Inspiring Memoirs — Making Art out of Life

Learn to tell your story from the example of others

Every life is worth living, and most lives are worth reading about. Writing about your life isn’t just a list of events — this happened and then this happened and then this other thing happened. Rather, it’s a series of artistic snapshots, recreated from your brain and set into a beautiful arrangement, much like a bouquet of flowers.

Dave Eggers — A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

I am inspired most by other art — movies, visual art, and books. At the top of the list of inspiring memoirs for me is Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Should my own efforts reach just a tenth of the success of Eggers work, I will be a happy man.

Eggers was not known before he wrote his book. And if he followed advice I see in blog post to not write his story because it’s not interesting enough, the world would have been without his writing. Everyone’s story is worth telling.

But Eggers took things a step further. He played with the memoir form. He did things that were new. In his long Acknowledgements before the start of the book proper, he goes to painstaking lengths to set out his voice as a writer, satirizing the memoir form before he even gets started. You trust this voice. You like this voice. This voice is unlike any voice you have ever read. It’s clear that he’s going to explode the memoir form and make this a book like nothing anyone has ever read before.

I’m drawn to writers who experiment, who break molds, who try new things. Eggers tells his story — how both his parents died within weeks of each other, leaving him as a 20-something young man to raise his 8-year-old brother. That’s, of course, just the bones of the story. How he tells his story is what’s interesting and inspiring.

He writes an interview he had in trying out for MTV’s Real World. The interview goes off the rails and becomes not just an interview but a part of how he tells his story. And when he doesn’t get selected for the show, he says, “Fuck it. Stupid show.” He bounces around like a pinball in a machine, trying to figure everything out in his life and take care of his brother while writing about and commenting upon how he’s trying to figure everything out in his life and take care of his brother.

There is an immediacy to his book that other memoirs and autobiographies lack. It’s accessible in that you live in the now with Eggers as he’s living his life. It’s not a quiet, reflective look back. It’s an energetic, kinetic, frenzied ride.

If I’m stuck at any point in my writing, I can pick up Eggers’ book, dip in for a few pages, and m mind races with the possibilities of writing. That’s inspiring. That’s what we hope that writing gives to us. That’s what we hope our own writing gives to others.

My Memoir is Almost Complete

This is a golden age of memoir. As I approach completing the memoir that I have spent more than three years writing, I’m looking back at how I reached this point.

First, I have lived a life of a writer, observing, cataloguing, taking notes and saving details for later use like a child hoarding candy under his bed.

Second, my life has yielded itself to incidents that make great stories.

Third, I have read a great deal about other people’s lives and have read a great deal of literature. I have spent a lifetime learning how writer’s write stories.

I’m looking forward to completing this memoir and the next steps to getting it published. I’m looking forward to new writing projects and being more active on Medium. If you are following along now, thank you. But you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Let Me Help You Write Your Story

Your story matters. My story matters. Stories matter. From our earliest exposure to nursery rhymes, fables, parables, and children’s books, we learn about the world through stories.

If you are serious about writing your story, I can help you with your writing process. By definition, writing is a process. If that process is inefficient, you will bog down. If you understand the necessary steps in that process, then any writing project is achievable.

What memoirs or autobiographies inspire you? Let me know in the comments below.

Just keep writing!

Lee G. Hornbrook taught college English for 25 years and is the editor of The Writing Prof and is at work on a memoir. Sign up for his 5-day free course on The Writing Process.

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