We categorize literary works via their form--for example, poetry versus drama. We categorize literary works via their audience--for example, children's literature versus adolescent literature. We categorize literary works via their imaginativeness--for example, fiction versus nonfiction. One category of literature (genre) that appeals to almost every audience and concerns almost every subject is nonfiction. A work of nonfiction is such because the author did not imagine or invent the experiences, events and facts. Nonfiction is about real people, real events, and real things in the past, present and/or future. It is a broad category that includes newspaper and magazine articles, essays, philosophical meditations, how-to books, biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs.
Literary nonfiction expresses and explores aspects of the human condition. Its specific subject is that which actually occurred or that which exists in reality, and its aim is to examine that which occurred or exists, allowing the reader to realize the writer's understanding of that experience. Although literary nonfiction, especially biography and autobiography, is popular, its roots go back thousands of years to the Greek writers. Some of the relatively recent, well-known writers to compose literary nonfiction include Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon
, Jonathan Swift
, Frederick Douglass
, Mark Twain
, Virginia Woolf
, Ernest Hemingway
, and George Orwell
. An important kind of literary nonfiction is memoir. The word memoir is kin to the word memory. When you write a memoir, you are remembering and telling a story of your life. You must realize that your recollections will not be exact replicas of your experiences. The primary issue to consider when you write a memoir is what to include. It is impossible to write every experience and every detail in your life; thus, you need to examine one detail at a time in order to tell a story as well as to explore the themes relative to that story. As you write your memoir, you will discover your subject--that is, your purpose for writing it. A memoir is not a list of experiences and details; rather, a memoir explores themes--patterns, ideas and issues to which you return and re-examine. The themes are the subject of your memoir as much as the actual details of your story. As you render your life, you will be communicating what you understand about the story. In other words, the experiences and details you choose to include will reveal the purpose of the memoir to your audience.
Many people have similar experiences--addictions, adventures, illnesses, romances--but no two people will recall those experiences the same way, even though two people may have shared an experience. Your goal as a memoirist is not to relate what occurred, but to explore the ideas about your experience(s), using the details of your memories to put flesh on the bones and voices in the mouths of the figures you recall. Often important to us as we recall our lives are the conflicts we have experienced and the relationships that have given our lives meaning. With respect to your memoir, conflict will occur when oppositional forces or feelings merge with an experience--for examples, the sadness you felt when someone, whom you loved, had died suddenly or the frustration you experienced when someone or something had quelled your hopes. As you work through such conflicts, you will discover the patterns, ideas and issues that have been informing your life. That process of realization is crucial to the construction of a memoir.
As you determine which experiences and details to include in your memoir, you may want to think in terms of islands of experience and time. Consider each major event in your life as an island and your life as a journey from island to island. Write about each island separately; then, combine the events that have common themes. To combine the events, you will want to introduce information that is important to the progression of the journey, but not to the comprehension of the experiences. Time will move quickly in those short sections, which may be only a sentence, but your audience will be able to connect logically the moments when you focus on a particular island. Regard each island as a scene, a place where you want the reader to linger and to experience. Such scenes will be the bulk of your memoir.
The structure of your memoir will depend on the arrangement of the scenes. You may want to present the events in continuous time from the beginning to the end (chronologically). You may want to move back and forth in time (flashback). If your memoir is a recollection of childhood experiences, you may want to use flashback to recall an event when you were a child, moving to the present to describe its impact on you as an adult and progressing through the experiences in such a manner until you finish. If you logically connect the temporal shifts, then your audience will be able to follow your progression. But you may want to begin in the middle of a significant event (in media res)--that is, begin with a representative incident that relates to and closely precedes the conflict.
As a writer of literary nonfiction, you will need to create a voice (a persona or style) that best communicates your ideas and feelings. Voice is the personality or mood of the speaker of a work. We associate voice with diction--formal or colloquial, for examples--with the style of sentences--complex or simple--with images--precise or general--and with what the speaker thinks and feels. Different subjects require different voices and forms. In one scene the speaker's voice may be emotional, and in another scene it may be distant. Voice allows a sense of the writer and his/her attitude toward the subject to come through. As your audience reads your memoir, they will be thinking about your subject, and they will be imagining you. The voice you adopt will inform that picture. Try to discover your voice as well as to construct your style deliberately. Experiment with different styles to see how they fit different subjects and forms.
Sometimes readers look for a definitive conclusion to a story. However, a memoirist may examine an experience without arriving at a conclusion. The purpose of a memoir is to re-experience a memory--to examine, validate and celebrate it, although it may be a painful memory. If you do not have the time or energy to write a complete memoir, do not expect to resolve the conflict in an essay. Your goal is to explore an idea, a feeling, or an opinion in such a way that you share your exploration with your audience. The word essay comes from the French word assai, meaning attempt. The essayist writing a memoir may be attempting to explain an idea, to experience something again and to understand it better, or to argue for or against something. My point: which do you want to assai? Whichever it may be, enjoy the process of discovery.
