Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir

by Lynn C. Miller, Lisa Lenard-Cook

Every person has a story to tell, but few beginners know how to uncover their story's narrative potential. And despite a growing interest among students and creative writers, few guides to the genre of memoirs and creative nonfiction highlight compelling storytelling strategies. Addressing this gap, authors Lynn C. Miller and Lisa Lenard-Cook provide a compact, accessible guide to memoir writing that shows how an aspiring memoir writer can use storytelling tools and tactics borrowed from fiction to weave personal experiences into the shape of a story.

            Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir offers an overview of the building blocks of memoir writing. Individual chapters focus on key issues and challenges, such as the balance between the remembering narrator and the experiencing narrator, the capacity to honor the subjective voice, the occasion of telling (why does this narrator tell this story now ?), creating an organically functional structure for a particular story, and taking the next steps with a written memoir. Drawing on their combined years of experience teaching memoir writing, authoring works of fiction and nonfiction, and working in autobiographical performance, Miller and Lenard-Cook provide a practical guide whose core philosophy is motivated by a key story .

Bronze winner, Foreword Book of the Year, Writing Guides

Genres: Writing

146 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2013

About the author

My new story collection, The Lost Archive, is just out in April, 2023: "The Lost Archive is laced through with humor and heartache, interwoven with strange, charmed moments of joy.”
—Jesse Lee Kercheval, author of Underground Women

The Day After Death was a 2017 Lambda Award finalist in lesbian fiction.

I believe that stories transform lives and that lives generate stories. I started writing at age 9, typing in red ink on an Underwood typewriter, when my family moved from River Forest, IL to a farm five miles northeast of Devils Lake, ND.

I live in Albuquerque and am a novelist and playwright, performer, and educator. My published novels are The Unmasking, The Day After Death, The Fool’s Journey and Death of a Department Chair. Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir (written with Lisa Lenard-Cook) came out in March, 2013 from the University of Wisconsin Press. My plays have been produced in Austin, Tulsa, Albuquerque, Provincetown, Yaddo, and elsewhere.

I co-host the podcast, "The Unruly Muse" featuring performances of poetry, music, fiction, and patter on the selections with co-host John Modaff. www.theunrulymuse.net

I have a B.A. from the University of North Dakota in English and theater, an M.A. from Northwestern University in performance studies, and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in communication and performance. I’ve taught writing and performance at Penn State University, The University of Southern California, and the University of Texas at Austin, where I was Professor of Theatre and Dance.

I have performed the lives of women in history (Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton, Victoria Woodhull, and Katherine Anne Porter), and have appeared as a guest artist at many universities and art festivals......

Reviews

[Nancy Dobson Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is well-written with detailed and practical advice for writers. It's geared toward memoir, but quite a bit of the information is applicable to any writing. I highlighted a lot and I'll be holding onto this to refer to it again. I liked the organization of the book, especially the "spotlight exercises" and the bibliography at the end.

[A.Y. Berthiaume · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite easily one of the best books on writing memoir I’ve read. It should be a required reading or supplemental text for students studying this genre or sought-after, read and studied by those writing memoirs beyond their college years or any formal training. It’s full of rich guidance and so very helpful to set you on your way.

[Paula Stout · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love how practical the exercises are. I started it as an audio book but had to buy the paperback so I could write in it and put teethmarks in it.

[Carol March · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many people know they have a story to tell. But how to tell it? Do you write a linear autobiography about your whole life? Disguise your story as fiction? Or do you craft a memoir about specific people and incidents that have meaning for you?

Lynn C. Miller and Lisa Lenard-Cook, both accomplished writers and writing teachers, use the elements of story to create a step by step guide for anyone interested in discovering the narrative potential of the personal story that burns to be told.

Beginning with the "occasion of the telling," the catalyst that starts the action, and moving through the interplay of the two you's, the person who experienced the incidents and the narrator who looks back to tell about them, this book guides the budding memoirist through examples, theory and exercises to shape the material of a lifetime into a coherent narrative. Lives may not seem to have plots, but memoirs do, and the discussion of memory as a sorting device is particularly useful. Memoir is discussed, not as autobiography, but as a vehicle for self-discovery and reflection, which can mesmerize readers as effectively as a novel.

The discussion of plot includes a useful identification of several types of possible methods of organization, starting with the obvious linear structure, and going on to circular, associative, collage, parallel, and locational structures. Specific examples are used for each concept, and an excellent bibliography is included. In addition to structure, how to construct effective scenes is discussed, along with voice, setting, and the use of metaphor. Instead of getting stuck in "what really happened," the authors encourage readers to use all the tools of the fiction writer to uncover the emotional truth of their lives.

Highly recommended for writers, teachers, and anyone who has thought about telling their story.

[Truthful · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of difficult for me as a dementia patient to understand. Some parts I just had to skip, but helpful.

[Sonja · Rating 5 out of 5]

very interesting and informative

[Brandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Has a lot of writing exercises and great tips to get started.