Member-only story
6 Things To Leave Out of Your Memoir
And One Thing to Include
By Pamela Jane
“The writer of any work, and particularly any nonfiction work, must decide two crucial points: what to put in and what to leave out…” Annie Dillard, author, An American Childhood.
But how do you know exactly what to put in and what to leave out, especially, when you’re so close to your story?
Memoir is a discovery of self as well as story. Hopefully these signposts will help guide you along the way.
DO Leave Out:
1. Everything
To quote Annie Dillard again,
“You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on to the reader’s arm, like a drunk, and say, “And then I did this and it was so interesting.”
As funny or fascinating as a favorite anecdote may be, you can’t throw everything that strikes your fancy into your memoir. I’m not saying you have to kill all your darlings — just the ones that are running around unattached.
2. Something that makes you profoundly uncomfortable
A colleague who critiqued an early draft of my memoir, remarked, “I have the feeling that there was more going on between you and [one of the characters] than you’re letting on.”
