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One book reviewer states that as fact, so let’s take a look.

“There is no grail so holy as the truth of one’s own story. And to tell it so that others may find meaning, there requires self-awareness minus the safe distances of irony or sarcasm—as well as belief that one’s story is worthy of being told.”

I was reading an ordinary entry in the Sunday, February 8, New York Times Book Review section when I came across that paragraph. I had to smile. Has it become simply fact that “the truth of one’s own story” is so vastly important? This is what we memoir coaches have been telling clients all along, but I wasn’t aware that it had risen to become conventional wisdom. But there it was, stated by journalist Danyel Smith in a review of The Flower Bearers by Rachel Eliza Griffiths, who’s married to author Salman Rushdie.

Worthiness doubts

Let’s start with the easy part of that paragraph—the notion at the end that to be a memoir author you have to believe that your story is worthy of being told. It seems self-evident, but I really tried to consider whether you could write your story despite self-loathing or just a nagging doubt that anyone would want to read about your life.

I don’t see why not. You just write it anyway. You can think about the subject—yourself—as someone else. Pretend that you’re just discovering this person. Now is the book more interesting? Or look at it as an assignment: write about yourself in a somewhat flattering light. And, really, humility can work in your favor. If you’re all full of yourself, your memoir will reflect that. Braggy memoirs sit on shelves.

If you’re writing a memoir mostly for informational purposes—to leave it for grandchildren and later generations—then your life is interesting because it’s their heritage. It doesn’t have to be filled with exciting adventures, tear-jerking tragedies or great achievement. Your life is about the stock they came from, and they’ll appreciate it.

Then there’s the goal of writing your own book for yourself. That is good enough. It’s your life, and it’s not unusual to want to document it from your own perspective. You’ll hand it out to friends, maybe list it on Amazon, but you’re doing this to fulfill a goal. And whether your life is worthy of a read or not, the goal itself is worthy of pursuing.

To sell a memoir, you must have either a great story or great writing. You don’t need both. If you’re a very good writer, you can choose quirky stories from your ordinary life and still write a fantastic book. And if you’re not a good writer, but your story is truly compelling or you have a large following, a publisher might get you a ghostwriter or excellent editor.

Self-awareness, no irony or sarcasm

The reviewer who wrote the paragraph specifically says a memoir author must have self-awareness and not hide behind irony or sarcasm. I agree with that. You have to be aware of what motivated you to act as you did at every turn of your story. You must understand your own talents and shortcomings and how you acquired them. You should be generous in giving credit to parents or mentors or some luck for your achievements, and you must be simply honest, raw and without attitude about any harm that was done to you. Lead with your heart; don’t give into the temptation to be cute or clever while not taking enough accountability. Readers will respond in turn with their own hearts, appreciating that you’ve presented yourself as naked as a newborn.

I remember when two celebrity memoirs were released at the same time, in October 2023, thereby meeting the risky fate of being compared against each other. Reviewers praised Henry Winkler’s Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond as less self-conscious, more genuine than John Stamos’s If You Would Have Told Me: A Memoir. I didn’t read the Stamos effort, but I did read Winkler’s book, and it was so forthcoming, candid, bare.

Truth as holy grail

Now we get to the initial claim that there is no grail so holy as your truth about your own story. I don’t know; it seems hyperbolic to me. If you ask 100 people to finish that sentence—“There is no grail as holy as…”—I doubt that “the truth of one’s own story” will come to the mind of any of them.

But, look, I’m a memoir coach. I believe in “one’s own story” even if I stopped using “one’s” when I realized I wasn’t British. I believe in the personally told narrative of every single life. I enjoy good writing. Put that together and I suppose it’s a grail holy enough to earn the distinction.

Are your pastimes and passions worthy of inclusion?

Typically, in your memoir you’ll write about your career and family, but what about hobbies and memoir—are they compatible? If you decide that your pastimes and passions worthy of inclusion, how do you present them?

The quick answer is yes, anything about yourself that you want readers to know can be appropriate to include in a memoir. However, memoirs typically have a theme. It’s tempting to shoehorn your favorite stories about your life into that theme, but the reader may not support such indulgence, even if you successfully pull off the justification you contrive for the inclusion.

But let’s say you decide to take that chance. Then you have two choices: dedicate a separate chapter, or sprinkle the hobby throughout the book.

A Dedicated Chapter

Dedicating a chapter to your hobby is the simpler of the two options. Find a place for that chapter that feels organic and doesn’t stop the action. Let’s say you’re an avid tennis player in a memoir about surviving domestic abuse. You’re going along chronologically without mentioning sports. But there’s one tennis game you remember playing against the abuser—a parent, spouse or partner—and during the game the person criticizes your abilities or yells at you, or maybe the game itself is the trigger for intensified abuse. That’s where you can insert the chapter.

