The Strength of Your Memory Does Not Determine Whether or Not You Can Write Memoir

Much of my teaching of writing work is grounded in creative nonfiction, and especially writing memoir. In workshops and classes, we never run out of topics that are worth thinking about, discussing, studying in published works -- and sometimes, complaining or venting about! 

Into that last category so often falls the subject of memory and how often we are vexed and perplexed by its unpredictable nature. One day, we sit at the keyboard or notebook, and our fingers fly, fueled by churning, detailed memory that seems almost unstoppable, offering up voluminous details, vivid visuals, sharp and full lines of remembered conversations. 

We recall with certainty the weather on a particular day, the clothing we wore, the way a loved one cocked their head, the inflection in their voice. Without thinking almost at all, we're describing the furnishings of a room down to the smallest bit of bric a brac, what the house smelled like, the lilt of a particular birdsong that drifted in an open window. The way we felt, what we thought, our hopes and fears at that moment in past time are as close and clear as if it all occurred yesterday.

And when that happens, bliss. Memoir seems to write itself.

Then, there are some other days. Or perhaps I should say, most of other days. The memoir writer's page remains blank, not for lack of ideas, but because those memories float just out of reach. We remember some of the event, but not all. We can't be sure if so-and-so said this-and-that, and if they did, was it in fact, on that day, at that moment? Where, exactly, did the interaction take place after all? And was it before or after some other event?

Elusive, spotty, incomplete memories are something with which every write of creative nonfiction -- memoir, personal essay, nonfiction narrative -- must learn to cope. Recognizing the fallible, hazy, unreliable nature of memory has caused many a memoir writer to push their project to the back burner, or abandon it completely, in the belief that memoir writing is reserved only for those with a stellar memory.

To which I say: nope. 

Yes, you can write memoir, even if your memory isn't great.

In fact, that's the title of a post I wrote this week for the blog of the New York Open Center on this very topic. I'd love to share it with you. Here's an excerpt: 

No one recalls everything with precision. When I wanted to know more about how memory works, I began researching and studying. Three of the most profound things I learned and which have significance for the memoir writer are: 

1.       It is impossible for the average human brain to record with total accuracy even something that happened just minutes ago

2.      Our current memory of a past event is influenced by the stories we’ve told (and heard) over time about the original event 

3.      The act of remembering itself often begets additional pieces of related memory (Great news! The more you write about a particular memory, the more you might retrieve.) 

This all suggests that even if my memory were better, I couldn’t rely on it completely anyway. Once I understood this, my writing opened up. Without the grinding pressure to be “right” about every remembered detail, I began to regard my own initial memories as a starting place for writing memoir, but not as the only resource... 

You can read the full article here.

And if exploring the relationship between memory and writing memoir is of interest, I'd love you to consider my day-long workshop on the subject at the Open Center in Manhattan on Saturday, April 13. 

Guest Blogger Marjorie Simmins on Memoir, Starry Night Memories, and What She Learned from a Workshop Student

How I love the way the internet connects me to like-minded, interesting people across miles, borders, cultures. I was introduced to Marjorie Simmins, a Canadian memoir writer and fellow horsewoman, by Rona Maynard, a writer/editor (Canada by-way-of-New-Hampshire), with whom I've exchanged Facebook posts for years. Rona knew I would like Marjorie's memoir, Year of the Horse (Pottersfield Press 2016). Marjorie also writes essays for magazines, newspapers and anthologies in Canada and the United States, and divides her time between Nova Scotia and British Columbia. In Coastal Lives (Pottersfield 2014), she wrote about loving two coasts and one man, husband Silver Donald Cameron, a noted Canadian author. Marjorie is currently working on a third non-fiction book, which includes tips, essays, and interviews on memoir—an outgrowth perhaps of her many workshops.

Please welcome Marjorie Simmins.

“You forgot something,” says sharp-eyed Sara, a fine essayist and freelance journalist. She points to the flip-chart, on which I've written the day's itinerary. “That last one—'Starry Night Memories'—what's that?”

