story . As I said, Crowdsourcing Paris is an education story.
• A subplot . Usually the subplot is another external story, in my case, a love story.

What three stories are you telling in your memoir?

5. Visualize Your Intention

One of the things that I’ve learned as I’ve coached hundreds of writers to finish their books is that if you visualize the following you are much more likely to follow through and accomplish your writing goals:

• Where you're going to write
• When you're going to write
• How much you're going to write

Here I want you to actively visualize yourself at your favorite writing spot accomplishing the word count goal that you set in step two.

For example, when I was writing Crowdsourcing Paris , I would imagine myself sitting at this one café that was eight doors down from my office. I liked it because it had a little bit of a French feel. Then I would imagine myself there from eight in the morning until about ten.

Finally, I would actively visualize myself watching the word count tracker go from 999 to 1,000 words, which was my goal every day. Just that process of imagining my intention was so helpful.

What is your intention? Where, when, and how much will you write? Imagine yourself actually sitting there in the place you’re going to write your memoir.

6. Who Will Be On Your Team?

No one can write a book alone. I learned this the hard way, and the result was that it took me five years to finish my memoir.

For every other book that I had written, I had other people holding me accountable. Without my team, I know that I would never have written those books. But when I tried to write my memoir, I thought, I can do this on my own. I don’t need accountability, encouragement, and support. I’ve got this.

To figure out who you need to help you finish your memoir, create three different lists of people:

• Other writers. These are people who you can process, with who know the process of writing a book. Some will be a little bit ahead of you, so that when you get stuck, they can encourage you and say, “I’ve been there. You’re going to get through it. Keep working.”
• Readers. Or if you don’t have readers, friends and family. These will be the people who give you feedback on your finished book before it’s published, e.g. beta readers.
• Professional editors. But you also need professional feedback. I recommend listing two different editors here, a content editor to give feedback on the book as a whole (for example, I recommend a Write Practice Certified Coach), and a proofreader or line editor to help polish the final draft. (Having professional editing software is smart too. We like ProWritingAid. Check out our ProWritingAid review .)

Just remember: it takes a team to finish a book. Don’t try to do it on your own.

And if you don’t have relationships with other writers who can be on your team, check out The Write Practice Pro. This is the community I post my writing in to get feedback. Many of my best writing friends came directly from this community. You can learn more about The Write Practice Pro here .

7. What Other Books Will Inspire You?

“Books are made from books,” said Cormac McCarthy. Great writers learn how to write great books by reading other great books, and so should you.

I recommend finding three to five other memoirs that can inspire you during the writing process.

I recommend two criteria for the books you choose:

• Commercially successful. If you want your book to be commercially successful, choose other books that have done well in the marketplace.
• Similar story type. Try to find books that are the same story type that you learned in step four.

For my memoir, I had four main sources of inspiration.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert; The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain; A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway; and Midnight in Paris , the film by Woody Allen.

I referred back to these sources all the time. For example, when I was stuck on the climactic scene in the memoir, I watched one scene in A Midnight in Paris twenty times until I could quote the dialogue. I still didn’t come up with the solution until the next day, but understanding how other writers solved the problems I was facing helped me figure out my own solutions for my story.

8. Who Is Your Reader Avatar?

Who is your book going to be for? Or who is the one person you’ll think of when you write your book? When the writing gets hard and you want to quit, who will be most disappointed if you never finish your book?

I learned this idea from J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote his novel The Hobbit for his three boys as a bedtime story. Every day he would work on his pages, and every night he would go home and read them to his sons. And this gave him an amazing way to get feedback. He knew whether they laughed at one part or got bored at another.

This helped him make his story better, but I also imagine it gave him a tremendous amount of motivation.

This Can Be You, Sort Of

I don’t think your reader avatar should be you. When it comes to your own writing, you are the least objective person.

There’s one caveat: you can be your own reader avatar IF you’re writing to a version of yourself at a different time. For example, I have friends who have imagined they were writing to a younger version of themselves.

Who will you write your memoir for?

9. Publishing and Marketing

How will you publish your book? Will you go the traditional route or will you self-publish? Who is your target market (check your reader avatar for help)? What will you do to promote and market your book? Do you have an author website ?

It might be strange to start planning for the publishing and marketing of your book before you ever start writing it, but what I’ve discovered is that when you think through the entire writing process, from the initial idea all the way through the publishing and marketing process, you are much more likely to finish your book.

In fact, in my 100 Day Book program, I found that people who finished this planning process were 52 percent more likely to finish their book.

Spend some time thinking about your publishing and marketing plans. Just thinking about it will help you when you start writing.

Start Building Your Audience Before You Need It

In the current publishing climate, most memoir agents and publishers want you to have some kind of relationship with an audience before they will consider your book.

Start building an audience before you need it. The first step to building an audience, and the first step to publishing in general, is building an author website. If you don’t have a website yet, you can find our full author website guide here .

(Building a website doesn’t have to be intimidating or time-consuming if you have the right guide.)

10. Outline Your Memoir

The final step of the planning process is your memoir outline . This could be the subject of a whole article itself. Here, I’ve learned so much from Story Grid, but if you don’t have time to read the book and listen to over 100 podcast episodes, here’s a quick and dirty process for you.

But First, for the Pantsers

There are two types of writers: the plotters and the pansters . Plotters like to outline. Pantsers think outlining crushes their creative freedom and hate it.

If you identify with the pantsers, that’s okay. Don’t worry too much about this step. I would still recommend writing something in this section of your memoir plan, even if you only know a few moments that will happen in the book, even recording a series of events might help as you plan.

And for you plotters, outline to your heart’s content, as long as you’ve already set your deadline!

Outlining Tips

When you’re ready to start outlining, here are a few tips:

• Begin by writing down all the big moments in your life that line up with your premise. Your premise is the foundation of your story. Anything outside of that premise should be cut.
• S eparate your life events into three acts. One of the most common story structures in writing is the three-act story structure. Act 1 should contain about 25 percent of your story, Act 2 about 50 percent of your story, and Act 3 about 25 percent.
• Act 1 should begin as late into the story as possible. In Crowdsourcing Paris , like most travel memoirs, I began the story the day I arrived in Paris.
• Use flashbacks, but carefully. Since I began Crowdsourcing Paris so late into the action, I used flashbacks to provide some details about what happened to lead up to the trip. Flashbacks can be overused, though, so only include full scenes and don’t info dump with flashbacks.
• Start big. The first scene in your book should be a good representation of what your book is about. So if you’re writing an adventure story (see Step 4), then you should have a life or death moment as the first scene. If you’re writing a love story, you should have a moment of love or love lost.
• End Act 1 with a decision. It is you, and specifically your decisions , that drive the action of your memoir. So what important decision did you make that will drive us into Act 2?
• Start Act 2 with your subplot. In Step 4, I said most books are made up of three stories. Your subplot is an important part of your book, and in most great stories, your subplot begins in Act 2.
• Act 2 begins with a period of “fun and games.” Save the Cat , one of my favorite books for writers, says that after the tension you built with the big decision in Act 1, the first few scenes in Act 2 should be fun and feel good, with things going relatively well for the protagonist.
• Center your second act on the “all is lost” moment. Great stories are about a character who comes to the end of him or herself. The all is lost moment is my favorite to write, because it’s where the character (in this case you ) has the most opportunity to grow. What is YOUR “all is lost” moment?
• Act 3 contains your final climactic moment. For Crowdsourcing Paris , this was the moment when I thought I was going to die. In a love story memoir, it might be when you finally work things out and commit to your partner.
• Act 3 is also where you show the big lesson of the memoir. Emphasis on show. Back in Step 1, you identified the lesson of your memoir. Act 3 is when you finally demonstrate what you’ve learned throughout the memoir in one major event.
• A tip for the final scene: end your memoir with the subplot. This gives a sense of completion to your story and works as a great final moment.

Use the tips above to create a rough outline of your memoir. Keep in mind, when you start writing, things might completely change. That’s okay! The point with your plan isn’t to be perfect. It’s to think through your story from beginning to end so that you’ll be prepared when you get to that point in the writing process.

Want to make this process as easy as possible? Get the memoir plan in a downloadable worksheet. Click to download your memoir plan »

That’s the end of the planning stage of this guide. Now let’s talk about how to write your first draft.

How to Write the First Draft of Your Memoir

If you’ve followed the steps above to create a memoir plan, you’ve done the important work. Writing a memoir, like writing any book, is hard. But it will actually be harder to not be successful if you’ve followed all the steps in the memoir plan.

But once you’ve created the “perfect” plan, it’s time to do the dirty work of writing a first draft.

In part two of our guide, you’ll learn how to write and finish a first draft.

1. Forget Perfection and Write Badly.

First drafts are messy. In fact, Anne Lamott calls them “shitty first drafts” because they are almost always terrible.

Even though I know that, though, any time I’m working on a new writing project, I still get it into my head that my first draft should be a masterpiece.

It usually takes me staring at a blank screen for a few hours before I admit defeat and just start writing.

If you’re reading this, don’t do that! Instead, start by writing badly.

Besides, when you’ve done the hard planning work, what you write will probably be a lot better than you think.

2. Willpower Doesn’t Work. Neither Does Inspiration. Instead, Use the “3 Minute Timer Trick.”

My biggest mistake when I began Crowdsourcing Paris was to think I had the willpower I needed as a professional writer and author of four books to finish the book on my own. Even worse, I thought I would be so inspired that the book would basically write itself.

I didn’t. It took not making much progress on my book for more than a year to realize I needed help.

The best thing you can do to help you focus on the writing process for your second draft is what we talked about in Step 4: Creating a Consequence.

But if you still need help, try my “3 Minute Timer Trick.” Here’s how it works:

• Set a timer for three minutes. Why three minutes? Because for me, I’m so distractible I can’t focus for more than three minutes. I think anyone can focus for three minutes though, even me.
• Write as fast as you can. Don’t think, just write!
• When the timer ends, write down your total word count in a separate document (see image below). Then subtract from the previous word count to calculate how many words you wrote during that session.
• Also write down any distractions during those three minutes. Did the phone ring? Did you have a tough urge to scroll through Facebook or play a game on your phone? Write it down.
• Then, repeat the process by starting the timer again. Can you beat your word count?

This process is surprisingly helpful, especially when you don’t feel like writing. After all, you might not have it in you to write for an hour, but anyone can write for three minutes.

And the amazing thing is that once you’ve started, you might find it much easier to keep going.

Other Tools for Writers

By the way, if you’re looking for the tools I use and other pro writers I know use, check out our Best Tools for Creative Writers guide here .

3. Make Your Weekly Deadlines.

You can’t finish your book in an all-nighter. That being said, you can finish a chapter of your book in an all-nighter.

That’s why it’s so important to have the weekly deadlines we talked about in Part 1, Step 2 of this guide.

By breaking up the writing process into a series of weekly deadlines, you give yourself an achievable framework to finish your book. And with the consequences you set in Step 3 of your memoir plan, you give your deadlines the teeth they need to hold you accountable.

And as I mentioned above, Scrivener is especially helpful for keeping track of deadlines (among other things). If you haven’t yet, check out my review of Scrivener here .

4. Keep Your Team Updated.

Having a hard time? It’s normal. Talk to your team about it.

It seems like when you’re writing a book, everything in the universe conspires against you. You get into a car accident, you get sick, you get into a massive fight with your spouse or family member, you get assigned a new project at your day job.

Writing a book would be hard enough on its own, but when you have the rest of your life to deal with, it can become almost impossible.

Without your team, which we talked about in Step 6 of your book plan, it would be.

For me, I would never have been able to finish one book, let alone the twelve that I’ve now finished, without the support, encouragement, and accountability of the other writers whom I call friends, the readers who believe in me, and most of all, my wife.

Remember: No book is finished alone. When things get hard, talk about it with your team.

And if you need a team, consider joining mine. The Write Practice Pro is a supportive encouraging community of writers and editors. It’s where I get feedback on my writing, and you can get it here too. Learn more about the community here.

5. Finally, Trust the Process.

When I walk writers through the first draft writing process, inevitably, around day sixty, they start to lose faith.

• They think their book is the all-time worst book ever written.
• They get a new idea they want to work on instead.
• They decide the dream to write a book and become a writer was foolish.
• They want to quit.

A few do quit at this point.

But the ones who keep going discover that in just a few weeks they’ve figured out most of the problems in their book, they’re on their last pages, and they’re almost finished.

It happens every time, even to me.

If you take nothing else from this post, please hear this: keep going. Never quit. If you follow this process from start to finish, you’re going to make it, and it’s going to be awesome.

I’m so excited for you.

How to Finish Your Memoir

More than half of this guide is about the planning process. That’s because if you start well, you’ll finish well.

If you create the right plan, then all that’s left is doing the hard, messy work of writing.

Without the right plan, it’s SO easy to get lost along the way.

That’s why I hope you’ll download my Memoir Plan Worksheet. Getting lost in the writing process is inevitable. This plan will become your map when it happens. Click to download the Memoir Plan Worksheet.

More than anything, though, I hope you’ll never quit. It took me five years to write Crowdsourcing Paris , but during that time I matured and grew so much as a writer and a person, all because I didn’t quit.

Even if it takes you five years, the life lessons you’ll learn as you write your book will be worth it.

And if you’re interested in a real-life adventure story set in Paris, I’d be honored if you’d read Crowdsourcing Paris . I think you’ll love it.

Good luck and happy writing.

More Writing Resources:

• How to Write a Memoir Outline: 7 Essential Steps For Your Memoir Outline
• 7 Steps to a Powerful Memoir
• The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith
• Crowdsourcing Paris by J.H. Bunting

Are you going to commit to writing a memoir (and never quitting, no matter what)? Let me know in the comments .

Summarize your memoir idea in the form of a one-sentence premise. Make sure it contains all three elements:

• A character
• A situation

Take fifteen minutes to craft your premise. When you’re finished, share your memoir premise in the Pro Practice Workshop for feedback. And if you share, please be sure to give feedback to three other writers. Not a member? Join us .

Join 100 Day Book

Enrollment closes May 14 at midnight!

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

Work with Joe Bunting?

WSJ Bestselling author, founder of The Write Practice, and book coach with 14+ years experience. Joe Bunting specializes in working with Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, How To, Literary Fiction, Memoir, Mystery, Nonfiction, Science Fiction, and Self Help books. Sound like a good fit for you?

One of my book chapters has been accepted for publication, but I lack confidence in the accuracy of what I have written. I have completed the chapter, but I would appreciate your assistance in improving its quality.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

• 3 Rules to Write World-Changing Memoir - The Write Practice - […] Here are my three “rules” about how to write a memoir: […]
• 4 Essentials for Writing Memoir That Resonates With Readers - The Write Practice - […] How do you write memoir and tell a story that is compelling to you, but might not be to…
• 19 Tips on Writing Memoir from The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith - The Write Practice - […] Marion Roach Smith has solid advice on how to write your own stories. Let me share nineteen tips on…
• The One Secret to a Deeper Memoir - The Write Practice - […] if you’re wondering how to write a memoir, what if you interviewed people–friends, family, community members–about the events on…
• How to Unlock the Power of the Present Tense in Memoir - The Write Practice - […] Writing memoir in the present tense suits grief in ways that the past tense simply cannot provide. […]
• Read Memoirs to Understand Character Motivation - […] about you? Do you want to know how to write a memoir? Check out our complete guide, Write a…
• How to Satisfy Your Reader With a Great Ending - The Write Practice - […] you’re figuring out how to write a memoir or a novel, creating an ending that is satisfying for the…
• How to Write About Your Family… Without Getting Disowned - […] this it true, through writing my own memoir, I have come to find that we can handle these situations…
• Write a Great Memoir: How to Start (and Actually Finish) Your First Draft – Books, Literature & Writing - […] “When you’re getting started writing a memoir, don’t just start writing about the first thing you remember.Tweet thisTweet […]
• 10 Memoir Writing Prompts to Get You Started - […] to take the next step and learn how to write a memoir? Check out my complete guide, Write a…
• How to Write a Short Memoir Story : The Write Practice - […] Then, when you’re ready to write a full memoir, check out our complete guide, Write a Great Memoir: How…

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• A Letter From Paris

How to write a memoir essay

If you’ve been reading my emails and posts for awhile you’ll know my favourite strategy for getting a book deal. Why is it my favourite strategy? Because it’s empowering! Let’s face it, publishing can be slow, elitist, confusing, and secretive!

My favourite strategy for getting a book published is not…

• Spending five years on your manuscript,
• Spending two years on your book proposal….
• Paying for endless critiques or constantly workshopping either of the two….

My favourite strategy is to leverage a published non-fiction piece – say, a blog post, an essay or an article – and turn it into a book deal.

This is how I found an agent and publisher for A Letter From Paris , it’s how dozens of authors I know have secured incredible book deals. You also earn money (if you pitch to a paying publication), improve your writing skills, build your platform and make impressive connections, learn a lot, and more.

Publishing a non-fiction piece either in a top publication or even a lesser-known outlet is also a great way to boost your writing profile (AKA that dreaded thing called ‘platform’ for the introverts among us!), gauge interest in your memoir topic or particular threads of the story, improve your google-ability (yes this IS a thing – be assured any agent or editor will google you before they do anything else!), add fantastic clips and extra material to your book proposal , finesse your story and improve your writing skills.

So how do you write a memoir essay?

In this post I’m going to give you the key points you need to remember to write a memoir essay – this is super important if you’re hoping that it will lead to a book deal for your memoir.

1: Clarify your Hook

The most important thing you need to get right for your memoir essay is also the most important thing you need in a book-length memoir: a strong hook.

Put simply, a hook is something unique, unusual, contrasting, strange or compelling about your specific personal story. I’ve talked about the hook in many of my blogs and webinars, but really, your hook is that part of your story that your friends say “WTF?” when you explain that the same day you lost your dog and your husband, you won the lottery.

It’s that part of your story that beggars belief but also elicits intrigue from your audience. It raises questions and interest.

Of course, you may not have lost your dog and your husband but also won the lottery on the same day, but the most human experiences can be given a strong hook. Find a common experience – right now, it’s the global pandemic. Throw in something unique to contend with or to assert: For example – you were on your second date when the lockdown was announced, and suddenly you had to decide whether to move in together or risk breaking the law or breaking up.

See what I mean? Practise finding your story hook by talking about your story with friends. What do they find most compelling? What is the question at the heart of your hook? You will spend the rest of the essay or article or series of blog posts exploring this.

Tip : Don’t just say “the essay is about my mother.” Or – “the essay is about my hunt for a house”. There has to be some kind of contrast. Even in a lyrical, prosaic essay, you need to explore the internal grapplings with something  – well, gripping.

Bonus tip: Start observing yourself when you watch a movie – how is the beginning of the story presented? How quickly do you learn the hook? Usually, it’s right, front and centre. For example: The Bourne Identity – Jason Bourne wakes on a boat in the mediterranean with amnesia, bullets in his body….  We have all these questions with a strong hook, we want to continue with the story…

2: Include both an inner and outer journey

Christopher Vogler in one of my favourite writing books, The Writer’s Journey   says:

“Good stories show two journeys, outer and inner…”

When I read a compelling memoir essay or article, I’m struck by how the narrator weaves the inner journey with what’s going on in their physical or outer world, and how the two reflect and build upon eachother. Have you read this essay by Lauren Hough ? What’s so human, and so compelling (and by the way, it led to a book deal for her forthcoming memoir from Vintage!), are the contrasts between her physical and working environment (being a “cable guy”) and the internal life she leads: left-leaning, queer, empathetic… These contrasts keep you reading (as well as the vivid examples she gives!). The characters she meets in her job (external) show who she is and what she believes (internal). Do you see what I mean?

Coming back to the hook element – it’s not enough to ‘explain’ something that happened to you – eg. I did this, I went here, I felt like this…. Plenty of these pieces get published. They’re clickbait, they’re quickly-forgotten, and you don’t want them on your clip list. Instead you need to deep-dive into how the external influenced the internal – to show those two journeys, inner and outer… To explore your own empathy, if you will.

Tip: Use the outer to provoke the inner. What do I mean? If you’re writing a story about meeting your real father for the first time at age 19 in a dive bar in New Orleans, relate the external reality of being in New Orleans with why and how you came to be meeting your father there…

3: Only include what’s relevant

I’ll come back to this, but a key pointer to an early versus a later draft is including relevant material. Essays need to be clean and concise – you don’t have an entire chapter to introduce a character, you have a few sentences or a paragraph. Even in longform essays, the story needs to be relatively tight. So, if your essay is about meeting your father in New Orleans (as the above example suggests), only include anecdotes, references, observations and material that relates to said meeting or how you dealt with said meeting.

