The Art of Memoir

There are a lot of gems in The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr. I think it’s a good read no mater what genre you’re writing, and I recommend buying it or checking it out from the library. Karr started out by saying it’s okay to be lost and not know where to start. “Being lost is a prelude to finding new paths. And any curious writer will have to do a lot of wandering before any book is done.” 

Another tip I thought was great because it will lead you to be honest with yourself and your readers is to ask yourself what people usually like and dislike about you, and include it in your work. Karr has some great rules for dealing with people you write about such as, “Never speak with authority about how people feel or what their motives were. You can guess at it, but always let the reader know it’s speculative.” Karr also has some great ideas to help you keep writing if you get stuck, such as copying poems and passages of books you love longhand, memorizing poems, and to push yourself in the direction of how you hoped during the time you are writing about.

Karr also provides a lot of recommendations of great memoirs to read and what to pay attention to when you read them.

I would like to share all of the notes I took from the book, but there are pages, so I will stop here. It is a book I will probably purchase for my own library so I can refer back to it.