Mary Karr's Memoir Checklist

Writers hate formulas and checklists. It’s way more fun to masquerade as a natural shaman who channels beautiful pages as the oracle once channeled Zeus. But looking at my own books, I’ve found they all include most of the stuff below—as do most of the books I teach. Here’s my list:

1. Paint a physical reality that uses all the senses and exists in the time you’re writing about—a singular, fascinating place peopled with objects and characters we believe in. Should include the speaker’s body or some kinesthetic elements.

2. Tell a story that gives the reader some idea of your milieu and exploits your talent. We remember in stories, and for a writer, story is where you start.

3. Package information about your present self or backstory so it has emotional conflict or scene.

All the rest of these are interior:

4. Set emotional stakes—why is the writer passionate about or desperate to deal with the past—the hint of an inner enemy?

5. Think, figure, wonder, guess. Show yourself weighing what’s true, your fantasies, values, schemes, and failures.

6. Change times back and forth—early on, establish the “looking back” voice, and the “being in it” voice.

7. Collude with the reader about your relationship with the truth and memory.

8. Show not so much how you suffer in long passages, but how you survive. Use humor or an interjecting adult voice to help a reader over the dark places.

9. Don’t exaggerate. Trust that what you felt deeply is valid.

10. Watch your blind spots—in revision, if not before, search for reversals. Beware of what you avoid and what you cling to.

11. (Related to all of the above) Love your characters. Ask yourself what underlay their acts and versions of the past. Sometimes I pray to see people I’m angry at or resentful of as God sees them, which heals both page and heart.

And one big fat caveat: lead with your own talent, which may cause you to ignore all I’ve recommended.

MARY KARR, The Art of Memoir

Prescription for Writer's Block

My prescription for writer’s block is to face the fact that there is no such thing. It’s an invented condition, a literary version of the judicial “abuse excuse.” Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something. And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It’s a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about.

THOMAS MALLON

Nice Writing Isn't Enough

Nice writing isn't enough. It isn't enough to have smooth and pretty language. You have to surprise the reader frequently, you can't just be nice all the time. Provoke the reader. Astonish the reader. Writing that has no surprises is as bland as oatmeal. Surprise the reader with the unexpected verb or adjective. Use one startling adjective per page.

ANNE BERNAYS

Creative Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction is a term that is currently having its day. When I was in college, anyone who put those two words together would have been looked on as a comedian or a fool. Today, Creative Nonfiction is the name of the college course I teach. Same college. Required to give the course a title, I named it for a quarterly edited and published by Lee Gutkind, then at the University of Pittsburgh. The title asks an obvious question: What is creative about nonfiction? It takes a whole semester to try to answer that, but here are a few points: The creativity lies in what you choose to write about, how you go about doing it, the arrangement through which you present things, the skill and the touch with which you describe people and succeed in developing them as characters, the rhythms of your prose, the integrity of the composition, the anatomy of the piece (does it get up and walk around on its own?), the extent to which you see and tell the story that exists in your material, and so forth. Creative nonfiction is not making something up but making the most of what you have.

JOHN McPHEE

Drinking Makes You Loquacious

Drinking makes you loquacious, as we all know, and if what you’ve got for company is a piece of paper, then you’re going to talk to it. Just try to enunciate, and try to make sense.

MADISON SMARTT BELL

Everywhere Is A Storehouse of Literary Material

Of course Nebraska is a storehouse of literary material. Everywhere is a storehouse of literary material. If a true artist were born in a pigpen and raised in a sty, he would still find plenty of inspiration for his work. The only need is the eye to see.

WILLA CATHER

Keep On Writing, No Matter What!

Keep on writing, no matter what! That's the most important thing. As long as you have a job on hand that absorbs all your mental energy, you haven't much worry to spare over other things. It serves as a suit of armor.

EUGENE O’NEILL

Three Characteristics A Work of Fiction Must Possess

[The] three characteristics a work of fiction must possess in order to be successful:

1. It must have a precise and suspenseful plot. 

2. The author must feel a passionate urge to write it.

3. He must have the conviction, or at least the illusion, that he is the only one who can handle this particular theme.

ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER

Don't Be Bullied By Punctuation

When speaking aloud, you punctuate constantly—with body language. Your listener hears commas, dashes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks as you shout, whisper, pause, wave your arms, roll your eyes, wrinkle your brow. In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard. Careful use of those little marks emphasizes the sound of your distinctive voice and keeps the reader from becoming bored or confused. . . . [Punctuation] exists to serve you. Don’t be bullied into serving it.

RUSSELL BAKER

Talent Is Irrelevant

I see the notion of talent as quite irrelevant. I see instead perseverance, application, industry, assiduity, will, will, will, desire, desire, desire.

GORDON LISH