Tip: Often (always?) you need to write out a whole heap of irrelevant material before you can get rid of it. You need to ‘write’ your way into the story. That’s fine! But make sure you leave it for a couple of days so you can assess what needs to go, when you come back to edit it.

4: End on a summary and/or show a clear transformation

The most important part in a memoir essay is that you show some sort of transformation in your character or point-of-view or change from beginning to end of the story. While you might be exploring a topic, question or theme in your story, you need to show that you, as a character, have changed or at the very least learnt and reflected from your journey. If it’s a non-fiction article, the ending will generally be a summary of what you’ve learnt, but with memoir it can be a little more subtle. You could end with a surprise realisation or moment of movement, to leave the reader on a high note.

Extra tips:

• Never ever send your first draft to an editor – leave your memoir essay or article for a few days and come back to it.
• Get some feedback . Truly – if one piece could mean you start fielding offers from agents and editors, wouldn’t you want to make it the best it can be?
• Edit for repetition and relevance: It always amazes me how much I repeat certain words in my writing. You only see this when you’ve left it a few days, and if you use that wonderful ‘search and replace’ tool in Word.  So look for repetition of certain words and delete or change them, if need be. Be ruthless.
• Relevance – As I touched on, above, if you’re aiming for a word count of 1200, for example (very standard for essays in publications such as the New York Times Ties section), and trying to lop 400 words off, what is LEAST relevant chunk to the main question or theme of your article? Remember: You can include the whole story in your book. This is a strategic published piece to elicit interest and engage in the most compelling elements of your story.
• Don’t take a huge ‘run up’ – Just as a huge issue many editors see in memoir manuscripts submitted to publishing houses is that they take too long to get to the point of the story – so you should jump right into the inciting incident, or compelling event, in the beginning of your essay. Don’t write three paragraphs of beautiful poetry about what you did the day before the big event. You don’t have a lot of words to waste in an essay or article.
• Study other essays – this should really be my number one piece of advice. Whatever outlet you choose to pitch to, study what has been published there and what has gone well.
• Read it out loud. This is a great tip one of my first newspaper editors gave me (particularly when you have a low word count). Reading out loud helps you see what needs to go, and what doesn’t work, very quickly.

Hi The detailed blogs are extremely helpful for memoir writing. Thank you so much for sharing your insight and the effort. much appreciated. ive been trying to download things and its unsuccessful.

Hi Annie – you’re welcome. I can see you signed up for the checklists but you need to confirm your email – check your spam as it might have ended up there?

Thank you so much for the response. You’re right! All your mails went into spam . Sorted and looking forward to accessing the masterclass. Thank you for the blogs. Informative and precise. Wishes from Scotland Annie

Argh – I find that a lot with gmail emails, their filters are annoying. Enjoy the masterclass!

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How to Write a Memoir Essay

October 12, 2023

What is a Memoir Essay?

A memoir essay is a form of autobiographical writing that focuses on a specific aspect of the author’s life. Unlike a traditional autobiography, which typically covers the author’s entire life, a memoir essay hones in on a particular event, time period, or theme. It is a deeply personal and reflective piece that allows the writer to delve into their memories, thoughts, and emotions surrounding their chosen subject.

In a memoir essay, the author aims to not only recount the events that took place but also provide insight into the impact and meaning of those experiences. It is a unique opportunity for self-discovery and exploration, while also offering readers a glimpse into the author’s world. The beauty of a memoir essay lies in its ability to weave together personal anecdotes, vivid descriptions, and introspective reflections to create a compelling narrative.

Writing a memoir essay can be both challenging and rewarding. It requires careful selection of memories, thoughtful introspection, and skillful storytelling. The process allows the writer to make sense of their past, gain a deeper understanding of themselves, and share their unique story with others.

Choosing a Topic for Your Memoir Essay

Selecting the right topic is crucial to write a good memoir essay. It sets the foundation for what you will explore and reveal in your personal narrative. When choosing a topic, it’s essential to reflect on your significant life experiences and consider what stories or themes hold the most meaning for you.

One approach is to think about moments or events that have had a profound impact on your life. Consider times of triumph or adversity, moments of exploration or self-discovery, relationships that have shaped you, or challenges you have overcome. These experiences can provide a rich foundation for your memoir essay.

Another option is to focus on a specific theme or aspect of your life. You might explore topics such as identity, family dynamics, cultural heritage, career milestones, or personal beliefs. By centering your essay around a theme, you can weave together various memories and reflections to create a cohesive narrative.

It’s also important to consider your target audience. Who do you want to connect with through your memoir essay? Understanding your audience’s interests and experiences can help you choose a topic that will resonate with them.

Ultimately, the topic should be one that excites you and allows for introspection and self-discovery. Choose a topic that ignites your passion and offers a story worth sharing.

Possible Memoir Essay Topics

• Childhood Memories
• Family Dynamics
• Life-altering Events
• Overcoming Societal Expectations
• Love and Loss
• Self-discovery and Transformation
• Lessons from Nature
• Journey from Darkness to Light
• Triumphing Over Adversities
• Life’s Defining Moments

Outlining the Structure of Your Memoir Essay

Writing a memoir essay allows you to share your personal experiences, reflections, and insights with others. However, before you start pouring your thoughts onto the page, it’s essential to outline the structure of your essay. This not only provides a clear roadmap for your writing but also helps you maintain a cohesive and engaging narrative.

First, consider the opening. Begin with a captivating introduction that hooks the reader and establishes the theme or central message of your memoir. This is your chance to grab their attention and set the tone for the rest of the essay.

Next, move on to the body paragraphs. Divide your essay into sections that chronologically or thematically explore different aspects of your life or experiences. Use vivid descriptions, anecdotes, and dialogue to bring your memories to life. It’s crucial to maintain a logical flow and transition smoothly between different ideas or events.

As you approach the conclusion, summarize the key points you’ve discussed and reflect on the significance of your experiences. What lessons have you learned? How have you grown or changed as a result? Wrap up your memoir essay by leaving the reader with a memorable takeaway or a thought-provoking question.

Remember, the structure of your memoir essay should support your storytelling and allow for a genuine and authentic exploration of your experiences. By outlining your essay’s structure, you’ll have a solid foundation to create a compelling and impactful memoir that resonates with your readers.

How to Write an Introduction for Your Memoir Essay

The introduction of your memoir essay sets the stage for your story and captivates your readers from the very beginning. It is your opportunity to grab their attention, establish the tone, and introduce the central theme of your memoir.

To create a compelling introduction, consider starting with a hook that intrigues your readers. This can be a surprising fact, a thought-provoking question, or a vivid description that immediately draws them in. Your goal is to make them curious and interested in what you have to say.

Next, provide a brief overview of what your memoir essay will explore. Give your readers a glimpse into the key experiences or aspects of your life that you will be sharing. However, avoid giving away too much detail. Leave room for anticipation and curiosity to keep them engaged.

Additionally, consider how you want to establish the tone of your memoir. Will it be reflective, humorous, or nostalgic? Choose your words and phrasing carefully to convey the right emotions and set the right atmosphere for your story.

Finally, end your introduction with a clear and concise thesis statement. This statement should express the central theme or message that your memoir will convey. It serves as a roadmap for your essay and guides your readers in understanding the purpose and significance of your memoir.

By crafting a strong and captivating introduction for your memoir essay, you will draw readers in and make them eager to dive into the rich and personal journey that awaits them.

Write the Main Body of Your Memoir Essay

When developing the main body of your memoir essay, it’s essential to structure your thoughts and experiences in a clear and engaging manner. Here are some tips to help you effectively organize and develop the main body of your essay:

• Chronological Structure: Consider organizing your memoir essay in chronological order, following the sequence of events as they occurred in your life. This allows for a natural flow and a clear timeline that helps readers understand your personal journey.
• Thematic Structure: Alternatively, you can focus on specific themes or lessons that emerged from your experiences. This approach allows for a more focused exploration of different aspects of your life, even if they did not occur in a linear order.
• Use Vivid Details: Use sensory details, descriptive language, and engaging storytelling techniques to bring your memories to life. Transport your readers to the settings, evoke emotions, and create a vivid picture of the events and people in your life.
• Show, Don’t Tell: Instead of simply stating facts, show your readers the experiences through engaging storytelling. Use dialogue, scenes, and anecdotes to make your memoir more dynamic and immersive.
• Reflections and Insights: Share your reflections on the events and experiences in your memoir. Offer deeper insights, lessons learned, and personal growth that came from these moments. Invite readers to reflect on their own lives and connect with your journey.

By organizing your main body in a logical and engaging manner, using vivid details, and offering thoughtful reflections, you can write a compelling memoir essay that captivates your readers and leaves a lasting impact.

Reflecting on Lessons Learned in Your Memoir Essay

One of the powerful aspects of a memoir essay is the opportunity to reflect on the lessons learned from your personal experiences. These reflections provide deeper insights and meaning to your story, leaving a lasting impact on your readers. Here are some tips for effectively reflecting on lessons learned in your memoir essay:

• Summarize Key Points: In the conclusion of your essay, summarize the key events and experiences you have shared throughout your memoir. Briefly remind readers of the significant moments that shaped your journey.
• Identify Core Themes: Reflect on the core themes and messages that emerged from your experiences. What did you learn about resilience, love, identity, or perseverance? Identify the overarching lessons that you want to convey.
• Offer Personal Insights: Share your personal insights and reflections on how these lessons have influenced your life. Were there specific turning points or moments of epiphany? How have these experiences shaped your beliefs, values, or actions?
• Connect to the Reader: Make your reflections relatable to your readers. Explore how the lessons you learned can resonate with their own lives and experiences. This allows them to connect with your story on a deeper level.
• Offer a Call to Action: Encourage readers to reflect on their own lives and consider how the lessons from your memoir can apply to their own journeys. Pose thought-provoking questions or suggest actions they can take to apply these insights.

By reflecting on the lessons learned in your memoir essay, you give your readers a chance to contemplate their own lives and find inspiration in your personal growth. These reflections add depth and impact to your storytelling, making your memoir essay truly memorable.

Crafting a Strong Conclusion for Your Memoir Essay

The conclusion of your memoir essay is your final opportunity to leave a lasting impression on your readers. It is where you tie together the threads of your story and offer a sense of closure and reflection. Here are some tips to help you craft a strong conclusion for your memoir essay:

• Summarize the Journey: Remind your readers of the key moments and experiences you shared throughout your essay. Briefly summarize the significant events and emotions that shaped your personal journey.
• Revisit the Central Theme: Reiterate the central theme or message of your memoir. Emphasize the lessons learned, personal growth, or insights gained from your experiences. This helps reinforce the purpose and impact of your story.
• Reflect on Transformation: Reflect on how you have transformed as a result of the events and experiences you shared. Share the growth, self-discovery, or newfound perspectives that have shaped your life.
• Leave a Lasting Impression: Use powerful and evocative language to leave a lasting impact on your readers. Craft a memorable phrase or thought that lingers in their minds even after they finish reading your essay.
• Offer a Call to Action or Reflection: Encourage your readers to take action or reflect on their own lives. Pose thought-provoking questions, suggest further exploration, or challenge them to apply the lessons from your memoir to their own experiences.

By crafting a strong conclusion, you ensure that your memoir essay resonates with your readers long after they have finished reading it. It leaves them with a sense of closure, inspiration, and a deeper understanding of the transformative power of personal storytelling.

Editing and Proofreading Your Memoir Essay

Editing and proofreading are crucial steps in the writing process that can greatly enhance the quality and impact of your memoir essay. Here are some tips to help you effectively edit and proofread your work:

• Take a Break: After completing your initial draft, take a break before starting the editing process. This allows you to approach your essay with fresh eyes and a clear mind.
• Review for Structure and Flow: Read through your essay to ensure it has a logical structure and flows smoothly. Check that your paragraphs and sections transition seamlessly, guiding readers through your story.
• Trim and Refine: Eliminate any unnecessary or repetitive information. Trim down long sentences and paragraphs to make your writing concise and impactful. Consider the pacing and ensure that each word contributes to the overall story.
• Check for Clarity and Consistency: Ensure that your ideas and thoughts are expressed clearly. Identify any confusing or vague passages and revise them to improve clarity. Check for consistency in tense, tone, and voice throughout your essay.
• Proofread for Errors: Carefully proofread your essay for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Pay attention to common mistakes such as subject-verb agreement, verb tenses, and punctuation marks. Consider using spell-checking tools or having someone else review your work for an objective perspective.
• Seek Feedback: Share your memoir essay with a trusted friend, family member, or writing partner. Their feedback can provide valuable insights and help you identify areas for improvement.

By dedicating time to edit and proofread your memoir essay, you ensure that it is polished, coherent, and error-free. These final touches enhance the reader’s experience and allow your story to shine.

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How To Write a Memoir Essay That Readers Won't Forget

Declan Gessel

May 11, 2024

For those seeking guidance on how to write an essay on how to write an essay , the process can be daunting. It is a meticulous task that requires precision, clarity, and a keen understanding of the topic. The task is not easy, but with the right guidance, you can excel. In this guide, we will explore the necessary steps required to craft a brilliant memoir essay. 

Table Of Content

What is a memoir essay, 4 key elements of a memoir essay, how to choose a topic for your memoir essay, 4 memoir essay writing tips to keep your readers engaged, jotbot highlights 3 great memoir essays, write smarter memoir essay with jotbot — start writing for free today.

A memoir essay is a piece of writing that combines elements of personal narrative and essay writing. The term itself is derived from the French word mémoire, meaning memory or reminiscence. A memoir essay tells a true story that happened to the author. It allows the author to explore and share memories from their past, reflecting on the significance of those experiences as they relate to them now.

Limited Scope

Unlike an autobiography , a memoir essay focuses on a specific period of the author's life, a particular event, or a significant relationship. This limited scope helps to keep the narrative more centralized, allowing the author to deeply explore the emotions and consequences of those experiences within the context of the overall theme.

Essay Structure

A memoir essay uses an essay structure to introduce a central theme, develop the story, and offer reflections or insights. This structure can help the author to organize their thoughts and present their story in a way that is engaging and easy to follow. It also allows the author to weave in other elements, such as research or commentary, that can help to enrich the narrative.

Emotional Depth

A memoir delves into the author's feelings and thoughts related to the experience. By exploring the emotional depth of their memories, the author can create a more evocative and powerful narrative that resonates with readers on a personal level. This emotional depth can draw readers in and make them feel more connected to the author's story.

Universal Connection

While personal, a memoir essay aims to connect with readers by exploring broader human themes. By sharing their experiences and insights, the author can help readers to see themselves in the story, finding common ground and shared emotions that make the narrative more meaningful and impactful. 

This universal connection is one of the key strengths of a memoir essay, allowing the author to reach a wider audience and create a more lasting impact with their writing.

Difference between Memoir and Autobiography

A memoir is closely related to the nonfiction format known as autobiography, but the two forms are not identical. Most notably, an autobiography is a first-person account of its author’s entire life. Autobiographies are usually written by famous individuals, such as politicians, celebrities, or business leaders. 

In contrast, a memoir is a nonfiction work that is based on the author’s personal memories, feelings, and experiences. Memoirs are often focused on a specific time period, theme, or relationship in the author’s life. Autobiographies are longer than memoirs and cover a broader scope of the author’s life. Although memoirs and autobiographies are different, both of these genres are entertaining and informative.

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1. The Use of Vivid Description

When writing a memoir essay, it is crucial to go beyond just recounting events. The use of vivid description can transport readers into the heart of your story, making it a truly immersive experience. By incorporating sensory details, figurative language, and evocative imagery, you can bring your memories to life and create a lasting impact on your readers.

2. Bring Characters to Life with Dialogue

Dialogue is a powerful tool in memoir writing, allowing you to breathe life into your characters and drive the narrative forward. By capturing the nuances of speech, revealing hidden emotions, and using dialogue to move the plot forward, you can create dynamic and engaging interactions that resonate with your readers.

3. How to Use Reflection in Your Memoir Essay

Reflection adds depth and meaning to your memoir essay, allowing you to explore the significance of your experiences and connect them to broader themes. By analyzing the "why" behind the event, connecting it to universal themes, and using introspection to express your vulnerabilities, you can infuse your memoir with emotional resonance and personal insight.

4. Showcasing the Journey of Growth

A compelling memoir essay showcases your personal growth and transformation, illustrating how specific experiences or relationships have shaped you over time. By illustrating your growth through actions and choices, using contrasting scenes to highlight your evolution, and ending on a note of personal growth, you can create a powerful narrative arc that resonates with your readers.

Reflecting on pivotal moments and turning points in your life is essential when choosing a topic for your memoir essay. These moments could be triumphs, losses, love, or transformations that profoundly impacted you. Consider experiences that have shaped your identity, values, or worldview and stand out vividly in your memory.

Emotional Impact

Emotional resonance is key to engaging readers in your memoir essay. Reflect on moments that made you laugh, cry, or feel deeply. These emotional moments provide a window into your soul and allow readers to connect with your story on a personal level.

Personal Growth and Lessons Learned

Exploring personal growth arcs in your life is another vital aspect to consider when choosing a memoir essay topic. Reflect on how you have evolved as a person and the lessons that life has taught you through challenges, mistakes, or unexpected twists. Sharing your insights can inspire and resonate with readers who may be going through similar experiences.

Universal Appeal

While your memoir essay is deeply personal, aiming for themes that resonate universally can make your story more relatable to a wider audience. Consider themes such as love and relationships, identity and self-discovery, resilience and overcoming adversity, journeys and travel, loss and grief, as well as career and passion pursuits. These themes can help your memoir essay connect with readers on a profound level.

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1. Identifying Your Narrative Core

When you're writing a memoir essay that truly captures readers' attention, it's crucial to identify the core of your narrative. This means delving into your life experiences to uncover the moments that truly define you. Here are some brainstorming strategies you can use to uncover your narrative core:

Thematic Exploration

Take a journey through the themes of your life, such as loss, friendship, or overcoming adversity. Identify specific moments that epitomize these themes and consider how they've shaped you.

Sensory Prompts

Recall vivid experiences by engaging your senses. Think about a specific smell, taste, or childhood object that brings back powerful memories. These sensory details will help you bring your story to life.

Turning Points

Reflect on pivotal moments that have significantly changed your life or your perspective. These moments often hold the key to understanding who you are and why you've become that way.

2. The Criteria for Choosing a Captivating Topic

Your memoir essay should be about more than just any story from your life. To truly captivate readers, you need to choose a topic that meets certain criteria. Here are some things to consider when selecting your story:

Choose an experience that evokes strong emotions in you. If you feel deeply about the story you're telling, your readers are more likely to as well.

Universality

Can readers connect with the story you're telling on a broader level? Look for experiences that resonate with the human experience and the emotions we all share.

Personal Significance

The best memoir essays tell stories that have had a lasting impact on the author. Consider the experiences that have shaped you, challenged you, or changed your life in meaningful ways.

3. How To Build a Memorable Narrative Persona

A key to writing a memoir essay that readers won't forget is to create a strong narrative persona. This persona is the voice through which your story is told, and it should be unique, engaging, and authentic. Here's how you can develop your narrative persona:

Identifying Your Voice

Take some time to analyze your natural writing style. Are you humorous, reflective, or descriptive? Understanding your personal tendencies will help you craft a narrative persona that feels true to you.

Building Your Narrative Voice

Consider the literary influences that have shaped your writing style. What authors or genres resonate with you? You can draw on these influences as you develop your narrative voice.

4. Crafting a Memorable Ending

Every great memoir essay needs a memorable ending. This is the final chance to leave a lasting impression on your reader, so make it count. Here are some strategies for crafting a memorable ending to your memoir essay:

Circle Back to the Introduction

Offer a sense of closure by connecting back to the beginning of your essay. This can create a sense of symmetry and completion that leaves your reader satisfied.

Reveal a Transformation

Show how the experience you've shared has shaped you into the person you are now. This transformation is often at the heart of a memoir essay and can make for a powerful ending.

A Lingering Thought

End your essay with a question or a thought-provoking reflection that will stay with your readers long after they've finished reading. This can prompt further contemplation and leave a lasting impact.

