Writing the Memoir

Conversations from the Archive
August 2013
UCLA Writers Faire
Los Angeles, California

Samantha Dunn
Amy Friedman
Alison Singh Gee
Tom Fields-Meyer

Excerpts:

When do you know when you’re onto a story for a great memoir?

Tom Fields-Meyer: It just happens to you. It’s usually when something goes wrong. If everything is going along smoothly, you don’t have a memoir.

Samantha Dunn: Whatever obsesses you. Whatever you can’t let go of.

How do you remember things?

Fields-Meyer: Write every day, even if you don’t know what the writing is for. Research, emails, interview other people.

Alison Singh Gee: Brainstorm burning memories. Write from photographs.

Dunn: Memoir is the story your memory tells you. What matters is what you make things mean. Self-exploration and vulnerability. Don’t make shit up.

Amy Friedman: Start with “I don’t remember . . .” Memoir is true. Dialogue is fiction.

Dunn: [Write] every day or the muse will go to someone else’s house. Five to ten minutes a day. Do something. You need some kind of deadline. Read a lot.

Singh Gee: Set small goals. Write for forty minutes. Make a contract with your unconscious.

Friedman: Marry the right person.

Fields-Meyer: Being a journalist, when you sit down to write, you know what the story is going to be. The best writing comes from process. Create a block of marble. Find the sculpture within. Find the story within.

Friedman: The only way to write is to write. Don’t wait for the muse to show up at the door. Block out six months on a calendar with deadlines. Writing and publishing are different. Don’t worry about vanity. The more intimate about you, the more the story will resonate with other people.

Dunn: Your work transforms you. It heals wounds I didn’t know existed.