Start this chapter either by setting the scene for that game or introducing your love of tennis to the reader. I’d lean toward the former. You set the scene, and then you spend a few paragraphs or pages on your tennis experiences. You go over the background of why you started playing and also can go into the future with information about later tennis achievements. Then come back to where you are chronologically in the book, at that game with your abuser, and describe that scene.

Recently, I helped a memoir author do something like that. I’m currently coaching an author who is writing mostly about her paranormal experiences and theories but wanted to include her love of opera. We crafted a chapter that picked up where her story was chronologically and linked her attendance at an opera at about that time with a paranormal experience she had. Then we traced other operas she’d attended both earlier and later in her life, describing her travel to cities to see them and any odd occurrences that took place.

A Sprinkle Throughout the Book

If you go in the opposite direction, by the time you get to the story of playing tennis with your abuser the reader already knows about your love of the game. One advantage of this is that you can build suspense about the eventual scene of your tennis match. You can have a paragraph like this:

“He suggested a game of tennis to see whether, at my young age, I could beat him. Since I’d already made plans to play with Lily that day, I had a legitimate excuse to turn down the invitation. The last thing I needed was for him to ruin one more passion for me. But I knew that, sooner or later, the invitation would morph into a command, and I’d have to face him on the tennis court. Once he got an idea in his head, he never let it go.”

Helping the Reader to Know You

Now let’s say you love to read. A lot of your down time has found you on a sofa or in a hammock, on a beach or in your bed, with a book or Kindle in your hands. You follow certain authors and feel that for people to really know you, they have to be aware of your taste in fiction. Does that belong in a memoir?

With skillful writing, you can get away with a lot. You can tie in your favorite books with events in your life or your introversion or what you had in common with the person you married. It can be enough for the reader to accept it as a way to fully know you.

I understand. Above you see a photo of me preparing to run a race in Senior Games track and field just last week. If I wrote a book about my later years, no matter what the theme, I think I would have to include some mention of how I transformed from a never-athlete into a senior quasi-athlete.

There are lots of ways to sneak in your hobby. Just be careful not to alienate your reader!

What we can learn from canned writing.

Artificial Intelligence’s quality of writing keeps getting more impressive, and I want to be open to examining memoir content written by AI. Even if the writing style is kind of dry, maybe we can learn something from canned writing.

An AI Memoir Writing Sample

Take a look at this sample. In addition to creating the above image through AI, I asked AI to provide three paragraphs of descriptive writing in first person about the day my dad left our family in suburban St. Louis. This is not from my own life—I grew up in the northeast and had a devoted dad—but it’s believable that a memoir author might include this episode. See what you think:

The bright morning sun spilled through the kitchen window, casting a warm glow on the table where my mother was packing lunches for my siblings and me. The air was filled with the comforting scent of toasted bread and freshly brewed coffee. I remember sitting on a stool, watching her cover sandwiches with plastic wrap as she hummed softly to herself. “Mom, where’s Dad?” I asked, glancing toward the hallway. She paused, her hands stilling momentarily before she replied, her voice strained. “Oh, sweetie, he’s just… he’s got some things to take care of.” The way she avoided eye contact made my stomach churn. In that moment, I felt a heaviness settle in the pit of my stomach, a weight I could not yet articulate.

That evening, as twilight cast a dusky hue over our cul-de-sac, my siblings and I were playing outside, blissfully unaware of the storm brewing inside our home. Suddenly, the front door swung open, and I watched Dad step out, duffel bag slung over his shoulder. My heart raced as I jogged toward him, confusion wrinkling my brow. “Dad, where are you going?” I asked, trying to hold back the urgency in my voice. He hesitated and looked down at me, his expression a delicate mix of sadness and resolve. “I need to do this for me, buddy. I promise it’s not what you think.” My little brother, playing with the soccer ball, kicked it towards Dad, unaware of the gravity of the moment. Dad sighed, knelt down, and ruffled his hair. “Take care of your mom, okay? I’ll… I’ll be back.”

The door closed behind him with a finality that echoed in my chest. I stood frozen on the porch as the sound of my siblings’ laughter faded into an uncertain silence. My mother emerged moments later, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. She knelt down and gathered us into her arms, murmuring reassurances that felt hollow. “Everything will be alright, I promise,” she said, but the tremor in her voice suggested otherwise. “Mom, why is he leaving?” I whispered, fear creeping into my tone. She simply held us tighter, her warmth and fragility intertwining. “Sometimes, people have to find their own way,” she breathed, the truth heavy in the air, as we stood together, trying to navigate a world that suddenly seemed much colder.