1. Eat, Pray, and Love by Elizabeth Gilbert 

(https://www.mwediting.com/memoir-topics-with-examples/) 

2. The Book “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed Essay 

(https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-wild-by-cheryl-strayed/)

3. Wild: a journey from lost to found by Strayed  

(https://archive.org/details/wildjourneyfroml0000stra)

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When writing a memoir essay, it is crucial to embrace vulnerability. Readers are drawn to stories that reveal the writer's true self and expose their raw emotions. By sharing personal tales and experiences with readers, writers can form deeper connections. It can be terrifying to share personal stories, but vulnerability is what makes memoirs compelling. Readers relate to vulnerability, and it encourages them to open up about their experiences. 

Embracing vulnerability in your memoir essay allows readers to connect with your story on an intimate level. When readers recognize themselves in your narrative, they are more likely to engage with your work on a deeper level. Vulnerability taps into emotions that are universal, enabling your readers to see themselves in your story. When writers embrace vulnerability, they create an emotional bond with their readers.

Overcoming Writer’s Block

Writer's block is a common challenge faced by memoir writers. It can be frustrating when you want to write but cannot find the words. When writer's block strikes, I use Jotbot to generate an outline for my memoir essay. Jotbot helps me organize my thoughts and ideas, which enables me to write more cohesively. With Jotbot, I can focus on specific sections of my memoir essay, allowing me to overcome writer's block.

Jotbot's AI essay writer helps me with sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation. When I struggle with a sentence, I use Jotbot to revise it. Jotbot helps me to write complete sentences and improve my grammar. I love how Jotbot helps me improve my writing skills. Writing my memoir essay with Jotbot allows me to concentrate on my writing and not worry about sentence structure or grammar.

Creating a Memorable Memoir Opening

When writing a memoir essay, the opening should grab the reader’s attention. A strong opening sets the stage for the rest of the essay. I like to begin my memoir essays with an anecdote or a compelling quote to draw readers in. By starting with a vivid image or a powerful statement, I can spark readers’ curiosity and make them eager to read more.

Jotbot assists me in creating an opening for my memoir essay that hooks readers from the beginning. Jotbot helps me to generate a catchy introduction that sets the tone for the rest of the essay. With Jotbot , I can create a memorable opening that captivates readers and compels them to continue reading. Jotbot allows me to focus on crafting an engaging narrative instead of struggling to find the right words for the introduction.

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How to Outline a Memoir in 6 Steps (with Template)

Memoirists are often daunted by the task of translating memories into a captivating narrative. Even with a clear understanding of your memoir's central themes and the stories you want to share, it can be challenging to weave them together seamlessly. 

In this article, we’ll share 6 steps to organize your memories into a compelling narrative, along with a free template to help you plot your personal story. 

How to outline a memoir: 

1. Order your stories chronologically

2. pick a fitting story structure, 3. hook the reader from the start, 4. lay out your goals and desires, 5. describe how you dealt with challenges, 6. end by showing how you’ve changed.

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If you’ve worked through our article on how to write a memoir , you should already have a hand-picked selection of powerful memories. The challenge now is to piece them together, with each memory serving as a crucial puzzle piece in an overarching narrative. 

A popular first step is to arrange your stories in chronological order. You could do this on a whiteboard, a notebook, or within your writing software of choice. For example, the Reedsy Book Editor offers an outlining board where you can create notes for your stories, then drag and drop them around.

With this bird’s-eye view, it becomes easier to spot patterns and understand what fundamentally connects your stories together, helping you find a suitable structure for your memoir. 

👻 Want to collaborate with a master storyteller to bring your memoir to life? Hire a ghostwriter! They'll handle everything in the background, but your name will be the one on the cover.

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Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once said that every story “has a beginning, a middle, and an end — not necessarily in that order.” When it comes to telling your own story, there isn’t a single way to structure them 一 you'll have to figure out what will have the greatest impact. To help you along, look at some of the most common memoir structures authors use. Three, in particular, stand out: 

Chronological. For memoirs that cover a specific time period or event of the author’s life and have a clear, chronological timeline (e.g. defeating cancer, or climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.) For example, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air recounts the 1996 Mount Everest disaster by chronicling the ascent, summit, and descent of the mountain.

Before/After. For memoirs that revolve around a particular event so central to the story that it makes sense to organize the book in a Before/After format, where the narration keeps cutting before and after that event occurred (e.g. being sentenced to jail, or surviving a hurricane). In Lee Lawrence's The Louder I Will Sing , the author describes his life before and after his mother was wrongly shot by police during a raid on their home, using the contrast to describe the two strikingly different realities he experienced.

Theme-based. For memoirs that aren't linked together by a specific timeframe, but rather a common theme, with each story offering a unique perspective into the author's life, yet all coalescing around a central theme. A good example is Trevor Noah's memoir Born a Crime, which explores his experiences as a mixed-race child growing up in Apartheid South Africa. Noah shares a range of poignant and often humorous stories, from going to Church with his mum to selling CDs to his first date, which all grapple with the book’s central themes of resilience and identity.

When outlining your own memoir, play around with your story notes and see if you can arrange them in a unique way that emphasizes your central message or story arc. If you find this especially challenging, don’t despair. You can always collaborate with a book coach 一 they’ll help you make sense of your tales and neatly organize them into a powerful narrative. 

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But in the end, the old ways are often the best — and most stories are best suited to having a distinguishable beginning, middle, and end. Most often, the strongest outline is one that follows a chronological, novel-like structure. To that end, we’ve created a free downloadable template that will help you deconstruct your memoir scene by scene and synthesize an overarching narrative.

Let’s dive deeper into your memoir outline and see that your story hits all the right chords. 

It’s never a bad idea to start your memoir with a moment of high emotion. When deciding whether your book is worth reading, readers will skim through the opening passages , either in-store or with Amazon’s Look Inside feature. If the first few pages don’t grab them, they won’t buy it. To engage readers from the get-go, open with a powerful moment from the middle or even the end of your story .  

For example, Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild (which we’ll reference throughout the rest of this post) doesn’t start with her mother’s death, failing marriage, or struggle with drugs. Instead, it begins on day 38 of her hike along the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) when Strayed accidentally drops one of her hiking shoes off a cliff. It’s a moment of profound helplessness and loneliness, evoking feelings she’s been grappling with since her mother died, ones that she hopes to overcome on her journey.  

Strayed hooks her reader right from the prologue . She knows they’ve picked up her book on the promise that they’ll get stories of hiking through the wilderness, and she delivers on it instantly, instead of spending the first 100 pages detailing her mundane ‘normal’ life.

This kind of in medias res opening is an effective way for memoirists to engage the reader right away, and leave them wanting to know more before providing background information and developing the story. 

Once you’ve figured out your hook, it’s time to lay the foundation for your narrative. If you’re following the classic Three-Act story structure , this would be your Act One.

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Some of the story elements you may want to include in the first part of your memoir are: 

Exposition 

As the main character, you’ll have to provide some background information about yourself (as long as it’s relevant to your memoir’s main focus.) You’ll want to paint a picture of who you were before the story starts, so that readers can follow along as you evolve through it. 

In Wild , Cheryl vividly portrays the profound bond she shared with her mother, and how her death set her on a destructive path of substance abuse and infidelity.

If your memoir is about joining the Navy Seals, this is the part where you share your ordinary life before military training. If it’s about grieving for your late husband, your exposition might detail how you fell in love with each other, and what made your relationship special. 

An Inciting Incident 

In most cases, you’ll be able to identify a defining moment that set your story in motion, and propelled you on a transformational journey. It’s the moment you fully decide to get out of your comfort zone to achieve your goals and desires. 

Cheryl's turning point in Wild comes after she hits rock bottom in the wake of an unwanted pregnancy. Browsing through a store, she impulsively purchases a guidebook for the PCT, thinking that the trail may help her “walk herself back to the woman she once was.”  

Of course, not all true life stories start with an earth-shaking epiphany or a serendipitous meeting. Maybe your decision to run an Ironman in your 40s was something that was brewing over a number of years, but try to think of a moment of high emotion that contributed to that choice. Was it the day you were fired from your job, or the time when a kid on the street called you 'old'? This moment could very well be your inciting incident. 

Introduction of Main Theme

As your story develops, make sure that your personal objectives are tied to a larger, universal theme that can resonate with your readers. In Cheryl's story, her primary goal is to hike the PCT, but on a deeper level, her quest touches on the themes of redemption and self-discovery. As she writes in the first pages of the book:

“It was a world [the trail] I’d never been to and yet had known was there all along, one I’d staggered to in sorrow and confusion and fear and hope. A world I thought would both make me into the woman I knew I could become and turn me into the girl I’d once been.”

Think about what your memoir's theme really is (e.g. parenting, mental health, social inequality) and spotlight it from the very beginning.

Now that your story is truly in motion, with backstory, an inciting incident, and thematic heft, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty. 

The second act of your memoir is often the trickiest. This is the section where you will usually deliver on the ‘ promise of the premise ’: if your book is about becoming an astronaut, this is the part where you’ll undergo training and plan for your mission. If you’re writing a memoir about hiking the wilderness, you better be in the woods by the start of the second act.

The tough part comes with making sure that you’re building momentum, increasing the stakes, and not just telling anecdotes that don’t contribute to the bigger picture. For this reason, a memoir’s second act usually sees your hero (you!) responding to bigger and bigger obstacles. 

Here are a few key plot points to consider to keep your narration strong: 

Rising Action

During this part of the story, you usually face external and internal challenges in order to achieve your goal. The key to maintaining credibility is to share both your failures and successes, moments of both fear and courage. 

On her first sleepless night camping on the trail, Cheryl is terrified of animal sounds. But as she grows more confident each day, she starts to join in with their howls. Despite her undersized boots, her heavy backpack, and her lack of camping experience, she manages to walk 100 miles through the Mojave Desert and reach the first campground. She also learns to trust strangers and ask for help, especially when it comes to letting go of some of her unnecessary baggage.

The rising action in your story may be less adventurous than in a travel memoir. If your topic is recovering from addiction, for example, it may include getting into arguments at Alcoholics Anonymous, before developing an uneasy friendship with your sponsor and growing more confident in your ability to get better. 

This is a turning point in your story, like a crisis, triumph, or simply a realization, that pivots your journey in a new direction. Usually, it’s a moment that carries significant emotional weight and sets the stage for the climax to come. 

Despite her growing confidence, Cheryl is forced to reckon with her emotions. This is when she loses her boots and feels helpless, used as the story hook. This time though, we get to see how she reacts: she reinforces her sandals with duct tape and keeps marching forward, with ever more strength and determination.   

Dig around your memories and try to identify that path-altering, highly emotional moment 一 it may be your midpoint. In a memoir chronicling the journey of building a successful startup, the midpoint may be a promising call from angel investors, willing to pour some money into your idea. It’s the moment when things turn around. 

It’s time to outline the final act of your memoir to end on a strong note and with a powerful message.

The Third Act is where the main conflict of your story is finally resolved, so the stakes and tension should be at their highest. Some of the key plot points to outline in this last section are: 

This is where you introduce your greatest challenge for the final act of your manuscript. It often involves a series of events that further escalate the conflict and heighten the anticipation for the ultimate resolution. 

In Wild , Cheryl deals with debilitating thirst, dodgy hunters, and a heavy storm, but more importantly, she revisits some of her most painful memories, from the abuses of her alcoholic father, to the heart-wrenching task of putting down her mother's cherished horse after her passing.

In your memoir, this is the moment before the end of your story that threatens to dash your dreams once and for all. It may be the moment when a global pandemic hits, countries close borders, and flights to Vanuatu are suspended, threatening your quest to visit every single country in a year.  

This is the point where the central conflict or challenge of your memoir comes to a head. It’s the culmination of everything you've built up to, and it should feel like a defining moment in your life. For Cheryl, it’s finally reaching the Bridge of the Gods and completing the PCT after a three-month-long hike. In your story, it may be the moment you complete an Ironman, sell your successful startup, or finally land in Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu.  

Resolution/Thematic Wrap-Up

The resolution is an opportunity for you to show the results of your journey and how you’ve changed as a result of it. Here you can again address the central theme of the book, sharing the lessons you’ve learned and how your perspective has changed over time. 

For Cheryl, it’s all about redeeming her turbulent past 一 from cheating to heroine 一 owning up to it, and rediscovering that inner strength and beauty she had lost touch with. In your memoir, this is the time to reflect on what you learned from overcoming addiction or running a race, and muse on how you have been able to move forward since.

Aaand scene! It's important to keep in mind that every memoir is unique and may require a distinctive structure, but we hope that our suggestions and template will provide you with a solid foundation to write with more clarity and get that memoir published.

Also, remember that writing a book is a marathon. After outlining, writing, and publishing your memoir, you'll have to publish it! Proceed onto our post teaching you how to publish a memoir and rest assured that you have a solid roadmap in front of you.

Evelyn Sinclair says:

04/03/2018 – 21:17

I've read a lot of the Reedsy information about memoirs, finding it all very helpful and I'm around 20,000 words in. Recently I'm struggling over how to bring it to an interesting end, and whether I can reach the length of a novel.

Comments are currently closed.

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18 Narrative and Memoir Essays

Narrative writing.

Human beings tell stories every day. We understand most of nature through stories. Though facts can be memorized, stories — the details, the description, the experience — make us believe.

Therefore, as we begin to study writing, we need to begin with the properties of the story. How do good storytellers make us believe? How can good writing draw a reader into a story? How can we harness the power of the story to make a point, even in a dry, academic context?

The purpose of narrative writing is to tell stories. This is a form we are familiar with, as any time we tell a story about an event or incident in our day, we are engaging in a form of narration. In terms of writing, narration is the act of describing a sequence of events. Sometimes this is the primary mode of an essay—writing a narrative essay about a particular event or experience, and sometimes this is a component used within an essay, much like other evidence is offered, to support a thesis. This chapter will discuss the basic components of narration, which can be applied either as a stand-alone essay or as a component within an essay.

Ultimately, narrative writing tries to relay a series of events in an emotionally engaging way. You want your audience to be moved by your story, which could mean through laughter, sympathy, fear, anger, and so on. The more clearly you tell your story, the more emotionally engaged your audience is likely to be.

WHERE DO WE FIND NARRATIVE?

We talk about narrative writing in many ways. Books will introduce it as Narration, Narrative, and Storytelling. Narrative creeps into most of the other kinds of writing we learn about, too. Persuasive essays use short stories — often called anecdotes  — to engage a reader’s attention and sympathy. Consider the difference between these two openings to the same essay:

Which opening makes you want to read more? The second one engages its readers with a story — and we’re hard-wired, as humans, to want to hear the end of a story.

Television plays on this characteristic all the time. Think of your favorite show and the maddening, brief preview that starts before the credits roll. It’s always a quick snippet that makes you stay tuned because the writers and producers know their audience will sit through several minutes of mindless commercials just to find out how the story will continue.

In our own writing, we can use stories in just the same way. We can draw our readers into our own experiences, even if they’ve never been through anything even similar to what we have, by telling our own stories.

HOW DO WE WRITE A NARRATIVE?

A narrative essay is a piece that tells one consistent, cohesive story. In academic writing, a narrative essay will also always convey a lesson, a moral, or a point that the writer wishes the reader to take.

When we say “moral,” some people think of after-school specials and having “good behavior” tips crammed down their throat. However, the most powerful lessons conveyed through writing are often done with great subtlety. True, the punishing pace of writing expected in a college course may not leave enough time to develop a nuanced story — no one is going to churn out War and Peace  or even  The Hobbit  in ten weeks — but not every story has to have the moral stated clearly, in bold font, at the very beginning.

Think about it this way: When you were a kid, if your grandmother had sat you down and said, “Listen. We’re now going to have a thirty-minute conversation about how it’s really bad if you start smoking,” would you have listened? Probably not. If, however, your grandmother took you to visit your uncle Larry, who had terminal lung cancer, and then casually mentioned as you left that Larry had been smoking since he was your age — would you get the lesson? Would you remember it? Do you remember better the 200 lectures you had as a teenager about not being a bully, or do you remember the one time that you witnessed its effects firsthand?

In a narrative, we want to pull that same kind of trick on our readers: get our point across, but do it in a way that engages the imagination and attention. Use the power of the story.

The narrative relies on the same components that all good writing does: it needs detail, clear organization, and a central purpose (AKA our friends Development, Organization, and Unity).

NARRATIVE DEVELOPMENT: BRING THE DETAILS

Consider this passage from the very first Sherlock Holmes mystery, “A Study in Scarlet,” which describes a major character:

The author includes detail upon detail to describe this gentleman. He could have simply said, “He was dying from hunger and from thirst,” which would tell us everything we need to know. Instead, he describes how these feelings have had an effect upon the man — he is  gaunt , he’s starting to look like a skeleton, and he can barely stand without the support of his rifle.

Think of the best book you’ve ever read (or the best television show you’ve ever watched, or the movie you love), and you may be able to relate to this. Good description is the difference between hearing a game on the radio and watching it live in the stadium (or on a ginormous 3-D television). The very breath of life in a narrative will always be your ability to describe a scene.

This relies on the use of specific language. As you read through the revision section, you were encouraged to avoid phrases that your audience might find misleading. Consider this as you write a story. With every sentence, ask, “What does my audience know? What do they think?” If you say a car is “beautiful,” will your audience think of a 2018 Hybrid Honda Accord or of a 1966 Chevelle (pictured at right)? If there’s some doubt, change your words to reflect your meaning.

You may have heard the advice that asks you to “show, not tell” in writing. This is what we mean: be so descriptive in telling a story that the reader feels s/he is there beside you, seeing the swimming pool or the school’s front doors or the new car or the new child with his/her own eyes.

NARRATIVE ORGANIZATION

Narrative traditionally follows time order, or  chronological order , throughout. This seems obvious when you think about it — we tell stories in time order, starting (usually) at the beginning and working through to the end.

In an essay, pieces of the story can be organized into timespans by paragraph. For instance, if I’m describing a particularly harrowing day at work, I might have a paragraph just for the morning, and then a paragraph about my terrible lunch break, and then a paragraph about my afternoon.

Narrative essays usually can’t cover more ground than a day or two. Instead of writing about your entire vacation experience, study abroad month, two years of work at the plant, or 18 years living at home, focus on one particular experience that took place over a day or two. That’s enough for a reader to digest in a few pages, and it will also give you a chance to really lay in details without feeling rushed.

Sometimes, we start stories out of order. Many popular movies and television shows do this regularly by showing a clip of something that happens later before starting the whole show. If you’ve ever seen an episode of NCIS, you’ll be familiar with this technique: they start each section of the show with a photo of the ending scene, then start an hour or two before that scene in the live-action. Shows often jump to “One Week Earlier” between commercial breaks.

Think of the emotional impact that has upon you as a viewer. Again, it’s a trick the writers pull with their story to drive you through the boring/silly/pointless/insulting commercials so that you’ll stay with them. We want to know how the characters get to that end.

You can manipulate your audience in this way, too, but be careful; giving away too much of the ending may sometimes make a reader simply put down what they’re reading. It’s safer (though not always better) to just start at the beginning and write things down as they happened. Particularly in a first draft, sticking to the natural story order will be a good way to make sure nothing gets missed.

Chronological order , the order in which events unfold from first to last, is the most common organizational structure for narratives. Stories typically have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Certain transitional words and phrases aid in keeping the reader oriented in the sequencing of a story. Some of these phrases are listed below.

Figure 5.2 Transition Words and Phrases for Expressing Time

The following are the other basic components of a narrative:

•  Plot . The events as they unfold in sequence.

•  Characters . The people who inhabit the story and move it forward. Typically, each narrative has there are minor characters and main characters. The minor characters generally play supporting roles to the main character, or the protagonist.

•  Conflict . The primary problem or obstacle that unfolds in the plot, which the protagonist must solve or overcome by the end of the narrative. The way in which the protagonist resolves the conflict of the plot results in the theme of the narrative.

•  Theme . The ultimate message the narrative is trying to express; it can be either explicit or implicit.

Writing at Work

When interviewing candidates for jobs, employers often ask about conflicts or problems a potential employee had to overcome. They are asking for a compelling personal narrative. To prepare for this question in a job interview, write out a scenario using the narrative moved structure. This will allow you to troubleshoot rough spots as well as better understand your own personal history. Both processes will make your story better and your self-presentation better, too.

