Thinking About Memoir

August 18, 2008

Saturday I spent two hours reading in a coffee shop.

I haven’t done that in a while and boy, was it nice. I’m almost done reading Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to read it– at least two months– that’s crazy! I haven’t taken this long to read a book since Madame Bovary (which i’m still reading…).  The thing is, I like the book, I really do. I just don’t love it. It’s told in multiple perspectives and it sometimes gets difficult to tell who is speaking/narrating. But damn if she doesn’t have some killer sentences and descriptions (especially of landscapes), like:

It was a drought-dry summer when I met Billy Peace, and in the suspension of rain everything seemed to flex. The growthless spruce had dropped their bud-soft needles. Our popples stretched their full lengths, each heart-lobed leaf still and open. The great oak across the field reared out, its roots sucking water from the bottom of the world. On an afternoon when rain was promised, we sat on the deck and watched the sky pitch over reservation land. I could almost feel the timbers shake under my feet, as its great searching taproots trembled.

and this one, that I read last night:

We nod for a while like two sages on a hill.

A book i’m also reading AND loving is Thinking About Memoir by Abigail Thomas.

No, i’m not thinking about writing a memoir– not yet at least– but I am teaching a Creative Nonfiction class at the community college starting next week. I’ve never seen this book before or heard of Abigail Thomas (I found this at Bookstar while looking for another book, in the Nonfiction section) but she has some amazing things to say in this tiny book. It’s brand new from Sterling Publishing, about the size of a large postcard and only 118 pages but it really packs a whallop.

Not only does she give excellent advice and activities for nonfiction/memoir writing but she actually completes the activities herself –quite subtly– in each chapter.

She also just says the most interesting and valid statements about writing:

This book is also about being in the here-and-now, because memories survive on a wisp of fragrance, or a particular shade of blue, or a song that reminds you of a song, and you don’t want to miss anything.

and (though I can’t remember exactly how she said it, or where in the book, I wrote this down in my notebook):

Thinking about writing is not writing.

and

Call it a diary–it is less imposing than a journal, which sounds like an end in itself. I steer clear of the word journal–and its spawn, the verb to journal, as in “I have been journaling all my life.” If I were to call my notebook a journal I would probably write with the notion that it be published someday, preferably posthumously, and people would marvel. This would make me self-conscious. I would be trying to perfect each sentence before its time. I prefer notes; if I clean it up too fast I lose the spark. Everything goes in: grocery lists, things to do (so I can scratch them off) random observations, knitting patterns, recipes, overheard dialogue, everything. A diary isn’t sacred. Think of it as the written equivalent of singing in the shower. I don’t care what I’m writing and I don’t pay any attention to language. Most of what’s in there is boring, but it keeps me in the habit. Writing doesn’t have to be good, not at first.

and

Be honest, dig deep, or don’t bother.

**I bought a moleskin book yesterday.