fair warning
Slate held a memoir week, where they published a bunch of short articles on how authors alerted people that they were writing about them. It was really interesting because it not only showed how the memoirists dealt with this, but also gave insite into their writing process. Here's the link, though I don't know if anmyone who reads this would care.
I will warn you all now. If I know you I either have written or will write about you. If you have ever kissed me, I guarantee I already have plenty of pages on you. Plenty. Just fair warning :)
I've been working on my memoir. But its not at all cohesive. Right now it's mostly just a bunch of snippets and random memories. I don't know how to start it. I go back and forth on it. Do I start at the moment he kissed me and the relationshp began or do i start at the moment the problems came to fruition? Do I leave the audience in the dark for a bit or put all my cards on the table on the first page? I don't know. I do not know.
Comments
en medias res is a classic way to start things out, and then go back to first moments in flashbacks, and plenty of authors do things in frames. So there's a lot of tradition in dropping the reader in the middle of things.
I think that's the way to go unless you're doing a complete "womb to tomb" biography, or you've covering the development of something very specific (Eggers's mom's cancer or Hornby's chronology of soccer games and him in Fever Pitch).
/2cents
Posted by: Chris | March 31, 2007 9:33 AM
I'd have kissed you for the brownies if you had brought them to Rob's. ...in fact, I still hold that offer open. I loves me my brownies. :)
Posted by: Dragonbane | April 1, 2007 10:38 AM
put all your cards on the table, but make them into a house of cards...then over the course of the book you knock parts down and play 52 pick up
Posted by: Sid | April 1, 2007 1:28 PM