Narrative Anecdotes

An  anecdote  is a short, personal  narrative  about something specific. It is often used as a component in an essay, acting as evidence to support your thesis, as an example to demonstrate your point, and/or as a way to establish your credibility. It always has a point in telling it.

Elements of an Anecdote

1. Who, Where, When

Have you ever wondered why children’s stories begin something like this?

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, the teachers were revolting …

It is the start of a simple narrative. It also contains all the elements of a beginning to any narrative: when, where, and who. An anecdote, because it is short, will begin similarly:

One day, while I was sitting at a stop sign waiting for the light to change…

This little particle of an anecdote tells when, who, and where before the first sentence even ends.

Note : An anecdote sets up a particular incident; it does not tell about a long period of time.

2. What Happened (Sequence of Events)

Any narrative also includes a sequence of events. You should be able to read an anecdote and tell what happens first, what happens next, and so on. In the following anecdote, the bolded words suggest each event in the sequence.

Example Anecdote:

My first day of college I parked in the “South Forty,” which is what everyone called the huge parking lot on the edge of the campus. It was seven forty-five in the morning, hazy and cool. I walked across the parking lot, crossed a busy street, walked over a creek, through a “faculty” parking lot, crossed another street, and came to the first row of campus buildings. I walked between buildings, past the library and the student mall. I passed many quiet, nervous-looking students along the way. Many of them smiled at me. One trio of young girls was even chuckling softly among themselves when they all smiled and said “Hi” to me at once. By the time I got to my classroom, far on the other side of campus from the parking lot, I was smiling and boldly saying “Hi” to everyone, too, particularly the girls. Every single one of them smiled or responded with a “Hi” or made a friendly comment or even chuckled happily. It was my first day of college.

When I found the building I was looking for, a friend from high school appeared. She was in my first class! I smiled at her and said, “Hi!” She looked at me. She smiled. Then she laughed. She said, “Why are you wearing a sock on your shirt?” I looked down. A sock had come out of the dryer clinging to my shirt.

3. Implied Point

Most of us want to make sure that we “get the point across” to whatever story we are telling, assuming it has a point. To do this, we tend to explain what we are telling. It is sometimes very difficult to stop. However, stopping in a timely way allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

Show, don’t tell

In the anecdote above, I am very tempted to tell the reader what I felt at the moment I realized that everyone was laughing AT me rather than just being friendly. For the ending, where the point is in this case, it is best to let the reader infer (draw conclusions, fill in the blanks) what happens implicitly rather than to state explicitly what the point is, or what the narrator felt, or anything else.

The more indirect you are about your object or place the better. In the anecdote above, it might be obvious that my object is a sock or my place is a parking lot. The point is, it is not an anecdote “about” a sock; it is referred to indirectly.

How do we show rather than tell? First, describe what you see (I don’t really see anything with “I was SO embarrassed…”) or what you smell, hear, or taste, but NOT what you feel. An easy way to check whether you are showing or telling is to go through your anecdote and underline the verbs. If the verbs are “be”-verbs (is, was, were, etc.) or verbs that describe actions we cannot see (“I thought…” “I believed…” “I imagined…” “it made me upset…” and so on) then you are probably telling. In the sentence above I used “walked,” “lecturing,” “ripped,” and “said.”

Most Common Question:

“What makes stories or anecdotes interesting and something I can relate to?”

Actually, it is a simple principle, even though it may not be obvious. We “relate” or “connect” most easily to situations we recognize and so fill in the blanks. If you “tell” me, for example, “I was SO embarrassed …” then you have not let me fill in MY embarrassment. On the other hand, if you “show” me a scene, it allows me to fit my own experience into it:

“I walked past the corner of the aluminum whiteboard tray while lecturing to a class. It ripped my pants. After a moment I said, ‘Class dismissed.’”

The writer of those statements, hopes the reader will fill in some similarly embarrassing moment without the writer clearly stating that this is what is supposed to be done. The connection, the act of “filling in,” is what people tend to refer to as “relating to.”

Interestingly, it does not even matter whether or not readers fill in what the writer intend for them to fill in; it is the act of filling in our own experiences that makes us “relate” to an incident. From a writer’s perspective, that means we should show rather than tell.

Second, resist the temptation to “explain.” Let the reader fill in the blanks! It is so much more personal when the reader participates by filling in.

Assignment 1

Write an anecdote that contains who, where, when, and what happens (a sequence of events). Think about an anecdote that  involves ,  alludes to, or otherwise includes your object or place ; it does not have to be “about” your place. It also does not have to be “true” in the strict sense of the word; we will not be able to verify any believable details if they add to the effect of the anecdote. Type it out. Keep it simple and to the point.

What are ‘clichés’ and why can’t we use them?

Clichés are figurative phrases and expressions that you have probably heard a million times. For our purposes, there are two kinds of clichés: the ones that jump out at you and the ones that we use without thinking.

If you are paying attention, you will notice that the two sentences above contain at least 3 clichés. You might also notice that clichés are best suited to spoken language, because they are readily available and sometimes when we speak, we don’t have time to replace a common expression with a unique one. However, we DO have time to replace clichés while we are writing.

The problem with clichés in writing is that they are too general when we should be much more specific. They also tend to tell rather than show. In the first sentence above, we have most likely heard the phrase, “have probably heard a million times.” In speech, that expression works. In writing, it should be  literal  rather than  figurative.  The first sentence is better this way:

Clichés are figurative phrases and expressions that we have heard so many times that we all share some understanding of what they mean.

Not exactly what you thought when you read it at the beginning of this answer, is it? That is why being  literal and specific  in writing is better than  figurative and vague  as a rule.

Here is a re-write of the second sentence at the start of this answer:

For our purposes, there are two kinds of clichés: the ones that are obvious expressions (like “You can lead a horse to water …”) and the ones that are not part of expressions but seem to “go” easily into a group of words (like “we use without thinking”).

The second type is more difficult to identify and eradicate. Usually it is a group of words we have heard before that doesn’t add anything to a statement. For example, instead of “We watched the donuts roll down the street every night,” you might be tempted to add to it this way: “We watched the donuts roll down the street each and every night.” Avoid clichés in your writing.

To see more see more commonly used clichés and for guidance on how to rewrite them, see this  handout (https://writingcenter.unc.edu/cliches/)from The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Writing Center.

Some Other Rhetorical Tips

• To create strong details, keep the human senses in mind. You want your reader to be immersed in the world that you create, so focus on details related to sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch as you describe people, places, and events in your narrative.
• Create tension by making the reader nervous about what is going to happen through sentence structure, tone, and voice.
• Add dialogue to show the immediacy and drama of the personal interactions (re-creating conversations as necessary to make your narrative work).
• Name specific objects to re-create the scene by selecting details that leave the readers with a dominant impression of how things were.
• Show people in action by describing precise movements and dialogue to convey the action of the scene.

External Links:

“ Sixty-nine Cents ” (https://tinyurl.com/ybjasq9c) by Gary Shteyngart: In “Sixty-nine Cents,” author Gary Shteyngart describes a coming-of-age experience as a first-generation Russian-Jewish immigrant in modern America.

Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spokane Reservation in Washington State. He chronicles his challenges in school, starting in first grade, in  Indian Education (https://tinyurl.com/hlshngr).

Sandra Cisneros offers an example of a narrative essay in “ Only Daughter ”  (https://tinyurl.com/yc4srod7) that captures her sense of her Chicana-Mexican heritage as the only daughter in a family of seven children. The essay is also available here  (https://tinyurl.com/y7hzxhz6).

 Annie Dilliard offers an example of a narrative essay in an excerpt, often entitled “ The Chase ” (https://tinyurl.com/ycsen7r4) from her autobiography  An American Childhood , outlining a specific memorable event from her childhood. This essay is also available  here  (https://tinyurl.com/y7udsl88).

NARRATIVE UNITY

The final consideration in putting together a narrative essay should be unifying it around a single theme or lesson. As you draft, you may already have this lesson in mind:  everyone should wear a seatbelt.  However, remember that your reader needs to make up her own mind. Don’t insult a reader by beating them up with your lesson, and don’t leave them guessing about the meaning of your piece by leaving it out completely.

Many writers include a paragraph of reflection after telling a personal story in an essay that lets a reader know, directly, the significance that the story has on the writer’s life. This can be a good way to get a lesson across. Showing what you’ve learned or found important in an event will provide the reader with a clue about the overall meaning of the story.

You should use “I” in a personal, narrative essay . There are types of academic writing where “I” is inappropriate, but this is not one of those times. In fact, the best narratives will often be the most personal, the stories that avoid hiding behind “you” or “they” and instead boldly tell the writer’s own story.

NARRATIVE OUTLINES

The typical narrative essay follows an outline that should seem like common sense:

• Paragraph 1: Introduction
• Paragraph 2: Event #1
• Paragraph 3: Event #2
• Paragraph 4: Event #3
• Paragraph 5: Conclusion

This outline is flexible. Perhaps the first event in your story will take significant space to describe; it may need 2 paragraphs of its own. Maybe there are smaller events that happen within the larger events. Maybe for your piece, it makes sense to jump right into the story instead of spending an introduction paragraph to give some setup. What matters most is that a reader can easily follow the piece from beginning to end and that she will leave with a good understanding of what you wanted the reader to learn.

Student Sample Essay

My College Education

The first class I went to in college was philosophy, and it changed my life forever. Our first assignment was to write a short response paper to the Albert Camus essay “The Myth of Sisyphus.” I was extremely nervous about the assignment as well as college. However, through all the confusion in philosophy class, many of my questions about life were answered.

I entered college intending to earn a degree in engineering. I always liked the way mathematics had right and wrong answers. I understood the logic and was very good at it. So when I received my first philosophy assignment that asked me to write my interpretation of the Camus essay, I was instantly confused. What is the right way to do this assignment, I wondered? I was nervous about writing an incorrect interpretation and did not want to get my first assignment wrong. Even more troubling was that the professor refused to give us any guidelines on what he was looking for; he gave us total freedom. He simply said, “I want to see what you come up with.”

Full of anxiety, I first set out to read Camus’s essay several times to make sure I really knew what was it was about. I did my best to take careful notes. Yet even after I took all these notes and knew the essay inside and out, I still did not know the right answer. What was my interpretation? I could think of a million different ways to interpret the essay, but which one was my professor looking for? In math class, I was used to examples and explanations of solutions. This assignment gave me nothing; I was completely on my own to come up with my individual interpretation.

Next, when I sat down to write, the words just did not come to me. My notes and ideas were all present, but the words were lost. I decided to try every prewriting strategy I could find. I brainstormed, made idea maps, and even wrote an outline. Eventually, after a lot of stress, my ideas became more organized and the words fell on the page. I had my interpretation of “The Myth of Sisyphus,” and I had my main reasons for interpreting the essay. I remember being unsure of myself, wondering if what I was saying made sense, or if I was even on the right track. Through all the uncertainty, I continued writing the best I could. I finished the conclusion paragraph, had my spouse proofread it for errors, and turned it in the next day simply hoping for the best.

Then, a week or two later, came judgment day. The professor gave our papers back to us with grades and comments. I remember feeling simultaneously afraid and eager to get the paper back in my hands. It turned out, however, that I had nothing to worry about. The professor gave me an A on the paper, and his notes suggested that I wrote an effective essay overall. He wrote that my reading of the essay was very original and that my thoughts were well organized. My relief and newfound confidence upon reading his comments could not be overstated.

What I learned through this process extended well beyond how to write a college paper. I learned to be open to new challenges. I never expected to enjoy a philosophy class and always expected to be a math and science person. This class and assignment, however, gave me the self-confidence, critical-thinking skills, and courage to try a new career path. I left engineering and went on to study law and eventually became a lawyer. More important, that class and paper helped me understand education differently. Instead of seeing college as a direct stepping stone to a career, I learned to see college as a place to first learn and then seek a career or enhance an existing career. By giving me the space to express my own interpretation and to argue for my own values, my philosophy class taught me the importance of education for education’s sake. That realization continues to pay dividends every day.

Most People Don’t Understand Memoirs  

In 2006, James Frey wrote a memoir about parts of his life when he was under the influence of drugs called  A Million Little Pieces , and after Oprah had him on her show to discuss the book – it was featured in her popular book club, of course – she was told that he “lied” about certain parts. Well, he didn’t lie. Memoirs contain what we remember. What we remember isn’t always “fact.” What I always say is that if you have all of your family members report what happened at a family gathering – like a birthday party or Christmas – whose report would be correct? No ones! That’s what a memoir is. It’s still nonfiction because it’s what the person remembers, but it’s not false on purpose. If I remember that my sister responded to me in a snotty way one day and my other sister didn’t think so, no one is correct. It’s just my memory versus hers.

Now, typically, memoirs encompass just a chunk of someone’s life, like when James Frey wrote about his drug years, but sometimes, some famous person in their 70s (or older) will write his/her memoir. No matter what, it’s simply what they remember, and I suppose if someone’s on drugs or has an awful memory, the stories could appear to be false. But they aren’t. That’s why they say, “life is stranger than fiction.”

Memoirs are part of the nonfiction category of literature; they contain a lot of description and detail, and they are typically very, very personal in content.

The Bits and Pieces of Memoir

The memoir is a specific type of narrative. It is autobiographical in nature, but it is not meant to be as comprehensive as a biography (which tells the entire life story of a person). Instead, a memoir is usually only a specific “slice” of one’s life. The time span within a memoir is thus frequently limited to a single memorable event or moment, though it can also be used to tell about a longer series of events that make up a particular period of one’s life (as in Cameron Crowe’s film memoir Almost Famous ). It is narrative in structure, usually describing people and events that ultimately focuses on the emotional significance of the story to the one telling it. Generally, this emotional significance is the result of a resolution from the conflict within the story. Though a memoir is the retelling of a true account, it is not usually regarded as being completely true. After all, no one can faithfully recall every detail or bit of dialogue from an event that took place many years ago. Consequently, some creative license is granted by the reader to the memoirist recounting, say, a significant moment or events from his childhood some thirty years, or more, earlier. (However, the memoirist who assumes too much creative license without disclosing that fact is vulnerable to censure and public ridicule if his deception is found out, as what happened with James Frey and his memoir,  A Million Little Pieces .)

Furthermore, names of people and places are often changed in a memoir to protect those who were either directly or indirectly involved in the lives and/or event(s) being described.

Why read memoirs?

To learn about other people’s lives and their thoughts about events that have occurred.  Memoirs are a personalized look at history.

How to write memoirs?

Reflect n your life. write what you remember about events that matter to you from your unique point-of-view.

Dialogue is another way to bring life to your writing. Dialogue is conversation or people speaking in your story. An engaging dialogue goes beyond what is simply being said to include descriptions of non-verbal communication (facial expressions, body movement, changes in tone, and speed of speech) and characterization. The way people speak and interact while talking reveals much about them and the situation.

Writing a natural-sounding dialogue is not easy. Effective dialogue must serve more than one purpose – it should:

• Drive the plot forward,
• Reveal information about the characters, and
• Build tension or introduce conflict.

Sample Dialogue

“So, what was it really like?” I asked.

“I’ve told you. It was amazing.”

I shifted to my side so I could look at her. “You have to give me more than that,” I insisted, “and not the mom and dad version.”

Liv mirrored my move to her side and propped up her head with her arm. Her blue eyes searched my greens, looking for the right words. “I shouldn’t–”

We broke our gaze as we heard our mom call for us. Once again, I didn’t get the truth.

Basic Dialogue Rules

• “I want to go to the beach,” she said.
• He asked, “Where’s the champagne?”
• “That is,” Wesley said, “that neither you nor me is her boy.”
• Even if the speaker says only one word, with no accompanying attribution or action, it is a separate paragraph.
• Start a new paragraph when you wish to draw the reader’s attention to a different character, even if that character doesn’t actually speak.
• For internal dialogue, italics are appropriate.

Example Memoir

Chocolate Can Kill You

Just when you think your life could not get any better, the Great One Above throws you for a loop that causes you to think upon your life, yourself, and your “little” obsession with chocolate. I am somewhat ashamed of this story, but it taught me so much. I still remember Alisa’s face when I came crying into the Valley City gym, I can hear Dad’s echoing “Are you OKAY?” consistently in my mind as if it had been a childhood scolding, and I see the image of the snow coming at me at 70mph every time I drive on a highway now.

In 1997, the morning after Valentine’s Day, I took off to see my sister in Valley City. She was there because of a wrestling meet. She is one of their prized assistants and without her, they would never get to see how goofy they look in tights. It was a crisp morning, and I cannot remember if I filled the bronco’s tank, but I did purchase a Twix bar before heading out on I-94. I vaguely remember thinking, Gee a seat belt would be good, even though the roads were as clean as they could have been in a North Dakota February. On that ten-degree morning, I met up with no one on the highway.

I was just bee-bopping along the left side of the road, listening to the radio and singing aloud as if I was Mariah Carey. It was at this time that I chomped into my first Twix bar.

In an attempt at a different radio station or something or another, I dropped the last bar between my legs onto the floor of the black beastly bronco.

This is where I become a stupid human. I tried to recapture the chocolate bar thinking, or maybe not even thinking, It will only take me a second. Whoever has said that seconds count in any accident WAS RIGHT! All of a sudden, I look up to see that I am driving 70 mph into the median’s snowdrifts. I cranked the wheel, thinking I could just drive back onto the highway. I mumble a few swear words and realize I am going 70 MPH IN A VERY DEEP SNOWDRIFT! I take my foot off the accelerator and while the front end slows, the back end has accumulated too much energy or velocity (a good physics question) and begins to lift upwards. I close my eyes, cross my arms across my chest, and crouch back into my seat and start to feel the bronco as well as myself turn and twist and hover for what seemed an eternity in slow motion. I did not open my eyes once.

And then all of a sudden, the small jolted car lands- PLOP – ON ITS WHEELS! My chair has completely reclined, and I sit up seeing smoke coming from my engine. I forget how to work my car and instinctively get out as if to show God I am alive. I stand on top of the drift becoming taller than my boxy 4×4. There are small dents in the front where you would open the hood but that is the biggest damage I can see.

“Are you OKAY?” An old couple are parked and honking at me from the other side of the highway going towards Fargo. They tell me to come with them and turn off the engine. I grab my parka and make my way through the snow to sit down in the back seat of the long car and take in that old people smell. This is when I quietly cry.

“You did a flip! It’s amazing you walked away from it,” says the old man and I think to myself sarcastically to calm down, Yeah I tried to do that. I ask them to take me to Valley City trying not to sound three and a half. Another major thought echoes What will Dad say?

They turned around at the next available bridge which was a mile away and the lady told me the exit so I could give it to the people that will tow my little bruised bronco. They talked to themselves as I tried to think of what exactly happened, how glad I was to be alive, and how I felt about it. Once inside the gymnasium, I found Alisa’s eyes and she instantly frowned and looked scared.

“Did you and Jason fight?” No, I try to say but I am crying in front of a large crowd who all seem more interested in me now than the matches. I sit down beside her and say:

“I did a flip… the bronco… flipped … it did a 360.”

“The bronco did a WHAT! ARE YOU OKAY!” She panics. I go to call Dad as she tells her friends, and they also feel sympathetic and are quite amazed. I don’t know how I managed to remember my calling card number, but I reached Mom and Dad just waking up. Once again Dad frightens me with his voice and vows to be there as soon as possible and tells me to call the highway patrol.

I was the only accident that whole day on the highway, I think, so I looked pretty silly.

Mom and Dad showed up an hour later. Mom was half-awake, and Dad looked like he’d been chugging coffee left and right. They had seen the bronco being towed incorrectly towards Fargo, so Dad feared the transmission was screwed up again much less the rest of the car. We took off for Fargo and stopped at the spot seeing the tracks lead into the snow, then 25 feet of no tracks, and suddenly a large indentation where the bronco had sat down.

Once at the Mobile on I-29, Dad jumped into the bronco to try to start it. It revved right up. I shook my head and thought of the motto, Built Ford Tough. Only the alignment and steering was off from me trying to turn it back onto the road, and the steam I had seen was the radiator fluid splashing onto the hot engine.

We had to meet with a highway patrolman, so the bronco could get a sticker and photos could be taken. I also, fortunately for the taxpayers, had to pay a Care of Vehicle bill of thirty dollars which means that the government basically can fine someone for trashing his/her own vehicle. This pissed me off incredibly after a day like I had just had. My mom had to remind me though that at least it wasn’t a medical bill.