Sara is right, and she is wrong. I didn't actually forget, but we did run out of time, and in truth, I am relieved, as I haven’t presented that particular writing exercise to a memoir writing workshop before, and I'm not quite sure how it might go over. But I am busted now.

“Right,” I say, “'Starry Night Memories'...” I hesitate again, when I look up to see eight pairs of alert eyes focused on me, expecting some degree of teacherly articulation. You're supposed to be the memoir writing expert, I chide myself. So speak up.

“You know when you are in bed at night, you're getting sleepy, and your thoughts are moving around from subject to subject, and sometimes, from memory to memory?”  Two or three people nod.

Encouraged, I press on. “Sometimes you deliberately take out a cherished memory to visit, and enjoy. It's like an old friend you haven't seen for a while. You're happy when you think about it, and it helps you fall into a happier, more relaxed sleeping state.”

No nods this time, but several heads on a tilt; they're all still listening.

I struggle to underscore the main point. “So those memories—those 'starry night memories,' the ones we keep in our memory vaults—sometimes they're so much a part of us, they need to be written about.” I take a deep breath, wind up for the killer point: “You need to take those memories out from an inner place of safe storage, to a public place of recorded story. One memory could even be the starting point for an entire memoir.”

The group is silent, not a single head nodding now. But I trust this brainy bunch. They just need a moment.

“Ohhhh,” breathes Sara. “You mean our deepest memories – the ones that make us, ourselves.”

“The ones that are as much us, as our fingerprints or our voices,” adds another participant.

“The memory-stars inside us,” chimes a third.

“Yes,” I say. “Those.”

                                                                   

Then I feel that usual slither of fear down my spine – which is probably why I didn't want to do this exercise, hoped no one would notice its omission from our full day of learning and sharing.

                                                                   

More to myself than to the group, I hear myself say: “Of course once you write about those memories, you kinda lose them as your special friends in your own might skies.” I should hold back the next thoughts, too, but somehow I can’t. “Sometimes it feels like there are only a finite number of the most intense, writable memories. So you might … run out.”

                                                                   

A weighted moment of consideration by all, then Sara cries out: “No! That's not it. As soon as you set one memory free, another is able to rise up and take its place. It's like water coming up in our footprints on the beach. All those footprints, all that water and sand:  that can't be counted individually, any more than memories can. And think of this,” her voice is triumphant now, “why shouldn't the memory that comes up be even more special than the one you let go of? It certainly could be as special.”

I will not gasp. I will not cry. I will not sag with relief.

                                                                   

“Yes,” I say, with apparent calm, my interior landscape as a memory-hoarder forever changed. “I can see that, Sara.”

What I see, in fact, is what I've known for ages, as an essayist and a memoirist: the memories do change within after you've offered them up publicly, becoming less vivid in some ways, more substantial in others. Most startling of all, they go on to have their own separate lives apart from you, in the memories of those who read about them.

But I have guarded my deepest, most personal memories partly because they are so connected to people I love, many of whom have passed on, either from simple old age, or complicated early deaths; replaying the memories seems like the only way I can spend time with them. Hence the instinct to hoard. Mine, all mine.

Which goes against every writerly instinct to share stories, I know. Somehow I’ve worked around that, my lifelong need to write and share stories winning out over my fears of losing particular, beloved memories.

What startles me more than anything from Sara's outburst is the idea of memories-in-waiting. Archaeological layers of memories, waiting to be troweled up into the sun. Bonus! I have never before thought of memories as infinite. I am exhilarated and delighted … and a wee bit intimidated. I am used to corralling, then gradually sharing what I thought was a finite selection of memories.

                                                                   

I stand silently in front of eight pairs of intelligent, kind eyes, and I think: I could claim that whole vast universe of memory that exists within us all, and I could experience more beauty, feel more sustenance from my waking, day-skies, too. Balance, I think, it’s all about balancing then and now.

