 |
|
| photo: Jeff Smith | |
The author of more than 18 books, including two memoirs, Brenda Peterson teamed up with her literary agent, Sarah Jane Freymann, to offer aspiring memoirists advice and inspiration. In Your Life Is a Book: How to Craft & Publish Your Memoir (Sasquatch, October 14), the duo helps writers craft the best memoir possible from the often confusing, exhilarating and unexpected raw material of their lives.
Peterson's works include the memoirs Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals and the recent I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth, which was selected by independent booksellers as a "Great Read" and named a "Top Ten Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year" by the Christian Science Monitor. She teaches private writing classes and delights in seeing many of her students published.
As a New York City literary agent, Freyman shepherds books onto bestseller lists, mentors fledgling writers and helps authors transform their lives through memoir. She and Peterson have worked together for years, including teaching a "Life Story" seminar.
What makes a great memoir, for the reader as well as the writer?
For both writer and reader, a memoir is like a love story, with all the ecstasies, disappointments and turning points of any relationship. In memoir, we come home to ourselves and realize that our lives have meaning. For the memoirist, crafting a life story that others will want to read is not just about skillful techniques--like finding your narrative arc, creating authentic characters and dialogue, or hard-won epiphanies--it is soul work. What do we really possess if not our life stories? In writing memoir, we don't just ask "Who am I?" but also "Who am I in this story?"
For the reader, a memoir offers another fully realized and vivid world we also want to inhabit. It is a mirror, another path, sometimes even a lifeline. As both the writer and reader "get it," we share a bond of catharsis and self-discovery. In the words of the late Maya Angelou, the best memoirists teach us how to "stand on their shoulders."
In Your Life Is a Book, you note that memoir surpassed fiction in popularity during the last century, a trend that still continues. Why do you suppose this is?
We're endlessly curious about one another's lives; and now through the Internet and media, the whole world's stories are open to us. Everyone is writing memoir. Blogs are mostly memoir, reality television is a kind of personal narrative, even social media sites tell the stories of our lives--and sometimes even our revolutions in real time. In all media, we're turning more to "real-life" and to our peers, what we call "the egalitarian memoir" to better understand how to live. Because of all this living out loud and online, we're familiar with the intimate tone of personal revelations. We also know from the West's fascination with therapy--a kind of characterization and self-discovery--that we gain some truth by sharing our lives.
Sarah Jane and I always teach aspiring memoirists to write their life story like a novel--one that just happens to be true. As in fiction, the memoir's main character--the evolving self--grows and changes. Just like a good novel, a memoir must start at a point of dramatic action or tension that will be resolved. A memoir is not like the facts-on-file dutiful march of an autobiography. Sometimes the personal narrative is organized by an emotional chronology or by a theme or historical event. Anything other than a legacy memoir, anything you want to sell or self-publish, has to read like a terrific novel.
Tell us about the structure of Your Life Is a Book.
In our "User's Guide" we advise reading our book from beginning to end to build upon the solid ground that it has taken us years to discover. But a reader may choose to review the chapter headings and sample content in a different way. For example, if you are writing a travel memoir based on a spiritual journey, you might begin with Chapter 7, "Eat, Pray, Love," and then Chapter 11, "Travel Memoirs: Journeys in and Out," and then Chapter 11, "Spiritual Memoirs." That would give you the foundation for your narrative arc. Part One is "Crafting Your Memoir," with many exercises, writing prompts and examples of setting, dialogue, characterization and finding your own unique storytelling voice.
Part Two is "Getting Serious about Publishing," with interviews and chapters on agents, editors, publishers, book proposals, better blogging and navigating traditional as well as indie publishing. In this digital age, there are many more options for publication. Many "hybrid authors," like myself, publish both traditionally and independently. I've reissued my out-of-print traditional books as e-books; in a congenial partnership with Perseus, which originally published I Want to Be Left Behind, I just brought out my memoir in paperback with a new cover by renowned book illustrator Wendell Minor. Sarah Jane's expertise and long-time experience is with publishing houses, so her insider's advice is invaluable for anyone taking the traditional route.
Throughout the book you include examples, advice and inspiring quotes from successful memoirists. What are some of your favorite memoirs? Which ones would you especially recommend to aspiring memoirists?
We've included in Your Life Is a Book an extensive bibliography of recommended memoirs. It's impossible to list all the memoirs Sarah Jane and I love, but some of our favorites include The Good Good Pig, the delightful story of how a pet pig taught author Sy Montgomery to be "more human," Jarvis Master's eloquent That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row and the inspiring Rena's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz by Rena Kornreich Gelissen, which will soon be a documentary. Also wonderful are The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Julia Child's editor, Judith Jones; Native author Linda Hogan's beautifully wise The Woman Who Watches Over the World; and Diane Ackerman's poignant One Hundred Names for Love.
What is the most important piece of advice you have for someone who is considering writing a memoir?
We believe that everyone has a life story to tell. The trick is creating a memoir that will be a pleasure for others to read. Take your time, apprentice yourself to the craft and learn the business of publishing. Most of all, remember that telling your story will change you. As the renowned psychologist C.G. Jung said, "The encounter with the creature changes the creator." When the mature narrator encounters the younger self, you are not simply observing and reporting--you are reliving along with the reader. Both on the page and in life, you will not be quite the same person at the end of a memoir as at the beginning.
We often talk about "Writing with the eye of God," calling upon that larger vision and more generous understanding of our own life and the lives of those around us. If you can see your own story with the engaged and sympathetic point of view of the master storyteller, at every moment you can transform your life. And then, your reader's. --Shannon McKenna Schmidt