The highway patrolman reminds me how valuable it was that I had had a seat belt on because I would have for sure gone through the windshield with that type of event and all the tossing that I had endured. That does not make replaying this event in my memory any better. As if God was saying: “No, not yet.”

It’s a common joke to not let me eat while I am driving.

That day made me incredibly grateful for my life, and for the people who came to my aid, especially my parents for spending their whole Saturday with me. Whether we were trying to contact the highway patrolman, paying the tower and the ticket, or comforting me- they never complained. Who knew chocolate could lead to such a life-threatening, yet philosophical day?

Time to Write

Purpose:  This assignment will demonstrate the understanding of how to write a memoir

Task: This assignment frames a single event for the memoir essay.

Write a Memoir Essay.  This essay should clearly identify a significant event or series of closely tied events that convey the significance of that event or has somehow shaped your personal perspective.  Remember that you are writing for an audience that doesn’t share your knowledge of the event(s), people, setting, etc. It is up to you to make your memoir come to life.

Key Features of a Memoir:

• Invoke the 5 senses
• Use narrative suspense
• use metaphor
• include significant details
• provide descriptive language
• use effective dialogue
• include transitions

Key Grading Considerations

• The rhetorical purpose is clear, focused, and appropriate to the audience and assignment.
• The purpose is focused on the memoir.
• Shows engagement with issues of story, language, rhetoric, or thinking deeply about a personal event.
• The theme relates to a personal experience but also illustrates more universal principles.
• Transitions
• Learning Point Thesis Statement
• Topic Sentences
• Some Narrative Elements that flow with the paper
• Clear introduction, event story, and conclusion
• Dialogue is used
• Descriptions and quotes to help visualize the event
• Correct, appropriate, and varied integration of textual examples, including in-text citations
• Limited errors in spelling, grammar, word order, word usage, sentence structure, and punctuation
• Good use of academic English
• Demonstrates cohesion and flow
• Uses the rules of dialogue
• Date format

Attributions

• Memoir Content Adapted from Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL). (2020).  Excelsior College. Retrieved from https://owl.excelsior.edu/ licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License .
• Narrative Writing Content Adapted from BETTER WRITING FROM THE BEGINNING . (2020).  Jenn Kepka. Retrieved from Better Writing from the Beginning licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-4.0 International License .

English 101: Journey Into Open Copyright © 2021 by Christine Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Writing the Memoir (Moxley): Introduction

• Introduction
• Tips for Writing the Memoir
• Annotated Memoirs
• Describing a Person
• Describing a Place
• Sample Topics and Essays

Introduction to Writing the Memoir

Teaching and writing the memoir .

            A memoir can be one of the most meaningful essays that a student can write and one of the most engaging essays for a teacher to read.  The spirit generated by the memoir can create class fellowship less attainable through subjects requiring pure analysis, description, or narration.  More than any other subject, a memoir demands that a student bring his sensibilities and experiences to school, and when that happens, it is virtually impossible for anyone to accept a mediocrity of passion.  Students and teachers are likely to treat writing as an experience in itself, a means for writers to understand their lives and for teachers to understand their students’ worlds.

              In Terrains of the Heart, Willie Morris writes,

  If it is true that a writer's world is shaped by the experience of childhood and adolescence, then returning at long last to the scenes of those experiences, remembering them anew and living among their changing heartbeats, gives him, as Marshall Frady said, the primary pulses and shocks he cannot afford to lose. I have never denied the poverty, the smugness, the cruelty which have existed in my native state [ Mississippi ].  Meanness is everywhere, but here the meanness, and the nobility, have for me their own dramatic edge, for the fools are my fools, and the heroes are mine too.

  As a young editor who left his native state for New York City, Willie Morris wrote prolifically about his hot Mississippi youth from the cold Northeast.  His essays on home preserve a way of life in the Delta—a complicated history marked by romance and violence—while he lived in a New York far removed from this past.  We sense when reading Willie Morris’s carefully crafted memories that he is coming to know himself through his writing and, in a broader sense, has resurrected a world that can help others understand their own lives.

            To both student and teacher, this is what I hope teaching and writing the memoir will give you:  a chance to investigate your past, your culture, and your lives in general, and in so doing, create a community of authors who delight in the struggle to write clearly, meaningfully, and correctly.

The Rationale

              By clicking here , or by opening the above tab, Annotated Memoirs, you will go to a list of six types of essays, each of which is hyperlinked to a sample essay and a discussion of it. 

              Each sample annotated essay will have the following:

1.  an introduction that comments on the type of essay and how it may generate good writing from young students;

2.  a link to the essay so you can open or print it;

3.  a discussion of the essay, called “The Craft of the Essay,” which explains the strategy in each paragraph or “part” of the essay so that the teacher and student can see how the memoir was crafted from the bare memory.  This section should encourage teacher and student to scrutinize the essay together during a read-aloud session to determine how they think the memory was turned into memoir;

4.  an “Assignment” section that gives the student some specific questions to answer that might help them see the further craft of the particular memoir.

Teaching Strategies

              As with any assignment, the teaching strategy depends on the size of the class, the amount of time allotted for the assignment, how much it is weighted, and so forth.

            Ideally, teaching the memoir should take 6-7 nights of homework.  These nights could be spaced over the course of two-three weeks.

            You could also make it a lighter assignment and cut it to 3-4 assignments, with only one rough draft, instead of the two I suggest.

Homework Assignment #1: 

              The teacher/class decides which category of memoir they will read together as a class to introduce the assignment.  For example, you may choose from the Annotated Memoirs to read the Writing about Death and Mortality assignment and its sample annotated essay “Death of a Pig” by E. B. White.  For this night’s homework, the students should print out the assignment and essay at home to bring to class as their text.  They should read the essay, read the “Craft of the Essay” discussion, and then answer on paper the questions under the “Assignment” section. 

            In class the next day, read the essay aloud (or as much of it as possible), go over the “Craft of the Essay” and finish the day having the students explain their responses to the “Assignment.”

            If there is any time left, you might get the students to discuss the topic, “Where does memory begin?” ( Click here for a passage from Willie Morris's Taps to get the ball rolling. )

  Homework Assignment #2:

              Open the  Sample Topics and Essays  tab to find numerous topics and sample essays.  Decide whether everyone is going to write the same type of essay or whether the topic will be open to a variety of memoirs.  Then read a few sample essays for the topic you choose. 

Written homework is to sit for 40 minutes and do a “fast write,” in which the student writes about half of the first draft of the memory, paying no attention to grammar, style, syntax, or organization. This assignment is to get the student to write or type 2-3 pages of his memory with some, but minimal, revision (the revision should take place after the fast-write).  Click on the tab, Tips for Writing the Memoir, for some help getting started after the fast-write.

            In class the next day, students will read aloud what they have written.  The object is to hear one or two inspiring accounts so that each student can “get the hang of the assignment.”  The teacher should be pushing everyone to develop his “voice.”   Again, see Tips for Writing the Memoir  for a discussion of voice and other terms.

  Homework Assignment #3: 

              Continue where the students left off in Assignment #2 and try to write 4-5 handwritten, or 3-4 typed, pages.  If someone does not like what he/she did in Assignment #2, then start anew.

            In class the next day, have the students read aloud their work.  By the end of this day everyone should have read his/her essay at least once, either on this day or the day before.  The teacher should keep track of who has read.  Again, note how distinct the students’ written voices are, and who is putting in moments of self-reflection and not getting hung up on chronological retelling.

  Homework Assignment #4:

              By this time the students should know the focus of their essay (in other words, what wisdom, revelation, or general idea that their essay is revealing) and should begin “crafting,” or creatively organizing, the memory to become a memoir.

            It is crucial that the student realize that facts are not solely important.  Good memoirs are a blend of fact and creation; this concept will be tough to defend, but the writers of memoir have flexibility regarding the facts of the memory, since it is the “truth” of the memory they are creating; sometimes the facts are too confusing or pallid to have the needed color to make a memory vivid.  For a memory to become memoir, it needs a larger-than-life appeal.  ( Click here for some comments by Dorothy Gallagher on fact versus truth in memoir. )

To craft the essay, for homework (5-10 minutes) try having them draw a timeline of the way the memory works; in class the teacher can draw the timeline of other successful sample essays.  They will see that many essays about a lost loved one starts at the funeral, flashes back to the life, and at the end returns to the funeral.  Flashbacks are crucial to building characters, dead or alive

            Also ask them to outline what they have written as best they can (10-15 minute assignment).  Then, looking at their outlines, they may see a way to restructure the telling of the memory to get the most out of it. 

            The students should be encouraged to imitate the structure of essays that resemble the one they are writing.

            With all this in mind, they should go back and begin writing a new draft for 30 minutes.  In class the next day, have them report on what they’ve changed and have them read some first paragraphs aloud.

    Homework Assignment #5:

              Finish draft number 2.  The students should be keeping track of their rough drafts, as their grade will be based as much on effort and process as on final product.  By now the essays should have incorporated a number of ways to build character, place, and their focus:  short dialogue, concrete descriptions, anecdotes, and moments of reflection.

            Have each student read his or her first 3-4 sentences.  Urge everyone to listen intently and decide which of these sentences should be the first one in the essay.  Frequently, the first paragraph or two can be cut.  It takes most writers about 100 or more words to get warmed up.  Remind them of the Truman Capote Rule:  “I believe more in the scissors than I do the pencil.”

  Homework Assignment #6:

              The final essay is due, approximately 4-5 typed pages.  The student should turn in at least two verifiable rough drafts and the final draft.  The teacher will have heard every student’s paper at least once and should have encouraged each student to drop by for 5-10 minutes during the last 4-5 days to discuss the progress of the memoir.

            The process of this assignment should be weighted as heavily as the final product.  I usually check that the student has written two drafts, contributed to class workshops, and has revised carefully by showing he has learned: 

  (1) to start strategically;

(2) to create the various characters through description, action, anecdote, and brief dialogue;

(3) to create place and atmosphere through concrete description, temperature, climate, and telling details;

(4) to build a strong focus through moments of self-reflection;

(5) to organize strategically, dividing his essay into many paragraphs, some short, some long;

(6) to unify his essay so that, although it may wander, it ultimately returns to some unifying point or image;

(7) to punctuate and write solid sentences that create a pleasing variety and rhythm.

• Willie Morris's "Taps"
• Comments by Dorothy Gallagher
• Next: Tips for Writing the Memoir >>
• Last Updated: Jan 18, 2024 11:10 AM
• URL: https://libguides.montgomerybell.edu/memoir

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The Personal Memoir

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Because the personal memoir is more demanding than the personal essay, for both writer and reader, it doesn’t fit into introductory courses as well as the personal essay. An intermediate level course is a good place to introduce the memoir. However, if the instructor takes the time to explain and introduce the memoir form, it can be adapted for introductory courses.

Difference Between the Personal Essay and the Memoir

While the personal essay can be about almost anything, the memoir tends to discuss past events. Memoir is similar to the personal essay, except that the memoir tends to focus more on striking or life-changing events. The personal essay can be a relatively light reflection about what’s going on in your life right now.

Where the personal essay explores, free from any need to interpret, the memoir interprets, analyzes, and seeks the deeper meaning beneath the surface experience of particular events. The memoir continually asks the following questions:

• Why was this event of particular significance?
• What did it mean?
• Why is it important?

In this sense, the memoir is heavier than the personal essay, and it mines the past to shed light on the present. The memoir seeks to make sense of an individual life. The questions that are left unanswered in Wole Soyinka’s essay from the personal essay resource, Why do I Fast? are answered in the memoir.

Generating Ideas for Personal Memoirs

Moore’s memoir exercise from The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction is useful in both beginning and intermediate courses:

“Make a list of six to ten events or circumstances in your own life, or the lives of those very close to you, that still provoke your curiosity. Mine your own life for the events and circumstances that still raise questions in your mind. Once you have the list (and this list should be private - don’t share it with others - and don’t hold back because you think someone else will be looking), pick one of the questions on the list that you are willing to explore.“

The potential questions Moore asks in this exercise are meant to be answered in the memoir. While the memoir tries to make sense of experience, it also shares something in common with the personal essay - the exploration of the question, and the process of trying to arrive at an answer, is at least as important as the answer or resolution you may arrive at.

Writing the memoir is not a simple Q & A with yourself; rather, the complicated process of trying to seek the answers is what makes the memoir engaging to write, and read. Here is an example from Carlos Fuentes’ How I Started to Write :

Fuentes is constantly questioning and answering, interpreting and analyzing his experience, trying to make sense of why and how he did what he did in order to become a writer. He seeks answers and tries to make sense of his life by interpreting his own experience, the cultural and political life of his time, the meaning of language and literary influence, and by stepping over imagined nationalist borders.

63 Best Memoir Writing Prompts To Stoke Your Ideas

You’re writing a memoir. But you’re not sure what questions or life lessons you want to focus on.

Even if only family members and friends will read the finished book, you want to make it worth their time. 

This isn’t just a whimsical collection of anecdotes from your life.

You want to convey something to your readers that will stay with them. 

And maybe you want your memoir’s impact to serve as your legacy — a testament to how you made a small (or large) difference. 

The collection of memoir questions in this post can help you create a legacy worth sharing.

So, if you don’t already have enough ideas for a memoir, read on. 

A Strong Theme

Overcoming obstacles, emotional storytelling, satisfying ending, examples of good starting sentences for a memoir , 63 memoir writing prompts , what are the primary parts of a memoir.

Though similar to autobiographies, memoirs are less chronological and more impressionable – less historical and more relatable.

Resultantly, they’re structured differently. 

With that in mind, let’s look at five elements that tie a memoir together, rendering it more enjoyable.

Biographies are histories that may not hew to a cohesive theme. But memoirs focus on inspiring and enlightening experiences and events.

As such, books in the genre promote a theme or idea that binds the highlighted happenings to an overarching reflection point or lesson.

Many people are super at sniffing out insincerity, and most folks prefer candidness.

So while exact dates and logistical facts may be off in a memoir, being raw and real with emotions, revelations, and relational impacts is vital. To put it colloquially: The best personal accounts let it all hang out. 

People prefer inspiring stories. They want to read about people overcoming obstacles, standing as testaments to the tenacious nature of the human spirit. Why?

Because it engenders hope. If this person was able to achieve “x,” there’s a possibility I could, too. Furthermore, people find it comforting that they’re not the only ones who’ve faced seemingly insurmountable impediments.

Readers crave emotion. And for many of the stoic masses, books, plays, television shows, and films are their primary sources of sentimentality.

Historically, the best-performing memoirs are built on emotional frameworks that resonate with readers. The goal is to touch hearts, not just heads.

In a not-so-small way, memoirs are like romance books: Readers want a “happy” ending. So close strongly. Ensure the finale touches on the book’s central themes and emotional highlights.

End it with a smile and note of encouragement, leaving the audience satisfied and optimistic.

Use the following questions as memoir writing exercises . Choose those that immediately evoke memories that have stayed with you over the years.

Group them by theme — family, career, beliefs, etc. — and address at least one question a day. 

For each question, write freely for around 300 to 400 words. You can always edit it later to tighten it up or add more content. 

1. What is your earliest memory?

2. What have your parents told you about your birth that was unusual?

3. How well did you get along with your siblings, if you have any?

4. Which parent were you closest to growing up and why?

5. What parent or parental figure had the biggest influence on you growing up?

6. What is your happiest childhood memory?

7. What is your saddest or most painful childhood memory?

8. Did you have good parents? How did they show their love for you?

9. What words of theirs from your childhood do you remember most, and why?

10. What do you remember most about your parents’ relationship? 

11. Were your parents together, or did they live apart? Did they get along? 

12. How has your relationship with your parents affected your own love relationships?

13. Who or what did you want to be when you grew up? 

14. What shows or movies influenced you most during your childhood?

15. What were your favorite books to read, and how did they influence you?

16. If you grew up in a religious household, how did you see “God”? 

17. How did you think “God” saw you? Who influenced those beliefs?

18. Describe your spiritual journey from adolescence to the present?

19. Who was your first best friend? How did you become friends? 

20. Who was your favorite teacher in elementary school, and why?

21. Did you fit in with any social group or clique in school? Describe your social life?

22. What were your biggest learning challenges in school (academic or social)? 

23. Who was your first crush, and what drew you to them? How long did it last?

24. What was your favorite subject in school, and what did you love about it?

25. What do you wish you would have learned more about growing up?

26. What did you learn about yourself in high school? What was your biggest mistake?

27. What seemed normal to you growing up that now strikes you as messed up?

28. How old were you when you first moved away from home?

29. Who gave you your first kiss? And what do you remember most about it?

30. Who was your first love ? What do you remember most about them?

31. Was there ever a time in your life when you realized you weren’t straight? 

32. Describe a memorable argument you had with one of your parents? How did it end?

33. Have you lost a parent? How did it happen, and how did their death affect you?

34. What was your first real job? What do you remember most about it?

35. How did you spend the money you earned with that job? 

36. At what moment in your life did you feel most loved? 

37. At what moment in your life did you feel most alone?

38. What do you remember most about your high school graduation? Did it matter?

39. What’s something you’ve done that you never thought you would do?

40. What has been the greatest challenge of your life up to this point?

41. What did you learn in college that has had a powerful influence on you?

42. How has your family’s financial situation growing up influenced you?

43. How has someone’s harsh criticism of you led you to an important realization? 

44. Do you consider yourself a “good person”? Why or why not?

45. Who was the first person who considered you worth standing up for?

46. If you have children, whom did you trust with them when they were babies?

47. Did you have pets growing up? Did you feel close or attached to any of them?

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48. Describe someone from your past whom you’d love to see again. 

49. Do you have a lost love? If yes, describe them, how you met, and how you lost them. 

50. Describe a moment when you made a fool of yourself and what it cost you. 

51. What is something you learned later in life that you wish you’d learned as a child?

52. How do you want others to see you? What words come to mind? 

53. What do you still believe now that you believed even as a child or as a teenager?

54. What do you no longer believe that you did believe as a child or teenager?

55. When have you alienated people by being vocal about your beliefs? 

56. Are you as vocal about your beliefs as you were when you were a young adult ?

57. Are you haunted by the consequences of beliefs you’ve since abandoned? 

58. How have your political beliefs changed since you were a teenager? 

59. Have you ever joined a protest for a cause you believe in? Would you still? 

60. How has technology shaped your life for the past 10 years? 

61.Has your chosen career made you happy — or cost you and your family too much?

62. What comes to mind if someone asks you what you’re good at? Why does it matter?

63. How is your family unique? What makes you proudest when you think about them?

We’ve looked at the elements that make memoirs shine. Now, let’s turn our attention to one of the most important parts of a personal account: the opening sentence.

We’ve scoured some of the most successful, moving memoirs of all time to curate a list of memorable starting sentences. Notice how all of them hint at the theme of the book.

Let’s jump in.

1. “They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname.” From Night, a first-hand account of the WWII Holocaust by Elie Wiesel

2. “My mother is scraping a piece of burned toast out of the kitchen window, a crease of annoyance across her forehead.” From Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger, foodie Nigel Slater’s account of culinary events that shaped his life.

3. “Then there was the bad weather.” From A Moveable Feast , Ernest Hemingway’s telling of his years as an young expat in Paris

4. “You know those plants always trying to find the light?” From Over the Top: A Raw Journey of Self-Love by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s beloved star, Jonathan Van Ness

5. “What are you looking at me for? I didn’t come to stay.” From Maya Angelou’s masterpiece, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , the story of persevering in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles

6. “I’m on Kauai, in Hawaii, today, August 5, 2005. It’s unbelievably clear and sunny, not a cloud in the sky.” From What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, a memoir about the fluidity of running and writing

7. “The soil in Leitrim is poor, in places no more than an inch deep. ” From All Will be Well , Irish writer John McGahern’s recounting of his troubled childhood 

8. “The past is beautiful because one never realizes an emotion at the time.” From Educated , Tara Westover’s engrossing account of her path from growing up in an uneducated survivalist family to earning a doctorate in intellectual history from Cambridge University 

9. “I flipped through the CT scan images, the diagnosis obvious.” From When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, the now-deceased doctor’s journey toward mortality after discovering he had terminal cancer

10. “Romantic love is the most important and exciting thing in the entire world.” From Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton, a funny, light-hearted memoir about one woman’s amorous journey from teenager to twentysomething

Final Thoughts

These memoir topics should get ideas flooding into your mind. All you have to do, then, is let them out onto the page. The more you write, the easier it will be to choose the primary focus for your memoir. And the more fun you’ll have writing it. 