                                                                   

Aloud I say: Close your eyes for a moment. Forget that it's daytime. Settle into a pretend night sky. Stars upon stars. When you go to your memories, what are the bright constellations you always go to?

Eight pens find paper. When I give workshops, next to the epiphanies that often come with the sharing of ideas, these silent, working times are my favourites..I love to see writers write. We've talked in and around memoir for most of a day, sharing what fascinates and frustrates us about this saucy, renegade genre. Now it's time for quiet, and the recording of thoughts, perhaps of epiphanies, certainly memories – starry night and otherwise.

Note: You can connect with Marjorie via her website, on Facebook, at Twitter, and

*Marjorie's next memoir workshop, The Minefields of Memoir, is scheduled for June 17, 2017, at the Thinkers Lodge National Historic Site, in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. Information is posted at her site.

                                                                       

The Post-Conference, Post-Vacation Post

Probably the smartest thing to do after a writing conference would be hurry home and burrow in, open a new document (or six!) for all the ideas that skittered across your mind while there. Or, better yet, take a solitary decompressing trip, that frees you to write and muse. I've done both of those things before.

What I hadn't done was return home, run a load of laundry, answer only the urgent emails, repack, sleep a few hours, and then set out with my family for an enforced four days of R&R—strictly away from my computer, all of us together in a small seaside house (often huddled in the A/C to escape daunting heat and humidity when not under a beach umbrella to escape frigid A/C), and on unspoken but rather clear orders from my husband not to disappear into my brain and essentially away from the moment

I had books. I had my notebook. What I didn't have was time to spread out all my notes from Hippocamp 2016 (a conference for creative nonfiction writers), and reflect, make notes, tackle follow-ups in the immediate manner I like, and to write a post-conference post.

But I'm back at my desk now (feeling of course as if I never did leave it!), so here goes.

If you read my post from the first day of activities this year, you already know how much I love this conference. You can scroll the live-at-the-time tweets, and read other post-Hippocamp coverage here and here and here, and at the official conference recap page. I'll just share some of what showed up in my notebook and program margins when I was sitting in the audience at various presentations.

First, I'll note that I was completely unprepared and overwhelmed by the lovely, positive reaction to my own session, "Writing About the Same Experience Across Multiple Pieces." Not only did people fill every seat in the break-out room (nerve-wracking and wonderful), but I was gobsmacked by how—for hours afterward and into the next day—so many writers approached me to say that the session opened up something for them about their own CNF work. I've never had that kind of response before, and almost cannot adequately express how much it meant to me. (And served as a timely reminder that when I'm in the audience and find value in a speaker's presentation, saying so afterward, face-to-face, can be a true gift to that person.)

Now, on to some of the small gems I came away with.

> In the Collage Essay Workshop (a pre-conference add-on), we got to talking about other fragmented forms, and Sarah Einstein shared her own definition of a segmented essay, which she thinks of as not exactly linear, but a series of interconnected stories that follow a timeline progression. Yes! That makes so much sense; something I think I intuitively understood but hadn't worked out a definition for.

> During a panel on query letters, one agent (sorry, didn't record who!) suggested a simple formula: "The hook, the book, the cook." What's the essential heart of the book?  What is the book about (slightly extended description)? Who is the writer?  Another noted that query letters should involve no more than "one scroll" of the email screen. Still another advised digging through the Manuscript Wish List's site or following #MSWL on Twitter.

> Wendy Fontaine, part of a panel on truth in nonfiction, shared some of her captivating research on memory and recall, brain anatomy and function. This, for example: "The brain makes no biological delineation between a true memory and a false one." Whoa! Certainly makes me want to think twice, or three, maybe four times when writing about what I think I remember clearly.

> At a presentation on designing and delivering a writers' retreat, Joanne Lozar Glenn advised working backward from the intended outcome. Ask yourself what you want the writers who will attend to take away from the experience. Newly generated pages? A notebook of ideas? Feedback? New process skills? Community? A combination? Something else?