Tips from the AI Passage

I think this is astonishingly adequate. Give AI a few more details about how this happened to you, and if you’re in high school you can pretty much hand it in as written, although of course I don’t recommend doing that. What can this passage teach us about good writing?

1. There is a standard way of writing; you can’t justify your loose knowledge of grammar by saying that’s just your writing style, as valid as any other style. Here, AI knows that the mom packed sandwiches “for my siblings and me,” not “for my siblings and I,” which is what I see all too frequently in my editing work. There are a few questionable word choices—the phrase “her hands stilling” is a clue that this was not written by a modern human, and “toward” is more standard U.S. English than “towards”—but the grammar in the AI piece is nearly flawless. The main error for a memoir is that in dialogue, each speaker should start a new paragraph. Maybe AI even knows this but, because I asked for only three paragraphs, it ignored the paragraphing rule. Other than that, the punctuation, word usage, preference for active voice—it’s all correct. If you’re weak on grammar, study AI’s sentence construction and you very well may pick up some tips.
2. Telling a story involves all the senses. In this sample, AI helps the reader see, hear, smell and feel what’s going on in the scene. Sun spilling through a window, covering a sandwich in plastic wrap, humming to herself, the dad ruffling the brother’s hair—it all paints a vivid picture and puts the reader right in the frame. Her “eyes glistening with unshed tears”— you can clearly picture that face.
3. Fill holes but don’t waste words on unnecessary detail. The story unfolds logically. There are no holes for the reader to fill in. How did the father get outside? “The door swung open.” You might wonder a little about what happened during the day between the morning scene and the evening scene, but it’s a valid option to set up tension from the morning and go right to the events of the evening rather than throwing in a sentence in between explaining that the kids went to school and the parents went to work.
4. Don’t repeat. AI has the appropriate use of pronouns instead of over-clarifying who was speaking/causing action by repeating the character’s name. Again using the example of jumping from morning to evening, we can assume that earlier in the book the reader learns what these people normally do all day, so there’s no need to repeat that. The word “stomach” is used in two sentences in a row, but for the most part synonyms are freely sprinkled in to avoid repeating favorite words the way a human writer tends to do.
5. Some cliché is ok. I can accept “morning sun spilled,” “the air was filled with the comforting scent,” “fear creeping into my tone,” and even “the truth heavy in the air.” With all of our words, we and AI alike will eventually hit on phrases written by authors who came before us. If you’re describing a window letting in the sun, the sun will be spilling, streaming, rolling, floating, shining—whatever you choose, you’re unlikely to come up with a brand new idea.

Human vs AI

Keep in mind that I gave AI only a few facts, and the rest is fiction that AI made up. So apart from the story reporting, I think AI did a good job of plot and character development all on its own. But you’re writing memoir, not fiction, so developing plot and characters is all on you because you’re also accountable to what happened in reality.

So what’s missing? Something is missing, right?

It’s voice. There’s a narrative voice there, but it’s not a compelling or unique voice. And even though I’m willing to accept some cliché, all of this feels like something you’ve read before. That makes sense, of course, since AI draws from everything that’s already been written. Still, I’m impressed with “his expression a delicate mix of sadness and resolve.”

I’m standing by my reference to this as “canned writing.” It’s fine for a pamphlet or website, for instructional content and supplying facts. In fact, it’s just fine. It’s not special. Your voice is what makes your memoir special. You can have the most amazing life with truly unique experiences, and if your voice doesn’t charm or compel people to keep reading, your memoir will fall flat.

This AI passage would be difficult for me to edit. I make it a priority to retain the author’s voice. Here, there’s nothing to hold onto. I couldn’t improve it. I would have to start from scratch and interview the author in order to write in the author’s voice.

You’re not AI. You’re human and special, and just keep that in mind as you write your memoir. Your book has to rise above the writing in a generic pamphlet.

Does the master’s advice hold up in this century and for our genre?

Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises was the first novel I couldn’t put down. I was in high school. I stealthily turned pages during class and continued reading as I walked through the halls between classes, bumping into anything in my way. I’d already enjoyed reading A Farewell to Arms, so I decided, in the habit teens have of attaching their own identity to things and people, that Hemingway was my writer of choice. Recently I discovered Ernest Hemingway’s 7 tips for writing, listed online on multiple sites. Would they hold value for memoir authors in 2025?

Hemingway never wrote out these 7 tips for writing as a prescription. Rather, observers gleaned them from his interviews, lectures and other opportunities to quote him. The Sun Also Rises was published 99 years ago, and Hemingway continued to be relevant until his death in 1961. As a writer he may have broken more rules than he followed. His crisp writing is known for its short sentences and generally minimalist style at a time when wordy, flowery descriptions were more the fiction fashion.