That’s not to say it’ll be easy to create a powerful memoir. It won’t be. But the more clarity you have about its overall mission, the more easily the words will flow. 

Enjoy these memoir writing exercises. And apply the same clarity of focus during the editing process. Your readers will thank you. 

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18 Essay-Length Short Memoirs to Read Online on Your Lunch Break

Emily Polson

Emily Polson is a freelance writer and publishing assistant at Simon & Schuster. Originally from central Iowa, she studied English and creative writing at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, before moving to a small Basque village to teach English to trilingual teenagers. Now living in Brooklyn, she can often be found meandering through Prospect Park listening to a good audiobook. Twitter: @emilycpolson | https://emilycpolson.wordpress.com/

View All posts by Emily Polson

I love memoirs and essays, so the genre of essay-length short memoirs is one of my favorites. I love delving into the details of other people’s lives. The length allows me to read broadly on a whim with minimal commitment. In roughly 5–30 minutes, I can consume a complete morsel of literature, which always leaves me happier than the same amount of time spent doom-scrolling through my various social news feeds.

What are short memoirs? 

What exactly are short memoirs? I define them as essay-length works that weave together life experiences around a central theme. You see examples of short memoirs all the time on sites like Buzzfeed and The New York Times . Others are stand-alone pieces published in essay collections.

Memoir essays were my gateway into reading full-length memoirs. It was not until I took a college class on creative nonfiction that I realized memoirs were not just autobiographies of people with exciting lives. Anyone with any amount of life experience can write a memoir—no dramatic childhood or odd-defying life accomplishments required. A short memoir might be an account of a single, life-changing event, or it may be reflection on a period of growth or transition.

Of course, when a young adult tells people she likes writing creative nonfiction—not journalism or technical writing—she hears a lot of, “You’re too young to write a memoir!” and “What could someone your age possibly have to write about?!” As Flannery O’Connor put it, however, “The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can’t make something out of a little experience, you probably won’t be able to make it out of a lot. The writer’s business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it.”

Memoir essay examples

As the lit magazine Creative Nonfiction puts it, personal essays are just “True stories, well told.” And everyone has life stories worth telling.

Here are a few of my favorite memoir examples that are essay length.

SHORT MEMOIRS ABOUT GROWING UP

Scaachi koul, “there’s no recipe for growing up”.

In this delightful essay, Koul talks about trying to learn the secrets of her mother’s Kashmiri cooking after growing up a first-generation American. The story is full of vivid descriptions and anecdotal details that capture something so specific it transcends to the realm of universal. It’s smart, it’s funny, and it’ll break your heart a little as Koul describes “trying to find my mom at the bottom of a 20-quart pot.”

ASHLEY C. FORD, “THE YEAR I GREW WILDLY WHILE MEN LOOKED ON”

This memoir essay is for all the girls who went through puberty early in a world that sexualizes children’s bodies. Ford weaves together her experiences of feeling at odds with her body, of being seen as a “distraction” to adult men, of being Black and fatherless and hungry for love. She writes, “It was evident that who I was inside, who I wanted to be, didn’t match the intentions of my body. Outside, there was no little girl to be loved innocently. My body was a barrier.”

Kaveh Akbar, “How I Found Poetry in Childhood Prayer”

Akbar writes intense, searing poetry, but this personal essay contextualizes one of his sweetest poems, “Learning to Pray,” which is cradled in the middle of it. He describes how he fell in love with the movement, the language, and the ceremony of his Muslim family’s nightly prayers. Even though he didn’t (and doesn’t) speak Arabic, Akbar points to the musicality of these phonetically-learned hymns as “the bedrock upon which I’ve built my understanding of poetry as a craft and as a meditative practice.” Reading this essay made me want to reread his debut poetry collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf , all over again.

JIA TOLENTINO, “LOSING RELIGION AND FINDING ECSTASY IN HOUSTON”

New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino grew up attending a Houston megachurch she referred to as “the Repentagon.” In this personal essay, she describes vivid childhood memories of her time there, discussing how some of the very things she learned from the church contributed to her growing ambivalence toward it and its often hypocritical congregants. “Christianity formed my deepest instincts,” she writes, “and I have been walking away from it for half my life.” As the essay title suggests, this walking away coincided with her early experiences taking MDMA, which offered an uncanny similarity to her experience of religious devotion.

funny short memoirs

Patricia lockwood, “insane after coronavirus”.

Author Patricia Lockwood caught COVID-19 in early March 2020. In addition to her physical symptoms, she chronicled the bizarre delusions she experienced while society also collectively operated under the delusion that this whole thing would blow over quickly. Lockwood has a preternatural ability to inject humor into any situation, even the dire ones, by highlighting choice absurdities. This is a rare piece of pandemic writing that will make you laugh instead of cry–unless it makes you cry from laughing.

Harrison Scott Key,  “My Dad Tried to Kill Me with an Alligator”

This personal essay is a tongue-in-cheek story about the author’s run-in with an alligator on the Pearl River in Mississippi. Looking back on the event as an adult, Key considers his father’s tendencies in light of his own, now that he himself is a dad. He explores this relationship further in his book-length memoir, The World’s Largest Man , but this humorous essay stands on its own. (I also had the pleasure of hearing him read this aloud during my school’s homecoming weekend, as Key is an alumnus of my alma mater.)

David Sedaris, “Me Talk Pretty One Day”

Sedaris’s humor is in a league of its own, and he’s at his best in the title essay from Me Talk Pretty One Day . In it, he manages to capture the linguistic hilarities that ensue when you combine a sarcastic, middle-aged French student with a snarky French teacher.

SAMANTHA IRBY, “THE WORST FRIEND DATE I EVER HAD”

Samantha Irby is one of my favorite humorists writing today, and this short memoir essay about the difficulty of making friends as an adult is a great introduction to her. Be prepared for secondhand cringe when you reach the infamous moment she asks a waiter, “Are you familiar with my work?” After reading this essay, you’ll want to be, so check out Wow, No Thank You . next.

Bill Bryson, “Coming Home”

Bryson has the sly, subtle humor that only comes from Americans who have spent considerable time living among dry-humored Brits. In “Coming Home,” he talks about the strange sensation of returning to America after spending his first twenty years of adulthood in England. This personal essay is the first in a book-length work called I’m a Stranger Here Myself , in which Bryson revisits American things that feel like novelties to outsiders and the odd former expat like himself.

Thought-provoking Short memoirs

Tommy orange, “how native american is native american enough”.

Many people claim some percentage of Indigenous ancestry, but how much is enough to “count”? Novelist Tommy Orange–author of There There –deconstructs this concept, discussing his relationship to his Native father, his Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood, and his son, who will not be considered “Native enough” to join him as an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. “ How come math isn’t taught with stakes?” he asks in this short memoir full of lingering questions that will challenge the way you think about heritage. 

Christine Hyung-Oak Lee, “I Had a Stroke at 33”

Lee’s story is interesting not just because she had a stroke at such a young age, but because of how she recounts an experience that was characterized by forgetting. She says that after her stroke, “For a month, every moment of the day was like the moment upon wakening before you figure out where you are, what time it is.” With this personal essay, she draws readers into that fragmented headspace, then weaves something coherent and beautiful from it.

Kyoko Mori, “A Difficult Balance: Am I a Writer or a Teacher?”

In this refreshing essay, Mori discusses balancing “the double calling” of being a writer and a teacher. She admits that teaching felt antithetical to her sense of self when she started out in a classroom of apathetic college freshmen. When she found her way into teaching an MFA program, however, she discovered that fostering a sanctuary for others’ words and ideas felt closer to a “calling.” While in some ways this makes the balance of shifting personas easier, she says it creates a different kind of dread: “Teaching, if it becomes more than a job, might swallow me whole and leave nothing for my life as a writer.” This memoir essay is honest, well-structured, and layered with plenty of anecdotal details to draw in the reader.

Alex Tizon, “My Family’s Slave”

In this heartbreaking essay, Tizon pays tribute to the memory of Lola, the domestic slave who raised him and his siblings. His family brought her with them when they emigrated to America from the Philippines. He talks about the circumstances that led to Lola’s enslavement, the injustice she endured throughout her life, and his own horror at realizing the truth about her role in his family as he grew up. While the story is sad enough to make you cry, there are small moments of hope and redemption. Alex discusses what he tried to do for Lola as an adult and how, upon her death, he traveled to her family’s village to return her ashes.

Classic short memoirs

James baldwin, “notes of a native son”.

This memoir essay comes from Baldwin’s collection of the same name. In it, he focuses on his relationship with his father, who died when Baldwin was 19. He also wrestles with growing up black in a time of segregation, touching on the historical treatment of black soldiers and the Harlem Riot of 1943. His vivid descriptions and honest narration draw you into his transition between frustration, hatred, confusion, despair, and resilience.

JOAN DIDION,  “GOODBYE TO ALL THAT”

Didion is one of the foremost literary memoirists of the twentieth century, combining journalistic precision with self-aware introspection. In “Goodbye to All That,” Didion recounts moving to New York as a naïve 20-year-old and leaving as a disillusioned 28-year-old. She captures the mystical awe with which outsiders view the Big Apple, reflecting on her youthful perspective that life was still limitless, “that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.”  This essay concludes her masterful collection,   Slouching Towards Bethlehem .

Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried”

This is the title essay from O’Brien’s collection, The Things They Carried . It’s technically labeled a work of fiction, but because the themes and anecdotes are pulled from O’Brien’s own experience in the Vietnam War, it blurs the lines between fact and fiction enough to be included here. (I’m admittedly predisposed to this classification because a college writing professor of mine included it on our creative nonfiction syllabus.) The essay paints an intimate portrait of a group of soldiers by listing the things they each carry with them, both physical and metaphorical. It contains one of my favorite lines in all of literature: “They all carried ghosts.”

Multi-Media Short Memoirs

Allie brosh, “richard”.

In this blog post/webcomic, Allie Brosh tells the hilarious story about the time as a child that she, 1) realized neighbors exist, and 2) repeatedly snuck into her neighbor’s house, took his things, and ultimately kidnapped his cat. Her signature comic style drives home the humor in a way that will split your sides. The essay is an excerpt from Brosh’s second book, Solutions and Other Problems , but the web version includes bonus photos and backstory. For even more Allie classics, check out “Adventures in Depression” and “Depression Part Two.”

George Watsky, “Ask Me What I’m Doing Tonight”

Watsky is a rapper and spoken word poet who built his following on YouTube. Before he made it big, however, he spent five years performing for groups of college students across the Midwest. “Ask Me What I’m Doing Tonight!” traces that soul-crushing monotony while telling a compelling story about trying to connect with people despite such transience. It’s the most interesting essay about boredom you’ll ever read, or in this case watch—he filmed a short film version of the essay for his YouTube channel. Like his music, Watsky’s personal essays are vulnerable, honest, and crude, and the whole collection, How to Ruin Everything , is worth reading.

If you’re looking for even more short memoirs, keep an eye on these pages from Literary Hub , Buzzfeed , and Creative Nonfiction . You can also delve into these 25 nonfiction essays you can read online and these 100 must-read essay collections . Also be sure to check out the “Our Reading Lives” tag right here on Book Riot, where you’ll find short memoirs like “Searching for Little Free Libraries as a Way to Say Goodbye” and “How I Overcame My Fear of Reading Contemporary Poets.”

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Shedding his Lemony Snicket persona, Daniel Handler lets off some steam

In his new book, “And Then? And Then? What Else?,” the author of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” explores the joys, frustrations and ironies of the writing life.

Writers lead messy lives, constantly condemned to days of lousy first drafts, failed ideas and chronic misstatements. Daniel Handler feels this deeply throughout his kinda-sorta memoir, “ And Then? And Then? What Else? ” Eventually it reaches a boiling point. Late in the book he abandons his quirky-cool demeanor — he’s best known as Lemony Snicket, author of the offbeat children’s books “A Series of Unfortunate Events” — and lets fly with an f-bomb-laden rant about cancel culture and the pressure writers feel to be everything to everyone.

It’s a fierce cri de coeur at a time when books — especially kids’ books — are targeted on the right and writers who misstep on the inclusivity front get targeted on the left. (Oddly, Handler doesn’t mention his own moment as a near-cancelee. Onstage while emceeing the 2014 National Book Awards, he directed a racist watermelon joke at Black author Jacqueline Woodson ; after a social media pile-on, he apologized.) Handler isn’t interested in wading far into the politics of writing today — elsewhere his prose tends toward the gentle, sprightly and personal. Still, it’s not hard to see why he made room for the tirade: He wants to encourage you to give up seeking easy answers about who writers are and how writing works.

“And Then?” — the title comes from a poem by Baudelaire, the namesake of the “Unfortunate Events” siblings — doesn’t have a subtitle to explain itself. But a good one might be “A Memoir of Writerly Confusions.” For Handler, the writing life means forever stepping into frustration and strange ironies. He recalls writing nine drafts for the “Unfortunate Events” movie before being fired from the job — and then being asked to consult on the script, without pay. “Previously I had considered these people innocent,” he says of the moviemakers, “and then maybe dumb, and then maybe a pack of vicious demons. I understood, too, that they were, at least obliquely, the reason I owned a house.”

Plainly, embracing the mess has made him a success: He recalls how some young Lemony Snicket fans were so excited to see him at readings that “bookstores began to have contingency plans for when a child, excited to meet me, threw up.” (The life of a reader can get messy, too.) So understandably, he’s fully embraced the idea of mess-as-process, that successful writing means wrestling with demons. On that front, he’s had a few. In one chapter, he recalls that during his college years he was stalked by visions of malevolent figures, accompanied by seizures that briefly sent him to a psych ward. Recovery wasn’t conquering those visions but making a kind of peace with them: “I still, to this day, see these figures, frequently but not frighteningly, not anymore,” he writes.

That experience has fueled a sensibility in which he does best when he’s open to strangeness. He takes inspiration from the melodrama of opera but also finds joy and insight in tacky kitsch like “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.” His polestars as an artist are art-film figures like Guy Maddin, who tweaks silent-film conventions, and, most obviously, Edward Gorey, whose not-for-kids-but-really-they-are illustrated stories inspired the Lemony Snicket books’ mordant brilliance. Still, he keeps his heroes at arm’s length: Recalling sending Gorey a fan note, he writes: “I never heard back from Gorey, but shortly afterward he died. I like to think that I killed him.”

Lines like that reflect the sort of tone we want from writer’s guides — intimate, self-deprecating. But these days, we also want them to be practical. The most prominent modern example remains Stephen King’s memoir “On Writing,” and countless others since have borrowed its tone and intention. George Saunders’s “A Swim in the Pond in the Rain” invites us to study classic Russian short stories. In “Essays One,” Lydia Davis brilliantly dismantles her own stories like a car engine. Handler’s book belongs in that company, but he’s skeptical of how much he can offer in terms of practical tips: Whenever he hears the word “process,” he writes, “I wish I could lay my head down on a table.”

Yet there are moments when Handler warms to the role of advice giver. Like every author, he encourages you to read a lot — he recalls the teacher who introduced him to Muriel Spark, the perfect writer for him at just the right time. And he encourages writers to abandon bespoke notebooks and keep it simple; he describes his (yes) process for gathering and reshuffling notes into stories, and how he forgives his sloppy drafts. He’s taken a lesson from his occasional musical collaborator, Magnetic Fields frontman Stephin Merritt, who’s “a devout corraller of happy accidents, encouraging musicians to try the wrong approach, the bonkers note, anything to fill the blanks.”

But all this — Spark, Gorey, B-movies, weird troubling figures in the corner of your eye — doesn’t solve the problem of producing good writing. As for what does, Handler recalls working on a script for a director who sent his draft back pockmarked with the letters “DB,” short for “do better.” Handler was infuriated at the vague note, but he took the lesson: “Now I write it in my own margins all the time, shorthand for I don’t know what’s wrong here but it needs to improve. I want to write better, but I usually don’t know how. Nobody does, really.” For Handler, knowing there’s no right way to do it is the most liberating advice of all.

Mark Athitakis is a critic in Phoenix and the author of “ The New Midwest .”

And Then? And Then? What Else?

By Daniel Handler

Liveright. 240 pp. $26.99

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

• Entertainment

How Writing Her Feminist-Punk Memoir Put Kathleen Hanna on the ‘Happiness Train’

K athleen Hanna has always been dead serious and slyly funny at once. More perspicacious than angry invective alone, that alchemy of tones has been her signature since the early ’90s, when a 20-something Hanna fronted Bikini Kill, the punk band that became the most visible act associated with the third-wave feminist movement known as riot grrrl . “Suck my left one,” she growled, in the face of an abuser, on one of their most famous tracks . Her subsequent solo project, Julie Ruin, conjured visions of a subversive, scrunchie-wearing “ valley girl intelligentsia ” over a bouncy surf beat. And at the turn of the millennium, she pivoted to dance-punk with the trio Le Tigre, executing synchronized choreography while channeling Fred Flintstone (“Yabba-dabba-dabba-doo, man”) in a song with the sarcastic title “ Mediocrity Rules .”

Hanna’s new memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk , out May 14, applies that same caustic, introspective, politically astute, and often mischievously playful voice to the ups and downs of her own life story. “There've been a lot of situations where I felt like I could roll up in a ball and just cry and cry and cry,” she explains, over the phone from Southern California. “And I do cry. But then I start to find the funny in the tragic.” In the book, “I hope I struck a balance between being able to laugh at myself and be serious, because I didn't want to make light of stuff like I usually did.” In her first draft, “all the rape stuff was really funny.” But the final product, achieved only after an overdue stint in trauma therapy, contains moving yet incisive, generously frank passages about the sexual assaults she survived as a teen and young adult.

This is one aspect of her origin story that will likely be familiar to fans, who have over the years gleaned a sketchy timeline of her life, from difficult childhood to ’90s notoriety to a diagnosis of late-stage Lyme disease that sidelined her for years following Le Tigre’s dissolution in 2007. In the last decade, all three of Hanna’s major musical projects have made triumphant comebacks . Once she’s made the promotional rounds for Rebel Girl , the 55-year-old artist and activist will follow up last year’s Le Tigre tour with an international Bikini Kill jaunt this summer.

Candid and reflective, Rebel Girl tells the stories behind her best-known songs (“Suck my left one” was her older sister’s catchphrase) and reframes her most mythologized brushes with the mainstream—like that time she accidentally titled Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Hanna also writes about aspects of her life she’s kept mostly private in the past: her marriage to Adam Horovitz of Beastie Boys , a miscarriage, the adoption of a son.

Arduous as it was, the writing process turned out to be a voyage from pain to joy. “I wrote all the bad sh-t first,” Hanna recalls. “Then I had to be like, ‘I’ve got to temper this with some happiness.’” She stared at a blank page for a week before the good memories started flowing, “and it was miraculous. Once I unburied the trauma, look what I found: a f-cking rose garden underneath a grave.”

TIME: You’ve been a public figure for more than 30 years now. How long have you been thinking about writing a memoir?

Kathleen Hanna: I first started talking about it when I was maybe 40 with one of my best friends, [ Also a Poet author] Ada Calhoun . Then I got sick with Lyme disease, and I was like, “This is too big of an undertaking for me with the place that my health is at.” When I got better, I immediately was like, “I want to get back to that.” I was moving [from New York] to Pasadena to be closer to my mom, which was a big change. And I wanted to release the me who I used to be—to write it all down so I could move on. It was a long time coming. But I'm glad I waited 'til I was 50 to start, because I think I had a better perspective than I would have when I was 40.

Now that you’ve written the book, do you feel like you’ve entered a new phase of life?

I think once it's out, I'll feel more complete about that, but yeah, I do. I feel like I'm finally grown up—which is weird, that I didn't feel grown up till I was 55. But something about putting the word author after your name makes you feel like an adult all of a sudden. And I do feel like I achieved what I set out to do, which was to get on the happiness train. I really want to learn how to be happy. And it's way harder if you have PTSD and trauma and all that kind of business.

