Top Tips
- A memoir is concerned with memory. Think about how memory works? Is it linear, chronological? Or not? Let your memoir writing reflect the workings of memory itself.
- Does the accuracy of memory matter above all? Or is the significance that you have a form of it – whether or not it would stand up in a court of law.
- We all embellish memory, do a bit of reconstruction. The best memoir writing can read like fiction, even if it is not that. Look at the story element – foster that.
- Try polishing a memory. Place it in context; what else do you know about that time, or place, or person?
Booklist
| Vladimir Nabokov | Speak, Memory |
| Leo Tolstoy | Childhood, Boyhood, Youth |
| Janice Galloway | This Is Not About Me |
| Alan Johnson | This Boy |
| Martin Amis | Experience |
| Hilary Mantel | Giving Up The Ghost |