> In a talk on incorporating science into CNF, Jeannine Pfeiffer, writer and scientist, suggested ways to track down data and experts without spending a lot on abstracts or other access to scientific journals—such as using Google Scholar; the Public Library of Science; asking a professor friend to let you search on Academia.edu or Researchgate.net; gaining in-person access to a local university library; and searching the terms "open access journals" + "your topic".

> At a session on content marketing, Kelly Kautz noted that for writers who are marketing themselves, their books, and/or their services, it's wise to tame the intimidating monster that is analytics data, focusing only on areas that are meaningful to you. Identify keyword combinations that work, and then purposely use them in posts or social media exchanges. That means, for me, posts incorporating the word combinations "New Jersey… Editor" "Writing teacher…NJ" and "NJ…writing coach," might be in my future.

> Jim Warner, on a panel about literary citizenship, invited writers from everywhere to submit audio files from literary events, especially interviews with authors, for consideration for his podcast, CitizenLit.

> Finally, it would be impossible to sum up all the wonderfulness that was Mary Karr's keynote address, so I'll leave you with these notes:

On writing about family: "A dysfunctional family is any form of family with more than one person."

On stories within memoir: "Memoir is, by its nature, episodic. Everyone has stories."

On melodrama: "Don't write how you suffered. Write how you survived."

On writing from reality: "Don't exaggerate. Trust that what you experienced was enough."

On blame: "Judge yourself more harshly than anyone else."

On her writing process: "One sentence at a time. There's no strategy. Jump lump along. Six hours or 1000 words a day, whichever comes first."

On revision: "Make the ugly parts prettier. Make the pretty parts better. And if you can't, cut it out, because you don't want to be boring."

There was so much more. I suspect it's all going to be buzzing around my writer's brain for weeks or months to come, and maybe as long as it takes to get back there in September 2017. Which is what I want out of a conference after all.

Images - Beach umbrella: Flickr/CreativeCommons - Monkeyatlarge - Memory stone: Flickr/CreativeCommons-Tim Green aka atoach

Friday Fridge Clean-out: Links for Writers - December 13, 2013 Edition

> Deflated by workshop feedback? Diana Munoz Stewart at The Write Catch has some excellent thoughts on what to do with all that comes your way across the workshop table, in "Why So Many Good Writers Can't Write".

> Good post by Bryan Cohen over at Memoir Writer's Journey, on "Using Sense Memory to Remember Story Details."

> Your book has won an award. Now what?  At Build Book Buzz, Sandra Beckwith has 12 good ideas on spreading the news.

> Cool slide show -- 50 narrative devices for nonfiction story tellers, over at Inside the Story.

> If you tweet to attract readers, build your platform, or expand your writing-related business, you might need these "50 Ways to Get Out of Your Twitter Rut."

> Like to make a donation that goes directly to helping kids and teens read good books? I favor the Books section at Donors Choose, where teachers post requests and you pick the classroom and project you want to help. Make a pledge, then get updates, and a note (and sometimes a photo) from the teacher when the project is fully funded, and books have been purchased and are in kids' hands.

> Interesting, detailed report on "The Ghostwriting Business" over at Priceonomics.

> Continuing with my new practice of pointing my readers to other blogs that post interesting links lists, be sure to check out Erika Dreifus's Friday Finds for Writers.

> Finally, two fun things... First, over at Rattle, Francesca Bell's hilarious poem that expresses what every writer who has ever received a rejection (hey, that's every writer, right?), might like to say in return.  And, "The Top Ten Reasons Not to Write", over at Brenda Moguez's Passionate Pursuits. Numbers 10, 5, and 1 said it all for me!

Have a great weekend!

Endings. Beginnings. For nonfiction writers, it's always note-taking season.