One of the things that came up for me, while writing, was that I started realizing all of this trauma that I had not dealt with. I just kept moving, I just kept making stuff—or I got sick. Keeping busy was my way of not looking at my own trauma. And I finally was like: “I jump every time my husband walks in the room. I'm constantly in a state of stress, and I need to figure this out.” I started getting serious trauma therapy, because I had to—because I would have to stop [writing] for months at a time. I would walk around with weird, crazy eyes, just staring into the distance. It was awful. I feel like I jumped in a life raft off the Titanic, and I just hit land.

One of the biggest themes in the book was this tension between the responsibility and obligation you felt, beginning when you were in your early 20s, as a highly visible representative of feminism and your personal needs as a human being. At this point, have you learned to strike a balance between those two aspects of yourself?

Definitely. If you’re an abuse survivor, you learn how to dissociate and check out of your life in order to survive. You turn your intuition off. I was great as a frontperson in a band, because I would shut down and take on what everybody else wanted me to take on and try to be who they wanted me to be. I was always present when I sang, but I wasn't always present for the rest of it. That allowed me to get through some very difficult touring, but it also kept me from taking care of myself. When you don't feel your body, you’re not really cognizant of everything going on; you can end up just people-pleasing, because it's the route of least resistance. I'm still working on being more present and enjoying the little moments of life that I neglected for a long time.

In the prologue to Rebel Girl , you write: “My war has never been with sexism, but with how sexism has warped me.” Can you explain the distinction you’re making there?

One of the things that has hurt me the most is when I'm trying to be generous and a man ends up abusing that generosity. When I was a teenager, an adult man who was really smart gave me a bunch of cool books, and we talked about them together. I thought, “Wow, finally an adult who sees how intelligent I am.” Then he hit on me, and then he started stalking me, and it felt like now I can't open myself up to that experience, because I'm just a f-ck doll . Then I started thinking every situation was going to be like that. These men teach you not to be kind, not to trust people or let your guard down—and then you're penalized for not being nice. 

The part of sexism that has wounded me the most is that my personality is warped by it, to not be able to open up to new experiences. I'm sick of being told to be thick-skinned and let stuff roll off my back. You know what? These f-cking a--holes should stop being sexist jerks. It's on them. But I don't have any control over that. And I don't sit around and think about sexist men all the time. Because they're not worth the space in my head. I just think about, how can I stay open to critique and to new experiences, despite the fact that I live in a sexist world?

Riot grrrl was not a term you chose to describe yourself, but you have consistently and conspicuously—in everything from song lyrics to the subtitle of this book—identified as a feminist. How has your relationship to that word evolved over the years?

My definition of it has evolved over the years—mainly thanks to younger people and older scholars, who have taught me the [blindspots] in my own life. I have never experienced racism, so I need to educate myself on, how has my white privilege shaped my life? In the beginning, while I paid lip service to being intersectional, I don't think I was putting it into practice. My feminism is way more expansive now. I feel like economic things are very tied to feminism, healthcare is very tied to feminism; I see it as connected to so many other issues. 

And I get scared about mainstream feminism saying things like “Believe all women.” Because rape [claims] have been used in North America, sometimes by white women, as a way to enact oppression on Black men and children. I don't want to have slogans that encourage that legacy to continue. We need to not victim-blame or tell people they're liars. But in certain situations, it’s important to get to the truth and not just throw out a believe all women blanket.

As you’ve expanded your understanding of social justice, did you ever worry that feminism, as a concept, had outlived its usefulness?

No. As long as women, especially women of color, are making so much less on the dollar than white men. As long as the domestic violence shelters are filling up. As long as abortion is not legal [in parts of the country] and women—disproportionately Black and brown women—are being jailed for having miscarriages. Thinking that feminism doesn't matter is not even a concept I entertain. But you can call it whatever you want. I'm not going to take somebody else's action in the world and define it as feminist. They can define it, and I will use their language.

You write candidly about your childhood, growing up in an unhappy home with a father you say “terrified” you. How did discovering art and music, as a kid, change your life?

I found singing very young—singing along with Jackson Five records or whatever we had in the house. That was a secret place I could go to, away from my dad's meanness. I played with Barbies 'til I was 14 years old, in the attic. I didn't really do the typical things with Barbie. I built her houses a lot. That was sort of my first art-making practice: saying I'm playing with Barbies, but I'm really building these weird Barbie apartment complexes. I was in the un-air-conditioned attic, in the summer in Maryland, being hot as hell, making something to get away from my dad. I had these magical experiences, because my home didn't feel safe. I ventured out or I hid in the attic and pulled the ladder up behind me, so nobody knew I was up there. And I created these imaginary worlds of my own. I think it served me as an artist.

There are parts of your life covered in Rebel Girl that you rarely discuss in interviews. Why did you decide to write about your relationships with some of the famous men who’ve played major roles in your life, from your husband to Kurt Cobain, who was your friend when you were both indie musicians in the Pacific Northwest?

Obviously, I'm a feminist artist. There's already a lot of people who are just going to talk about me in terms of my relationship to these famous male artists. So there's these sexist stereotypes that you have to contend with. But this is my book. And in my world, I want to write about the people who actually have affected me. The truth of the matter is: Kurt, Adam—because I'm married to him, but not so much as a musical collaborator—and Ian MacKaye from Fugazi and Minor Threat were people who played really big roles in my life. I don't want to diminish that.

Many fans who read the book will find out, for the first time, that you have a son, Julius Horovitz. Did you make a conscious decision to keep him out of the public eye, and has it been difficult to maintain that privacy?

We're not followed around by paparazzi. There was a picture that got taken of him and we were like, “That's Adam's brother's kid.” It's for his safety and wellbeing. Because I still have crazy men who want to murder me. So I want to be safe with his life, and also I don't want him to be [overshadowed] by who his dad is or things that I've done. It’s very easy to keep it close to the vest because we have a lot of lovely, supportive friends who don't take pictures of us and put it on Instagram, unless they ask. We're not in a very Hollywood universe.

From anti-trans legislation to the end of Roe to the attack on antiracist education , the past several years have been one of the hardest periods for women, LGBTQ people, and people of color in the U.S. in decades. Amid so much oppression, have you managed to hang on to some optimism about the future?

I am optimistic. Moments that people in community with each other create—where people see themselves reflected and have places to go where they're seen and heard, and where we can enjoy the beauty of stuff each other creates—form the basis for the society we're going to create. Artists don't make legislation happen, and it's corny to say you have to vote, but you gotta vote. I don't necessarily like the choices I have in terms of my health care or the President, but I'm gonna vote anyway, because people fought and died for my ability to vote. And I would much rather see a maniac like Trump not get in power again. 

I hate the fact that young people have everything [older generations have done wrong dumped on them to fix]: “You guys got to change the world because we f-cked it up.” But I do feel like intergenerational working-togetherness could change the future. I get educated every day by somebody younger than me, whether it's on a TikTok video or in person, and that gives me a lot of hope. My kid crying at an Olivia Rodrigo show is pretty beautiful.

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Luis Miranda Jr. reflects on giving, the arts and his son Lin-Manuel in the new memoir ‘Relentless’

FILE - Luis A. Miranda Jr. poses for a portrait during the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2023, in Park City, Utah. Miranda has dedicated his life to expanding opportunity and representation for Latinos in the United States. He recounts his decades of work as a community organizer, political strategist and philanthropist in a new memoir, “Relentless: My Story of the Latino Spirit that Is Transforming America.” (Photo by Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP, File)

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Luis A. Miranda Jr. was just 19 years old when he arrived in New York City from a small town in Puerto Rico, a broke doctoral student badly needing a job.

It was 1974 — decades before “Hamilton,” the Tony Award-winning musical created by his son Lin-Manuel, became a sensation and brought his family international recognition and unexpected fortune — when a nonprofit focused on Puerto Rican youth hired Miranda as a researcher in its office a few blocks from the Empire State Building.

“You can imagine the symbolism,” Miranda told the Associated Press. “A job with the Empire State Building in the background? I felt like Debbie Reynolds in ‘The Unsinkable Molly Brown’.”

Miranda planned to complete his doctorate in clinical psychology and return to Puerto Rico. He was an ardent independentista, committed to helping lift his country from the shadow of United States colonialism.

But the job opened his eyes to the different challenges facing the Puerto Rican diaspora. They lived in substandard housing. Their children lacked access to a good education. They, like other Latino groups, dealt with inequality and lack of representation. These became the issues he cared about most.

“The Empire State Building was the symbol of the great city,” Miranda said. “But El Barrio, the South Bronx, our communities, were the places that I wanted to spend my energy supporting.”

Miranda didn’t finish his doctorate. Instead, he threw himself into a career of community activism, political organizing and philanthropic giving — a transformation he recounts in his new memoir, “Relentless: My Story of the Latino Spirit that Is Transforming America,” released on May 7.

While he spent most of his career in politics, Miranda spoke to The Associated Press about how he and his family have also dedicated themselves to lifting up Latino communities through giving. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Your parents were very involved in their community. How did their example influence your own dedication to service?

A: We lived in a small town, Vega Alta. It was literally six streets. We didn’t have money. We couldn’t do what philanthropy does in the United States. But we had human capital, and we used our human capital to help others.

Every Thursday, my dad went to a meeting of the Rotary Club. They talked about the good deeds that they were going to do for the town. We were always involved in the Red Cross, and whenever there was a hurricane or something that hit the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, my dad was a leader in making sure that we were sending stuff.

What I have learned as I got a little more money and I could be philanthropic, is that you also have to give human capital. Being involved in the organization is much more work, but it feels different than when you just give money. I learned that from my parents.

Q: What guides your family in deciding how to share your resources?

A: At the Miranda Family Fund, we always try to be the first one giving money. Money brings money, so we want to make sure that we go in and we help sell the story.

We’re working with the People’s Theater Project on a dream of having the first off-Broadway theater in Washington Heights. You have no idea how many people said to me, “It’s really a tall order, we don’t have the audience.” It becomes a chicken and egg situation, because if you don’t have a place, how do you get an audience?

So we put the first $1 million in. Then, I went to New York-Presbyterian and said, “You need to match us, because you are the employer of this community.” Then all of a sudden every foundation is coming in, and we’re raising $20 million to create a real theater.

Q: Why have the arts been such a priority for your family’s giving?

A: The arts changed our lives. We believe it not only feeds your heart and soul, but is a door to opportunity.

If my son had not created “Hamilton,” and if my wife and I had not taken the leap to mortgage our house to invest in “Hamilton,” the Mirandas would have still been great people using a lot of their human capital to help. But the arts changed our fortunes.

So the arts are a way to prosperity, but to get there, you need to get opportunities. And in order to get opportunities, someone has to invest. We invest in organizations that are in the arts and are opening doors, and in people who are in the arts, have talent and want a chance.

Q: Helping Puerto Rico recover from the devastation of Hurricane Maria must have felt like a monumental task. How did you approach it?

A: We did what we knew best through the Hispanic Federation, which was to use a network of nonprofits to help. The nonprofit sector in Puerto Rico already existed, with real leaders, with vision, but was very weak. So we said, “Okay, We know how to strengthen existing organizations, and we know how to push forward their development.”

We created the Flamboyan Arts Fund, again, not by ourselves. A donor reached out to us, he already had a foundation in Puerto Rico. So we didn’t spend a penny on creating new systems. There were organizations in Puerto Rico that were part of the art ecosystem and needed to be developed. So we invested there. We brought “Hamilton” to Puerto Rico and raised $15 million for the Flamboyan Arts Fund.

Q: You write about how everyday people were also so key in mobilizing help for Puerto Rico.

A: It was the most difficult but most rewarding chapter to write. I remember going to the Hispanic Federation one day. José Calderón, the president, opened a safe and showed me 500 letters they had received that day with donations. They had to get volunteers just to help open the envelopes.

Kids would send a $10 Hamilton bill in honor of Lin-Manuel. Other people sent sizable checks. Even the Facebook group “Fans of Lin-Manuel” mobilized themselves like there was no tomorrow.

It was normal people from all over. Those who were invested emotionally, like the diaspora was, and those who were connected, sometimes peripherally, because they loved “Hamilton” and they loved Lin-Manuel, or just because they saw real need and just came to the rescue.

Q: Any final thoughts on giving?

A: You have to give, and you have to give until it hurts. When our kids were growing up, if we gave $250, we were hurting. We were not going to go hungry, but if Lucecita or Lin-Manuel needed some shoes or new this or new that, it was not happening because we gave $250 to an organization in the neighborhood.

I hope that my kids have learned that legacy and that it becomes a quest in their lives, and in how they teach their kids to be giving people who worry about their neighbors. That’s what I hope the future generations of Mirandas will continue to do.

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy .

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Kathleen Hanna Is a Riot

The bikini kill singer mined decades of trauma and joy to write her new memoir. she’s grateful she made it to the other side..

Like the feminist art she’s made for over 30 years — the incendiary punk anthems and DIY ballads, the electronic rock and blazing fanzines — Kathleen Hanna’s memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life As a Feminist Punk , is by turns brutal and beautiful.

Hanna chronicles her creative genesis in the Olympia, Washington, underground alongside her bandmates in Bikini Kill, the scorched, epochal band that incited the ’90s punk-feminist movement known as riot grrrl, and later in Le Tigre, which brought that agenda to the dance floor. Evoking the very texture of pre-internet DIY — passing out lyric sheets at shows, mailing postcard flyers — Hanna writes through the miracle of humor, offering blunt cultural critique and staring trauma in the eye as she unflinchingly details the violence her “dream-killer of a dad” inflicted upon her early family life in Maryland. Her prose cuts and shimmers, particularly when she’s describing the music she made from the inside out. Singing “has never stopped being the tiny tornado I most want to be in,” she writes. As a child, it “was like figuring out I could make a rainbow appear on the wall just by staring at it.”

Today Hanna’s cultural impact is overwhelming. Tracing the influence of Bikini Kill’s third-wave countercultural art could begin with their Oly peers, including Nirvana — Hanna famously (drunkenly) scribbled “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” on his bedroom wall with a Sharpie marker, titling the world-dominating song — and later Sleater-Kinney, but it continues across genres, mediums, generations.

A couple of nights before our first of two interviews, Bikini Kill’s signature girl-love anthem, “ Rebel Girl ,” filled Madison Square Garden as part of Olivia Rodrigo’s pre-show playlist: Its joyride hooks boomed right as the stage’s backdrop lit “GUTS” across the screen, and thousands of teen-girl screams filled the arena with Hanna’s own. When I mentioned I took a video of the moment, Hanna asked me to send it over so she could show her 11-year-old son: “He’ll be like, ‘You’re still not cool.’” Musing on the process and pain of writing her revelatory memoir, Hanna is truly a riot, evidenced on almost every page of Rebel Girl and across the four hours she spent discussing the book from her home in Los Angeles.

In the book you write that, during Bikini Kill’s first incarnation, you only did two interviews with the press. I knew about what has been historicized as the riot grrrl media blackout — a collective effort to decline mainstream-media queries — but I was still a bit shocked to realize it was only two. What do you remember about those interviews? A lot, actually. One was with L.A. Weekly , and it was about riot grrrl. A friend of a friend asked me. It was fine. The writer was really fun to talk to. But I do remember specifically lying about how huge riot grrrl was and acting like it was way bigger than 15 girls in D.C. I was like, I’m gonna lie and see what happens. So I just said, “Yeah, there are chapters everywhere.” The hope was that people would look for it and then when they didn’t find it, start their own. I know that in a lot of cases, that happened, and in a lot of cases people looked for it and gave up. [ Laughs ]

The second one was a doozy. It was either for NME or Melody Maker when we were going to tour with Huggy Bear in the U.K. It was put to us like, “You need to do this interview or we can’t really afford plane tickets. This’ll get people to the shows.” I didn’t want to do it because by then the way people were writing about us was pretty horrible . Anyway, it was at a restaurant two doors down from the club I was stripping at. It was a guy and right at the beginning, he asked, “How can you call yourself a feminist and be a stripper?” And questions about sexual assault that were really inappropriate. Like, “Have you been sexually assaulted? Can you tell me in detail?” It was every artists’ horror story of the worst questions, and they were all directed at me. I remember going to the bathroom and sitting in there like, I hope they’re finishing this ’cause I’m not coming out until it’s done.

That’s unconscionable. How do you feel about the decision not to talk to the press in retrospect? The thing that’s strange for me is it’s been constantly written about as if it was this big conscious decision for Bikini Kill and for riot grrrl. That’s not how I remember it. For me, it was a mental-health protective thing. It was like, I literally cannot mentally keep going through this . When it started getting talked about in riot grrrl meetings — “we’re being misrepresented” — I was just like, “Well, then just let’s not answer ’em back.” I just threw it out as an idea. I didn’t make a proclamation. I wasn’t like Benjamin Franklin rolling out a tablet on my mountain and saying, “From henceforth no one in riot grrrl will …” Some people went with it and some people didn’t. I didn’t really give a shit what people did. I mean, if I saw articles that were total misinformation, it was sad, but I just knew that in the larger scheme of things, it wasn’t really that important. I just felt like the media is all bullshit anyway. A lot of times when people write about you, they’re really writing about themselves. I just take it with a grain of salt. I’ve read so many things about myself or people I know that are completely false.

When did you decide to write the book and what was your process of recovering memories like? I started five or six years ago. I had to do it really slowly because it was super painful and awful, and I started going to therapy twice a week because of it. I got diagnosed with C-PTSD while I was working on it. So I took time off. I was figuring out how to process this mental diagnosis. I would get bummed out like, I don’t wanna finish it. I just wanna give my advance back. But then I’d remember how one of the things that has really helped me out is when other people have shared their stories. Hayley Williams from Paramore talked about being sexually harassed on the Warped Tour. It meant a lot to me that she spoke out because I’ve had similar situations, and I’m much older than her, but I felt validated by that. The idea that a younger person in a band could read some of the stories and feel validated was really important to me. And so that kind of kept me going.

The point of writing the book was partially that I wanna let a lot of this trauma stuff go. And I don’t really wanna talk about riot grrrl anymore, honestly. I’m bored of that conversation and I don’t want it to be the only thing I’m known for. I can talk about Bikini Kill every day of my life, but I wanted to tell those stories that I felt like telling, then be able to move on. There is something very practical about being like, I’m gonna tell this one fucking time. [ Laughs ] So I did it, and I went through all of the physical and emotional stress responses because of it, and I made it out the other side. It was a huge therapeutic cleanse for me.

Were you referring back to diaries or interviewing other people? I didn’t use journals at all. In the very beginning, I tried. I pulled out all my journals, boxes and boxes, and brought them to my office. I opened them up and it was mainly quotations from books, me interrogating myself about privilege, drawings of outfits, and stuff about people I had huge crushes on that I was sure I was gonna throw myself off a mountain if I didn’t make out with them. It was kind of hilarious, but none of it was really helpful, and it was also massively embarrassing. I am planning a large bonfire for my journals at some point.

A lot of stuff came back to me as I was writing. There were things that were these really visceral memories, and part of it was super joyous. I got out all the vomit-y, bad trauma shit in early drafts, and then I was like, I need to balance this with some joy. I had to realize how much the trauma had blacked out the joy.

The book is this miraculous balance of humor and trauma. What were some precedents for you in striking that balance? Almost every comedian does that: “Tragedy plus time equals comedy.” I see it everywhere. I love the comedian Hari Kondabolu. He takes these racist situations he’s been in and turns them into hilarious stories that are also painful and tragic and make you really mad. I’m a big fan of lemons to lemonade.

My mom is a very funny person, and she taught me to use humor as a way to survive. She has a wicked fucking sense of humor, and that really made her a person. If you can make people laugh, you’re an active agent in your own life. We always had weird private jokes with each other. That was most of our communication. The outside world may have seen my mom as: She’s a woman, she’s a nurse, she’s middle class. But I saw her as this larger-than-life hilarious-ass person. Having a woman like that in my life made me feel like I could be larger than life.

When I think about your work through the decades, I always think about language — being galvanized early on by text artists like Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer, moving into spoken-word performance, and how all of that informed your lyrics. In the section about Le Tigre in the book, you write about how language also communicates political context, and this kind of misogynist dismissal of “explaining” songs onstage: “‘Real’ bands let music speak for itself, but we introduced all our songs with language.” What was language doing for you as you were coming into being as a feminist artist? I think it comes from very early experiences with my family. I was always treated like I was too much. When I would try to bring something up that felt very important, I would be dismissed as being a drama queen. It led me to feel like language was useless and nobody understood anything I said. That’s lasted my whole life. When I used to give lectures years ago, I was constantly finding myself saying, “Do you understand me?” to the audience. It was obvious what I was saying. I had pictures behind me and I was being very clear. But I always have this fear of being misunderstood. And I think that really led me to wanting to write lyrics that kind of shot through stuff and just said the fuckin’ thing.

