Don't Listen To Everything You Believe In

The Best Book On Writing Memoir I've Ever Read

A friend was asking me recently about how to write a personal story. It was about her father who had died of a rare brain disease. At first I wasn't even sure what she was asking, but in the end, it seems she was trying to figure out how to get it out. I asked her why she wasn't simply writing a memoir and she responded, "You mean write it in the order that it happened?"

This is the funny thing about memoirs. There are no rules. Not really. Okay, maybe a few rules, but they don't have anything to do with the form of the writing. Only the essence.

First rule: Be honest. This is about being true to the story. It's about looking for truth, but don't ever let facts get in the way of finding the truth. Facts are funny things when it comes to memory. Details are important. Facts, not so much.

The truth is, sometimes writing in it in the order that it happened can be helpful. Personally, I think that puts too much pressure on getting all the facts down. I'm more interested in what happened, not when.

The book pictured above is by an author I adore. The first book I read by her was called "A Three Dog Life" and was about...well, to be honest, I don't know what it was about. It was about her life. It was about everything. I guess at its core, it began as a story about how she lost her husband when he suffered severe brain damage when he was struck by a car while walking their dog in NYC. He didn't actually die till years later, but he had no short term memory. Hardly a memory at all. That part of his brain was gone. But that was just one of the facts, and not really the story. The story was a jumbled mix of details, all of them fascinating, and none of them necessarily relevant in and of themselves. But together they told the truth about this one period of her life.

Memories
• I was camping a few years ago with my wife Jane and our friends Bob and Donna. Donna was telling me something she'd heard on the radio or TV. Something I was skeptical about and so I meant to tell her, "You can't believe everything you hear." What I actually told her was, "You can't listen to everything you believe in." Truth be told, we'd all had a few drinks, but not so much that I didn't laugh and immediately write it down in my journal. It's true. Even more so than not believing everything you hear. Sometimes, you really shouldn't listen to everything you think you believe in.

• My friend Don, who has a similar sense of humor, which is to say odd, told me recently about a sign he saw in an Asian laundromat. It was hanging over a dryer and it said, "Sneakers left in dryer, will open doors, and time will be lost." We're still pondering that one.