         I am approaching a season of endings. Or rather, the endings have already begun, mostly in the area of my parenting life. In less than a month, my elder son will graduate from high school and his younger brother will finish middle school. Instead of a summer filled with camp, Boy Scout projects and events, and a family vacation, there will be summer jobs, and an orientation visit, and me working more hours than I usually do in the "off-season" (tuition bills take no holiday!)  
          In August, the first one starts college in another state, and the second heads to an out-of-town high school, boarding a train each morning as his brother did. And I'll begin…worrying, making adjustments, crying a little, praying a lot, planning, and feeling as if the earth has tilted. 
         But first, and all along the way, I am taking notes. 
         Now you know why I am talking about this on my writing site.  
         Taking notes.
         Isn't that what all personal essayists and memoir writers do when life shifts, when things end, when things begin?  In between the adjusting, crying, worrying, changing, shifting, praying, feeling nostalgic and maybe regretful and certainly grateful and hopeful?  
         We take notes. 
         We observe – ourselves and others. We listen. 
         And we sneak off and write it down. You know, in all those little notebooks we squirrel away – in purses, briefcases, backpacks, cars, laundry rooms, kitchens, bedside tables, gym bags, desk drawers.  
         You do stash tiny notebooks everywhere, don't you?  
         Or we send ourselves a text, an email, a voice message if no notebook is available. Or we scribble on receipts, soccer schedules, pizza menus, deposit slips, coupons, junk mail envelopes. 
         I do, anyway.
        We write it down.  Or, we forget. Nonfiction writers don't want to forget, because when we forget, if we forget, we are sunk. 
        We write nonfiction, after all, because we don't forget, and because it's in the not forgetting that we find meaning. Or at least, we try to.
         And so, as I begin to stockpile dorm room necessities in big plastic storage tubs, I'll be taking notes. When I have a moment in between the graduation ceremony and the family lunch, I'll be taking notes. If either or both sons sit at the kitchen counter and leaf through their yearbooks with me, I'll disappear right after and take notes. After my husband and I drive away from the college campus, and after we wave goodbye to a departing train, I'll be taking notes. 
         Better get a new pen with ink that doesn't run.

Update:  I wrote this last week and scheduled it to automatically post this morning.  Yesterday I got the ultimate call about endings:  My mother passed away at age 86. In the last four years, she had four heart attacks, a stroke, and was suffering from kidney disease and congestive heart failure. I wasn't there at the end. Not long after I got the news, I immediately thought of a writer who once wrote about sitting at her dying mother's bedside, and her mother, knowing how much her daughter was comforted and sustained by writing about life's seminal moments, told her daughter, kindly, "take notes."  I can't remember right now who wrote that - it may have been Patricia Hampl or perhaps Ann Hulbert or maybe another writer altogether (if someone knows, I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me) It was Nora Ephron-- but I do know this:  late last night, I reached for my notebook. 

Stuff My Writing Students Say, Part 11 -- On getting casual, lazy, sloppy.

"I realized that I had become a very casual writer. With texting, emails and Facebook, I've gotten sloppy and lazy."

So many writers have, and of course, it's helpful to be aware of this tendency and guard against a too-casual, even sloppy approach to the creative work we write in the hopes of publication. Just as we take care that the easy, sketchy, rough-note aspects of first drafts don't cross over into more polished pieces, it's also a good idea to create a mental boundary around the kind of sloppy, casual way we write in emails and social media, and the way we approach how we write when we are writing for real.

But it's perhaps not all bad news. In fact, several times over the past six months, I've actually advised a few writers to look to their casual, sloppy, social correspondence in order to get to a new place in their memoir manuscripts and/or personal essays.

Some nonfiction writers find it difficult to dig down deeper than surface level and express sometimes uncomfortable feelings, or to describe potentially embarrassing or painful personal moments in an essay or memoir form; and yet, sometimes these are the very same people who tell me they can however, easily express themselves and tell the real story underneath a surface situation, when writing an email to a very close friend.

When I hear this, I make what to me seems a very logical suggestion, but one which many seem to find a bit odd: Gather up those emails -- they are kindling, fodder, the ingredients for a from-scratch creative meal. Yes, they will be wordy and rambling and not always on point. But that's okay. It's in the spaces between the tangents and the sprawling, long-winded rants and prose pity parties, where the valuable stuff resides.