Girls in the scene didn’t even feel like they had a right to be there and I wanted to address that and be like, “Look, this is happening.” That’s where Girls to the Front came from. I just wanted to, in a quick, interesting way, address the fact that at that time when we started playing shows, typically there were like four women there and they were all in the back. That was then, now is different. But to just cut through the bullshit and say something like Girls to the Front, that’s using language to actually disrupt a situation that is naturalized in the room.

Later, when I did a solo record and then with Le Tigre, I was getting frustrated with the limitations of language because I saw that so many things we did got turned into a one-liner about empowerment. When you start to see all these people’s work get put together with a bumper sticker that says “Girls kick ass,” you’re like, no, there’s nuance and variation and all these bands are different. You can’t write about them like they’re the same just because they happen to care about the state of the world. I started to feel like I’d been trying so hard to be understood that I forgot about how beautiful language can be when it’s kind of abstract and not necessarily linear.

To me this was something really important that ran through the book — I was trying to talk about the different ways you can use language and that there are so many different opportunities to do that. My personal experiences with language are very heavy to me. My relationship with language is as important as my relationship with my husband.

What was the first time you wrote a lyric that you felt like really shot through? A lot of them felt that way to me at the time. We were operating within a scene that wasn’t necessarily super welcoming to feminist content. Boys in the scene treated any lyric I wrote as if it was an arrow directed at them. When actually it had nothing to fuckin’ do with them at all. But you know, if the shoe fits. But I wasn’t really thinking about men that much at all when I was writing. I was writing for other women.

“Double Dare Ya” definitely felt like a breakthrough. I wrote this song called “Daddy’s Little Girl” — “Daddy’s little girl doesn’t wanna be his whore no more” — and it felt like a really outta-control thing to sing that live. It felt super cringe, but it also felt really powerful.

What do you remember about writing “ Feels Blind ”? “Feels Blind” is a poem I wrote when I was 16 or 17 that I turned into a song. I wrote that after this adult man hit on me when I was like 16. He was a scientist and a friend of an adult in my life. I’d been hanging out with him, and he read all these smarty-pants books and I was reading like, Sufferings of Young Werther , and I thought I was pretty fuckin’ cool and smart. So he was telling me books that I should read and I was reading them and discussing them with him. We were drinking, which should have been a red flag. Then he hit on me. I was lucky he didn’t pursue it when I said no, but I felt really demoralized and sad. I thought he really liked me as an intellectual. I was like, Oh, he just wants to get in my pants, I’m just a body. I was super drunk and I stayed up and wrote that in my notebook. I wrote poetry all the time since I was really young. It was just the first verse of the song that came from that poem.

I love the way you write about your relationship with Tobi Vail, describing the beginning of Bikini Kill and being in Tobi’s apartment, reading bell hooks and Angela Davis together, and loving independent record labels but hating capitalism. Were you having any mutual intellectual epiphanies at that moment in time? One of the big epiphanies was the different ways that our minds worked. I was always thinking more psychologically, like, How does the world affect our personal psychology? How does our personal psychology then affect the world? And she had a way smarter class perspective than I did. I always turned around to look back out, but it was a different way of processing the world. I was universalizing more, writing from this place of, “Hey, girlfriend!” or “This is for all girls!” And she always wrote from this specific viewpoint of like: “Take out a piece of paper, put your name up in the corner.” I felt like a lot of her songs were more impactful to me because I could hear the person in it.

The book includes so many incredible details about Bikini Kill and Nirvana’s friendship. Bikini Kill made its first demo tape on discarded Bleach cassettes that Kurt gave you; the photo on the cover of Bleach was taken during a show at your gallery, Reko Muse; Tobi was once asked to be the drummer of Nirvana. You write about your and Kurt’s joint mission as “feminist vigilantes” defacing a “fake abortion clinic.” How did your bands mutually influence each other? I just know I loved being in the audience of their shows. It was addictive. If I heard they were playing, I wanted to be there. I can only speak for myself, but I was influenced by them in terms of wanting to play good shows live. I wanted to be a band that when we played a party, everybody came together and got really sweaty and had a great time.

Early in Bikini Kill, we were very conscious of not wanting to be a footnote in any male story. But we were in the scene at the same time. Kurt dated Tobi. Everybody would put together bands and play at parties — I think Billy and Tobi and Kurt were in a band. To me the important thing is you can have friends in bands who play really different music than you, and you still respect each other.

I loved learning more about your 1998 solo album, released as Julie Ruin. My favorite from that record is “VGI” — “Valley Girl Intelligentsia” — where you sing “I’m a masterpiece / I’m a philosopher / I wear a scrunchie.” The scrunchie-clad philosopher is an important addition to the lexicon of girl genius. What informed that song? In the ’90s, there was this whole “don’t sell out” thing. Even just playing a show with the Go-Gos that was sponsored by Budweiser was considered an absolutely horrible thing for Bikini Kill to do. Everything I did as a person was massively scrutinized to such a bananas extent that it felt impossible to do anything anymore within that band. When I started writing on my own, I let go and did whatever the fuck I wanted. I was like, Man, I’m in my twenties , and ostensibly me and my friends started a fucking movement. Fuck all you fuckers. [ Laughs ] So I was doing something that felt absolutely off-limits, which was writing, “I’m great.” That record for me was sort of like if you’re a writer and you learn how to type as fast as your thoughts. I was learning to make music fast enough to keep up with my brain so I could get my ideas out.

Whenever I did a radio interview, someone would call up and make fun of my voice for being a Valley Girl. People made fun of my voice in articles. Women academics would be like, “Oh my God, you read?” when they would find out that I actually read books, just ’cause I have this accent and I do the upswing at the end of a question. I have a Maryland accent that’s also influenced by the Valley Girl Handbook ’cause we wanted to sound rich and we thought rich girls sounded like that. [ Laughs ] That does not mean I’m stupid.

I started thinking, What does it mean that young women who have certain kinds of accents are completely diminished as idiots? There’s all different kinds of people who are diminished because of their accents. It was frustrating. To speak back to that felt super powerful. And it’s stealing from Tobi again — she made up these words like “hypocobrats,” ’cause everybody called us hypocrites, and it was like, “No, we’re actually intellectual punk-rockers.”

You describe the writing of your song “Rebel Girl” — of course I knew Joan Jett produced the single version of the song, but you note that you also had Joan in mind when you were actually writing it. How did Joan influence the song itself? I didn’t formally know her yet. It was more the fact that this woman who I revered so much had taken the time to pick up the phone and call a not-very-well-known punk band and be supportive. She could have just not done that; she was pretty busy. It made me feel like, Oh, I am a part of something bigger. It was like, “Hey kids, you’re on the right track.” Joan lived in Rockville, Maryland, which was not very far from where I lived as a kid — maybe it’s that we both come from Maryland, but from the very first time I talked to her, I knew we were gonna be friends. She also totally reminds me of my older sister. For all the issues I may have with my sister, she’s definitely a fighter. Joan is the loveliest person in the world, but she doesn’t take fuckin’ shit.

About the writing of “Rebel Girl,” you wrote, “I realized this song was already written. I just had to reach up and grab the lyrics.” Is there a songwriting lesson in that?  I felt like the community spirit of things that were happening at the time, like the women in the scene who were taking back space, who were starting bands that were inspiring me, my friends who were inspiring me, people who were showing up outta nowhere and helping me when I needed help, like Joan — these women who showed up at the right time to make me feel like, you can’t give up . Those moments and those people were in the room at that moment and wrote the song. I was a vessel for it. That was one of the only times I wrote a song where I was like, I like this , right away. The songwriting lesson is I stepped out of the way of the song. I didn’t overthink it. I let myself open my mouth and see what happened. I trusted my band not to laugh at me.

What’s another song you liked immediately after writing it? I really liked “Hot Topic.” I remember writing that in a basement on Mott Street in New York. We had gotten the instrumentation together and the drumbeat. I remember as I was hitting on the backup vocal part being like, I love what that sounds like. I love the way the verse cuts through on top of it. This is the right direction.

What bands do you find interesting today? What have you been reading that inspires you? I like Lambrini Girls. I like Gustaf. I listen to Lana Del Rey a lot. I think she represents a new way of absorbing information. It’s almost like a really smart person trying to deal with a constant influx of stuff and then turning them into these beautiful dramatic scenes. Her songs are almost like dioramas that have a lot of drapery in them.

I wanna see Paramore live so bad. I was watching tons of videos of Paramore on tour. I went down this Paramore wormhole. She’s such a magnetic performer and her singing is just great. I don’t know how she keeps her voice in shape. I really wanna chitchat with her about that someday.

I’ve been reading mostly stuff by people I’m gonna be doing the book tour with as moderators, like Brontez Purnell’s book 10 Bridges I Burnt . I actually read this right as I was turning in the final draft of my book, and it totally saved my life. There’s this final poem in it at the back and it became like my mantra. It says “Eulogy: the encyclopedia / of my scandals / and failures / will always be / a more substantial read / than the pamphlet of your success / I bet money, bitch / on who will ring immortal / I will echo with reverb.” I was feeling like, What if I TMI’d in the book? What’s gonna happen? People are gonna kill me. My family’s gonna hate me. And then I would just read that every day, and I was like, What a moment that I got his book. I’m also inspired by that compilation book Black Punk Now , and I’ve been rereading Your Art Will Save Your Life , by Beth Pickens.

Do you hear any of your songs differently after excavating all of these memories? Playing them live, definitely. “ For Tammy Rae ” now brings me back to being on the bus going from my stripping job to my restaurant job. I was trying to avoid this annoying Christian lady and in avoiding her, I started writing in my journal and I wrote this kind of song. I smile during “Double Dare Ya” remembering being in my white jacked-up truck. I didn’t even remember that until I started writing the book, and I was like, Oh yeah, that’s how that song was written . That was kind of my first songwriting practice: I would listen to a bunch of Nirvana, then I would put in the tape of our practice that had like, the instrumental on it, and I would start singing to it and goofing around with it, and ’cause it was a truck, it had that small cab. The way my voice came back to me sounded really nice. So it gave me a lot of confidence.

When you’re in Santiago onstage, or in Lima, Peru, and everyone’s singing the lyrics with you, and you’re like, I wrote that when I was like 22 in my fuckin’ truck on my way to practice — and how amazing is it now that I’m standing in front of thousands of people so far away from home and they all know the words? How the fuck did that happen? I definitely never imagined I’d be 55 years old standing there singing it and feeling a new revitalized energy toward it. I’m just so much more appreciative and grateful that I’m able to be onstage. To hear all these kids screaming about how they know they have rights — it feels radical in a whole different way.

You wrote these songs when you were in your early 20s, which is a real testament to how the things that happen to us when we’re young matter and shape us and take on new resonances. You should listen to a Blink-182 record sometime — because those guys were very impacted by girls who didn’t return their affections in high school and they will never get over it. We’re touring at the same time as them, and whenever people ask, “Do you still feel the songs?” I am always like, “Ask them,” because I don’t know how they can sing about being rejected for a date by a girl in high school or — I don’t know what their songs are about, actually, but I think a common theme is, “Nobody likes me and I’m the guy that people don’t like,” “I’m immature and dumb.” Our songs got more relevant, but how do you get up and sing a Blink-182 song when you’re like 50, 60 years old?

Toward the end of the ’90s, you came to realize that, rather than an activist, you were “a musician who worked on the cultural front.” What does it mean to you now to be a musician on the cultural front? Everybody was always saying, “She’s an activist. She’s not a musician.” Part of it makes sense because when I first started playing music and would get interviewed in fanzines, people would ask me my influences. I would say “the 14 women who were murdered by Marc Lépine at the technical school in Montreal.” That was something recent that had happened: A man walked into a college and separated the men from the women and then systematically murdered 14 women. In almost every retelling of the story, this was not seen as domestic terrorism against women or a crime against women. It was just seen as “He’s a crazy guy.”

That story influenced me because of the women who lost their lives who had the right to be wherever they fucking wanted to be. The fact that they were killed in the process of gaining an education particularly struck me. So when I was asked about my influences, I thought it was important to say: Everyone’s not just influenced by bands. I’m influenced by whether I ate today or not. I’m influenced by the Anita Hill hearing. So I can see why people got the perception that I was an activist and not a musician. For a long time, I thought of myself as a performance artist probably more than a musician or an activist.

But at a certain point I was like, I’m a musician on the cultural front. I’m not actually an activist who is leading the way to bills being passed. But I’ve been told by countless people that our music allowed them to find the thing they really wanna do and are good at. And they’re like, “I saw myself in what you made and that gave me the courage to continue.” Or, “You guys created this soil for my thing to grow in.” I can be happy with helping create that soil that people can grow in.

When you met Kathy Acker , she asked you why you write, and you said, “Because no one’s listened to me my whole life and I really wanna be heard.” When was the last time you felt like you were really heard? Do you know Fabi Reyna? She did She Shreds and she’s a musician, she’s gonna interview me in Portland about the book. We don’t really know each other so we did a pre-interview, get-to-know-each-other kind of thing. I felt very seen and heard by her. She asked, “What happens when you’re victimized in some way, but you learn something from it?” No one who is victimized in any way — or deals with oppression in the myriad of ways people deal with oppression — asked for it. But there’s shame around the fact that you may get something out of being victimized.

There’s something lucky about looking out in the landscape of underground music and being like, “Hey, not a lot of people are singing about these particular topics, there’s such an open field.” It’s like having 20 blank canvases prepared for you. There was so much that hadn’t been written about yet, in the scene I was in, and there’s something lucky in that positionality. I was like, Well, someone has to write about this. I’ve never had to search for material. I’ve never been bored. Life has thrown too much at me to ever get bored or complacent. I have more empathy for other people, and I have a real commitment to dealing with my trauma so I don’t put it off on other people.

There’s a certain relief when your purpose feels clear. Yeah, like thank God I felt silenced for 17 years of my life because once I opened my mouth, I just couldn’t stop.

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Guest Essay

It’s Time to End the Quiet Cruelty of Property Taxes

By Andrew W. Kahrl

Dr. Kahrl is a professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia and the author of “The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America.”

Property taxes, the lifeblood of local governments and school districts, are among the most powerful and stealthy engines of racism and wealth inequality our nation has ever produced. And while the Biden administration has offered many solutions for making the tax code fairer, it has yet to effectively tackle a problem that has resulted not only in the extraordinary overtaxation of Black and Latino homeowners but also in the worsening of disparities between wealthy and poorer communities. Fixing these problems requires nothing short of a fundamental re-examination of how taxes are distributed.

In theory, the property tax would seem to be an eminently fair one: The higher the value of your property, the more you pay. The problem with this system is that the tax is administered by local officials who enjoy a remarkable degree of autonomy and that tax rates are typically based on the collective wealth of a given community. This results in wealthy communities enjoying lower effective tax rates while generating more tax revenues; at the same time, poorer ones are forced to tax property at higher effective rates while generating less in return. As such, property assessments have been manipulated throughout our nation’s history to ensure that valuable property is taxed the least relative to its worth and that the wealthiest places will always have more resources than poorer ones.

Black people have paid the heaviest cost. Since they began acquiring property after emancipation, African Americans have been overtaxed by local governments. By the early 1900s, an acre of Black-owned land was valued, for tax purposes, higher than an acre of white-owned land in most of Virginia’s counties, according to my calculations, despite being worth about half as much. And for all the taxes Black people paid, they got little to nothing in return. Where Black neighborhoods began, paved streets, sidewalks and water and sewer lines often ended. Black taxpayers helped to pay for the better-resourced schools white children attended. Even as white supremacists treated “colored” schools as another of the white man’s burdens, the truth was that throughout the Jim Crow era, Black taxpayers subsidized white education.

Freedom from these kleptocratic regimes drove millions of African Americans to move to Northern and Midwestern states in the Great Migration from 1915 to 1970, but they were unable to escape racist assessments, which encompassed both the undervaluation of their property for sales purposes and the overvaluation of their property for taxation purposes. During those years, the nation’s real estate industry made white-owned property in white neighborhoods worth more because it was white. Since local tax revenue was tied to local real estate markets, newly formed suburbs had a fiscal incentive to exclude Black people, and cities had even more reason to keep Black people confined to urban ghettos.

As the postwar metropolis became a patchwork of local governments, each with its own tax base, the fiscal rationale for segregation intensified. Cities were fiscally incentivized to cater to the interests of white homeowners and provide better services for white neighborhoods, especially as middle-class white people began streaming into the suburbs, taking their tax dollars with them.

One way to cater to wealthy and white homeowners’ interests is to intentionally conduct property assessments less often. The city of Boston did not conduct a citywide property reassessment between 1946 and 1977. Over that time, the values of properties in Black neighborhoods increased slowly when compared with the values in white neighborhoods or even fell, which led to property owners’ paying relatively more in taxes than their homes were worth. At the same time, owners of properties in white neighborhoods got an increasingly good tax deal as their neighborhoods increased in value.

As was the case in other American cities, Boston’s decision most likely derived from the fear that any updates would hasten the exodus of white homeowners and businesses to the suburbs. By the 1960s, assessments on residential properties in Boston’s poor neighborhoods were up to one and a half times as great as their actual values, while assessments in the city’s more affluent neighborhoods were, on average, 40 percent of market value.

Jersey City, N.J., did not conduct a citywide real estate reassessment between 1988 and 2018 as part of a larger strategy for promoting high-end real estate development. During that time, real estate prices along the city’s waterfront soared but their owners’ tax bills remained relatively steady. By 2015, a home in one of the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods worth $175,000 received the same tax bill as a home in the city’s downtown worth $530,000.

These are hardly exceptions. Numerous studies conducted during those years found that assessments in predominantly Black neighborhoods of U.S. cities were grossly higher relative to value than those in white areas.

These problems persist. A recent report by the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy found that property assessments were regressive (meaning lower-valued properties were assessed higher relative to value than higher-valued ones) in 97.7 percent of U.S. counties. Black-owned homes and properties in Black neighborhoods continue to be devalued on the open market, making this regressive tax, in effect, a racist tax.

The overtaxation of Black homes and neighborhoods is also a symptom of a much larger problem in America’s federated fiscal structure. By design, this system produces winners and losers: localities with ample resources to provide the goods and services that we as a nation have entrusted to local governments and others that struggle to keep the lights on, the streets paved, the schools open and drinking water safe . Worse yet, it compels any fiscally disadvantaged locality seeking to improve its fortunes to do so by showering businesses and corporations with tax breaks and subsidies while cutting services and shifting tax burdens onto the poor and disadvantaged. A local tax on local real estate places Black people and cities with large Black populations at a permanent disadvantage. More than that, it gives middle-class white people strong incentives to preserve their relative advantages, fueling the zero-sum politics that keep Americans divided, accelerates the upward redistribution of wealth and impoverishes us all.

There are technical solutions. One, which requires local governments to adopt more accurate assessment models and regularly update assessment rolls, can help make property taxes fairer. But none of the proposed reforms being discussed can be applied nationally because local tax policies are the prerogative of the states and, often, local governments themselves. Given the variety and complexity of state and local property tax laws and procedures and how much local governments continue to rely on tax reductions and tax shifting to attract and retain certain people and businesses, we cannot expect them to fix these problems on their own.

The best way to make local property taxes fairer and more equitable is to make them less important. The federal government can do this by reinvesting in our cities, counties and school districts through a federal fiscal equity program, like those found in other advanced federated nations. Canada, Germany and Australia, among others, direct federal funds to lower units of government with lower capacities to raise revenue.

And what better way to pay for the program than to tap our wealthiest, who have benefited from our unjust taxation scheme for so long? President Biden is calling for a 25 percent tax on the incomes and annual increases in the values of the holdings of people claiming more than $100 million in assets, but we could accomplish far more by enacting a wealth tax on the 1 percent. Even a modest 4 percent wealth tax on people whose total assets exceed $50 million could generate upward of $400 billion in additional annual revenue, which should be more than enough to ensure that the needs of every city, county and public school system in America are met. By ensuring that localities have the resources they need, we can counteract the unequal outcomes and rank injustices that our current system generates.

Andrew W. Kahrl is a professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia and the author of “ The Black Tax : 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America.”

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