Salon’s guide to writing a memoir

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 23:00:00 +0000

It’s a genre that critics love to bag on, and readers love to devour. But we like to think that it’s not bad to write a memoir, it’s just very hard to write a good one. So we asked 10 of our favorite first-person authors for their best advice on the form. Get ready to take notes, gaze at your navel -- and learn from the masters.

Anne Lamott (“Operating Instructions,” “Grace, Eventually,” “Help, Thanks, Wow”):

The most important advice I could give to aspiring memoir writers is that it's pretty much all hopeless. There is very little chance that you will get your memoir published by a mainstream publisher (or, for that matter, your novel). Also, if you do get published, the process will make you way more mental than you already are. Plus, almost no one makes a great living as a writer. You have to be willing to take a real job, to finance your writing life. I cleaned houses and taught tennis lessons on the one court in Bolinas, Calif., for most of my 20s. Before that, I worked as a clerk typist at Bechtel, and as an assistant at a magazine.

Salon.com > Ta-Nehisi Coates

Salon’s guide to writing a memoir