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4.1 AVERAGE
4.1 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
There are so many ideas in this book that I'm going to need to read it twice. She has a deep understanding of writing - how to think about it and how to feel it.
challenging
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
Really cool, very useful. Loved this.
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
As someone who has written memoir in the past, this was stirring. Will I write again in the near future? I don’t know. Did this book make me wish I would and could? A hearty and somewhat desperate yes.
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
It took me a little while to get into this book, but by the end I enjoyed it quite a bit. It is basically a series of short chapters on how to write a good memoir. She uses lots of personal examples and examples from other memoirs she has enjoyed over the years which makes the lessons go down easier.
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
I’m a big fan of Mary Karr and I’ll pretty much read whatever she writes. I have no interest in writing a memoir myself and I truly enjoyed this book! The tips on writing itself weren’t really of interest to me but her analysis of memoirs was really fascinating!
Listened to on audiobook after finishing Karr's memoirs (The Liars' Club, Cherry, and Lit). I have no desire to write memoir, but found Karr's description of process and craft shaping my understanding of what I'd liked (and disliked) about memoirs I'd read earlier this year-- mostly her thoughts on how the writer handles multiple selves, voice, memory, truth, and what she calls the "carnality" of scene. While Karr's points are specific to memoir, there are several parts relevant to fiction writers too. I wish I had read this before teaching creative nonfiction this semester, both for her thoughts on the genre and for her comments on the important of revision. Would definitely assign excerpts from it in future classes.
"The writer who's lived a fairly unexamined life--someone who has a hard time reconsidering a conflict from another point of view--may not excel at fashioning a voice because her defensiveness stands between her and what she has to say. Also, we naturally tend to superimpose our present selves onto who we were before, and that can prevent us from recalling stuff that doesn't shore up our current identities. Or it can warp understanding to fit more comfortable interpretations. All those places we misshape the past have to be 'fessed to, and such refletions and uncertainties have to find expression in voice" (37)
"sentimentality is only emotion you haven't proven to the reader--emotion without vivid evidence" (68)
"The split self or inner conflict must manifest on the first pages and form the book's thrust or through line--some journey towards the self's overhal by the book's end. However random or episodic a book seems, a blazing psychic struggle holds it together, either thematically or in the way a plot would keep a novel rolling forward. Often the inner enemy dovetails with the writer's own emotional investment in the work at hand. Why is she driven to tell teh tale? Usually it's to go back and recover some lost aspect of the past so it can be integrated into current identity" (92)
On revision: "Finally, put it aside. Put it out of your head at least a week. You want it to set up like jellow. And when you pick it back up, ask yourself, What haven't I said? How might someone else involved have seen it differently?" (34)
"The writer who's lived a fairly unexamined life--someone who has a hard time reconsidering a conflict from another point of view--may not excel at fashioning a voice because her defensiveness stands between her and what she has to say. Also, we naturally tend to superimpose our present selves onto who we were before, and that can prevent us from recalling stuff that doesn't shore up our current identities. Or it can warp understanding to fit more comfortable interpretations. All those places we misshape the past have to be 'fessed to, and such refletions and uncertainties have to find expression in voice" (37)
"sentimentality is only emotion you haven't proven to the reader--emotion without vivid evidence" (68)
"The split self or inner conflict must manifest on the first pages and form the book's thrust or through line--some journey towards the self's overhal by the book's end. However random or episodic a book seems, a blazing psychic struggle holds it together, either thematically or in the way a plot would keep a novel rolling forward. Often the inner enemy dovetails with the writer's own emotional investment in the work at hand. Why is she driven to tell teh tale? Usually it's to go back and recover some lost aspect of the past so it can be integrated into current identity" (92)
On revision: "Finally, put it aside. Put it out of your head at least a week. You want it to set up like jellow. And when you pick it back up, ask yourself, What haven't I said? How might someone else involved have seen it differently?" (34)