truth in memoir


Writing Memoir: Is Your Story True? 7

WHAT IS TRUTH IN MEMOIR? may be the most hotly debated question of all memoir-writing questions. We memoir writers talk a lot about “our truth” and how we define what that means. What is truth after all? Is there one truth or or many? Is truth subjective or objective? Are truth […]


Writing Memoir: Searching for the Truth 7

FINDING TRUTH IS THE ELEMENTAL TASK OF MEMOIR, and what memoirists struggle with most as we write our stories. I have been reflecting on this aspect of memoir, since reading Ann Churcher’s post, “Memoir Writing: Can’t Find My Way Back Home,” in which she writes: Searching for the truth has […]


Entanglements: Writing About Family 10

WHEN YOU SET OFF TO WRITE ABOUT YOUR LIFE, you will end up, at some point, wonder how much to include about your family members. Especially if you’re revealing family secrets, which memoirs tend to do. Even when journaling about family, you may worry that family members will some day […]


From Memories to Memoirs, Part 1 — What is Memoir? 8

Our greatest desire, greater even than the desire for happiness, Is that our lives mean something. This desire for meaning is the originating impulse of story.   ~Daniel Taylor I believe that everyone’s lives, however “ordinary,” are filled with experiences that speak to universal human experience and are therefore interesting to […]