It's not that I want these writers to copy and paste this material directly into their pieces, but I do want them to take a look at it, think about what they've written there, and consider what they've told their best friend and why and how they first wrote it. If they are lucky, those emails go back to the time in question they are trying to write about. Why wouldn't you study them? The way, say, you'd go back and re-read personal journals? What better memory trigger?

In this way, I've seen a few writers make the leap from hiding behind vague descriptions and imprecise emotional language, to getting their more elusive, emotional stories on the page.

Sure, we want to be aware that today's modes of communication encourage sloppy writing, and keep our standards high for our more meaningful work. One effective but oh-so-difficult habit is to clearly separate the time we spend really writing, from the time we are participating in any online activities (as in, turn off the damn internet when writing!). But these newer communication methods also encourage writing, period. And encourage us to tell our stories, sloppy as they may be, to our first read readers, our confidants. Sometimes, sloppy – in an emotional sense -- is what you want, at critical points in working as a creative nonfiction writer.

You can read the rest of the Stuff My Writing Students Say series here.

Memory, nonfiction, and writing about the here and now

I've always been interested in how nonfiction writers work with memories, recreating on the page the events of our past. I even occasionally give presentations to writers groups about it, and also cover the topic in some of my classes. I'm interested in how we can retrieve bits of stubborn memories, how the writing process itself helps loosen additional details, and what we can do to work around, through and sometimes without, the memories we think are necessary to tell a particular story.

I think this intrigues me because a large portion of my creative nonfiction work has pivoted on incidents from at least five years in the past, and some goes back further – 10, 20, even 30 years ago. Although my freelance journalism activities have included a fair share of reporting and opining keyed to current events, for creative nonfiction, it's looking back, often far back, that has always felt more comfortable to me.

Then my father died in 2006, and suddenly I had a compelling need to write about that experience, not so long after it occurred. Slowly, over the four-plus years since, more and more of the present (or more recent past) has crept into my work.

And then last summer, I did what for me, was rather strange: wrote a personal essay about what was happening in my life, right then. I did not fool myself that the piece had the same kind of depth and nuance, the same kind of reflective insight and long-lens perspective I liked to see on the page; but then again, there was a certain energy and tone to it that I liked. Here's how and why it happened.

Last May, I was asked to write twice a month for the Love Mom section at Your Tango. Technically, this made me a (paid) blogger, though my editor and I agreed my pieces wouldn't be casual chronicles, but personal essays. The site typically skews to a younger readership, but I was to represent the slightly older Mom voice, the one with experience, teenage children, and a 22 year marriage.

It was an interesting learning curve, as my (now former) twenty-something editor and I wrestled with getting the tone right, somewhere between here's-what-I-know-for-sure and despite-my-experience-I'm-as-clueless-as-every-other-mother. I experimented with essays that reached back to specific events from when my boys were babies – such as how a miscarriage once affected holiday plans, and my initial reluctance at the prospect of motherhood -- and those noting current struggles, but still reliant on echoes of past experience – such as my annual family-free week, and making peace with being just good enough.

Then last summer, faced with a deadline and operating on scant sleep while across the country at my mother's and on the third week of hospital bedside duty, and missing my family, I decided to let fly with an of-the-moment essay about the mixed emotions stirred by the situation. After getting over the small tremor of fear that my siblings would be upset by the piece, I rather liked the experience. Since then, I've continued to write about what's happening, as it happens, including a follow-up when my mother had another heart attack and I decided not to fly to her side. In one of my favorite pieces, I wrote about anticipating how much I'll miss the family routines we take for granted today, when they are one day gone.

While I don't write or think of these essays in the same manner I do the longer, deeper pieces I continue to work on for other venues, I've grown quite fond of writing them. As I tell my students all the time, shorter is harder, and at less than 800 words, these short pieces are a useful way to practice what I teach.

