Most memoir writers will tell you that the hardest part of writing a memoir isn't what to include, but what to leave out.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
What makes writing a memoir difficult is harder to quantify. Is it learning to know when you're ready to talk about something? Is it seeing the structure in a lumpen mass of fact? Is it finding out what you were really like as other people saw you? Yes to each.
I would never write a memoir, because it would be too boring.
I will say, with memoir, you must be honest. You must be truthful.
When you are writing a memoir, you have the advantage of knowing how it all ends. It's just taking your life apart and putting it together again.
Writing a novel is easier than writing a memoir; you are not constrained by the truth.
A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons.
I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.
I'm not sure I ever would write a memoir.
In memoir, you have to be particularly careful not to alienate the reader by making the material seem too lived-in. It mustn't have too much of the smell of yourself, otherwise the reader will be unable to make it her own.
I've always said the hardest aspect of the job of being a writer is writing.
No opposing quotes found.