"Memoirs of a Quiet Life" Excerpt

Among the standard categories of genre literature, “memoirs” are the red-headed stepchild.

The Writer has self-published two well-received non-fiction history books and one cookbook. She also has a collection of unpublished non-fiction stories; a kind of memoir compiled and written over many years. Interesting stories. Unusual. With the right publicity, the collection could attract a lot of readers. But self-publish again? No. Financially, a waste of money because after a few sales to friends and relations, self-published memoirs by ordinary unknown people rarely sell. She needs a literary agent willing to handle memoirs. But in the 21st century, how is “memoir” defined?

No website, online writing expert, editor or agent agrees on what a memoir is, or should be. The standard minimum length for a novel is 40,000 words. But reputable sources state a memoir should be at least 70,000 words. Or longer. Except when it should be shorter. Memoirs must have an “arc.” But the experts never explain precisely what the arc should be. They stress that diary or journal entries from family members are not acceptable. And no vignettes. As one agent stated in her online guidelines for prospective clients, “If you have vignettes, don’t bother to try and get published.” 

The Writer fixes another cup of coffee. And then, like all real writers, she stares out a window. Thinking. Thinking…

There are flaws in the online advice. Real life is not an “arc.” It’s mostly vignettes. Small moments. Stories. Memories…

But random unconnected moments and recollections are not enough to create a book that anyone outside a writer’s family would want to read. Like short stories, novels and nonfiction, a good memoir must be about something. It needs structure. A unifying “Red Thread” tying all the stories together. So what red thread runs through The Writer’s memoir? Mysteries. Sometimes eerie. Unsettling. Incidents with no real beginning or end. But afterwards, always questions: What just happened? What was that about? What did I see? 

And how should they be organized? By logic and her own preference, it would be chronologically. But if she begins the book with entries from her grandfather’s 1942 diary, the manuscript would probably be rejected immediately by irate agents adamant in their refusal to even consider books with diary and journal entries. By theme? In some stories, themes and chronology overlap.

In a second cup of coffee, The Writer finds the answer. Arrange the stories by specific themes, and within those themes, by chronology. So The Writer begins with the diary entries, written over a decade before she was born because, as a child, the first stories she was ever told about life, history and remembering came from her grandfather.

Thank you, Grandpa.