Stage Left: Enter the Academic
Memoir Scholarship and Memoir Writing
Memoir by the Numbers
This coming week, starting Friday, is the Atlanta Writers Conference. I will be attending with my newly slim-downed memoir. We have hit the gym, taken in less calories, hit that treadmill, and trimmed the fat considerably.
On Dec. 4, 2021, I called my memoir done. It was 674 pages/203,000 words long.
We went on a diet.
On Jan. 14, 2022, I completed the cuts. It was 553 pages/168,000 words long. I sent it to some readers. But it was still too much.
At this date, my memoir is now 370 pages/109,400 words long. My goal is to have it at 98,000 by the end of the week.
My memoir is better for the cuts. It must be in the ballpark to attract the interest of an agent or editor. Will this be enough? Stay tuned for the answer next week.
Books About Memoir Writing
With my focus on editing and tidying up all the loose ends before the conference, I’m taking it easy this week. I wanted to share with you the books that helped me write my memoir.
When I shifted gears from writing about my brother to writing memoir, I took a deep dive into just what memoir is. I had never written a memoir before, though I was writing many personal essays on Medium at that time. Certainly, I didn’t envision something of the scope which I have attained.
I was an academic for 34 years. So I turned to books about writing in general and writing memoir in particular for help. Here’s a list of some of the works I studied in detail.
Sue Willam Silverman, Fearless Confessions
Thomas Larson, The Memoir and the Memoirist
William Zinsser, Writing About Your Life
edited by William Zinsser, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir
Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones
Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir
Each of these books offered me golden nuggets that I mined for writing my memoir. I could dip in in places and savor, or, as I did with most of them, read them voraciously from cover to cover and go back to the more salient points after I was done. In the future, I will discuss each of these books.
I also read (re-read in some cases) some basic writing books.
William Zinsser, On Writing Well
John McPhee, Draft No. 4
Anne Lamott, bird by bird
Colum McCann, Letters to a Young Writer
Stephen King, On Writing
I’m always amazed at how well the best writers on writing illustrate their points by doing what they say. Zinsser and McPhee are master storytellers and writers at the same time as they are chief among writing teachers. I owe a great debt to them both.
At that same time, and to be discussed in another post, I read memoir after memoir.
There are 4 books I looked at almost every day for the past 3 1/ 2 years.
My undergraduate text book, a small, slim volume:
T. S. Eliot, Selected Poems.
In it, is “Prufrock” and The Waste Land, with my pencil annotations from my undergraduate years.
I also three other well-used books:
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, the Norton Critical Edition.
The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot’s Contemporary Prose, by Lawrence Rainey
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, a Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound, Edited and with an Introduction by Valerie Eliot.
I have much to say about all these books and will delve further.
Friday is the conference, but I will have something to say before then. Stay tuned. On Monday, May 9, I will provide an update from my experience at the conference, before we return to our regular programming.
For now, enjoy your week! Happy Spring. Happy May!
Just keep writing….and reading!
Three and one-half years is a long time to devote to a single effort. One must be committed, determined to pursue the long-term goal, and at ease with delayed gratification.