Going back to the idea of memory, I've also discovered – or rather reconfirmed what I probably already knew – that all memory is tricky, and rich, and so very fallible. Recalling what happened two weeks ago -- and what it means, how I felt, the way others reacted, and who said what -- is as much an act of using one's imagination, as to mine material from decades past.

Turns out, I like getting a story out to readers without even knowing for sure it will all turn out. (Why I should be so surprised, given my initial journalism training?) That part though is a risk for someone like me who is much more comfortable knowing the end of a story before putting a single word on the page. But then again, I need to remind myself that most of the time when I write a very long piece about something which took place 20 years ago, the "end" I eventually write toward is rarely the same conclusion I had originally attached to that story in my memory.

This week over at Love Mom, I wrote about how the preparations for the SAT -- and my son's not-so-subtle stance against my inner-Tiger Mother instincts -- had me re-evaluating the hovering blunders I've made, and how I'm now trying to change that pattern. And who knows, two months from now it may be that I've not really changed at all; that "lesson learned" may have faded to a missed opportunity and I may feel slightly nauseated that I touted what turned out to be an unearned epiphany.

That's the risk I guess of writing in the present. I've avoided it a long time, and so for now at least, I want to see how that particular writing glove fits. Good thing too, since now I'm contributing an essay weekly at Love Mom. I hope you will hop over from time to time to see how it's going, let me know how I'm doing. (All of my pieces at the site are listed here.)

Reading (Way) Outside My Comfort Zone

I like to read outside my comfort zone from time to time, and when I do read a book, or even part of one, which I wouldn't ordinarily pick up, I always learn something.

Readers of this blog know of my interest in song lyrics and the people who write them. While waiting for my son to finish a chess club event at our library the other day, my eyes fell on Decoded by Jay-Z.

In the book, the rapper and hip hop star offers analyses of his own lyrics, interleafed with anecdotal reminiscences of coming of age in the Budford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. I'm pretty certain Jay-Z had a ghostwriter, and she's kept the star's voice on the page (for better and worse, depending on each reader's taste).

I read the first 40 pages in between doing a zillion other things – one of which was compiling a lecture on nonficiton writing that involved working with memories that seem elusive or incomplete. One of my points is that in many cases, it's often more interesting to the reader – and certainly more honest – for the writer to put our own misgivings about the quality of our memory right on the page, to write the memory holes into the prose. I know I have many examples of this on my bookshelf.


But before I had a chance to look for them, there, on page 4 of Decoded, I stumbled across one example of working with a fragmented memory. Jay-Z is describing the first time he saw a rapping rhymer in action, on a street corner in his rough-and-tumble world (bold mine):

"...Like the day I wandered up to something I'd never see before: a cipher – but I wouldn't have called it that; no one would've back then. It was just a circle of scrappy, ashy, skinny Brooklyn kids laughing and clapping their hands, their eyes trained on the center. I might have been with my cousin B-High, but I might have been alone, on my way home from playing baseball with my Little League squad. "

He can't remember who he was with or where he was going, so he shares that with the reader, suggesting likely scenarios based on the activities he does remember doing frequently (being with B-High, walking home from baseball). He didn't know what to call the thing he'd come across, though later he learned the word (cipher), but he tells the reader about his ignorance at the time of the incident. Both are better decisions, sharing with the reader what the author doesn't know, than either skipping the incident altogether, or fleshing it out with details he can't stand behind or couldn't have known at the moment.

As for the book in its entirety, I may not get to page 317. I know only a handful of Jay-Z's recordings, so I can't comment on whether his meditations on, and explanations of the lyrics, jive with what I thought the lyrics meant (or if I really want to go there). I don't have an opinion on whether hip hop lyrics are a new and important poetic form. Or even if I like the guy.

I'm only saying that when I read outside my comfort zone, it makes me think. Sometimes, I read more carefully. That's always a good thing for a writer.

Readers, what have you read lately that's outside your comfort zone?