So I don’t think Hemingway would object to our going through his advice to see whether we, as 21st century writers, agree. We write memoir, not fiction, so that alone may impact how we perceive the 7 tips for writing.

1. To get started, write one true sentence.

I like this first suggestion, but in memoir it’s obvious. When you write one true sentence in fiction, you establish a concrete foundation to build upon. You know you have a believable, relatable start to whatever you will write next. In memoir, every sentence you write must be true or at least true-ish. And yet that doesn’t make the advice inappropriate. I might change this to “write one true sentence about one story in your life.” What Hemingway is addressing here is how to get started. If you write one sentence that’s a solid cue to the story in your mind, you’ll have something there. You’ll really have something.

2. Stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.

Hemingway said this was his most important advice, because if you always know what happens next you’ll never wake up with writer’s block. In fiction, you’re making up a story. I suppose it’s possible to conjure up your next scene before you quit for the day.

Memoir is trickier. I agree that this is a great goal, but you might not be able to fulfill the assignment at the end of every writing session. We tend to write memoir one story at a time and worry less about transitions between stories until our second draft. So I would say have a plan for what you want to write about next, but it doesn’t have to be “what happens next.” In fact, it may not be writing at all. You may know that your next step is to interview a friend or relative, search through records, or visit a location from your past. But I like the advice to have a plan for tomorrow so you’re not stuck staring at a blank screen.

3. Avoid thinking about the story when you’re not working.

I don’t know about this one. I certainly don’t follow this advice and wouldn’t want to shut off my creative faucet just because it’s not the right hour of the day. Ideas come into my head randomly all the time. How many of us keep a pen and paper on the bedside table for middle-of-the-night scribbling? I don’t actually do that, but I understand why people do.

For me, thoughts can come while showering, taking a walk, eating—pretty much anytime. When I’m writing a long piece, whether it’s a book or a magazine article, I’m kind of living it 24/7. It doesn’t keep me from going about the rest of my life; I still do normal things that end up distracting me from the work, and that’s healthy. But I’m still not going to try to force ideas out of my mind. I think it’s much less reasonable to expect your brilliance to show up only during the three hours or whatever time period you decide to sit down and write.

Compartmentalizing would weaken my writing, but it’s really my editing that would suffer. Sometimes in the middle of doing nothing special, a sentence I wrote will come back to me with the realization that there’s a much more precise word I could use, or I got a fact wrong, or I should insert that sentence into a different section. This happens to me all the time, and I consider it part of my writing method. So I’d say this guidance might be fine for some people but really bad advice for others.

4. When it’s time to work again, start by reading what you’ve written so far.

Hemingway elaborated on this point, saying, “The best way is to read it all every day from the start, correcting as you go along, then go on from where you stopped the day before. When it gets so long that you can’t do this every day, read back two or three chapters each day; then each week read it all from the start. That’s how you make it all of one piece.”

I’m really surprised at this advice. Today, I see most memoir experts recommending just the opposite—write it all out, and then go back and review/edit/tweak. But on this point I’m pretty much like Hemingway. I don’t reread sections every time I write, but I do it more often than not. I edit over and over, and reading what I’ve already written gets that voice going in my head and helps me maintain continuity as I go forward. I can avoid repetition, because the previous writing is fresh in my mind. Still, I don’t think this is for everyone. If your memoir recounts a painful episode in your life, you may want to write it once and not reread it at all until it’s time to edit the whole manuscript.

5. Don’t describe an emotion—make it.

I’m a little uncertain about what he’s getting at here, but I think it’s all about “show, don’t tell.” You probably are a good enough writer to know that instead of writing, “I felt so sad that day,” you should describe your tear-stained face and bloodshot eyes. Hemingway’s advice goes a little deeper. As a writer, you should present the scene in such a way that the reader is the one crying. You can describe yourself as well, but through your depiction, create strong emotion so that the reader feels it alongside you.

6. Write by hand first.

This is simply outdated advice. Hemingway supported writing by hand because it gives you a chance to improve the writing when you copy it by typing it out to make it more formal. Obviously, we don’t have that issue today. Word processing programs permit you to revise constantly; you’re never typing something out on clean paper to produce a final, pristine product.

Today, there is controversy around studies that conclude writing by hand works the brain in deeper ways than typing on a keyboard does. Even though it’s limited to taking notes in class and learning new material, this research has been disputed. I type a mile a minute and handwrite nothing longer than a thank-you note, so I completely reject the idea of writing a memoir in longhand. But there’s nothing stopping you if you prefer writing in that format.

7. Be brief.

Well, yes, that’s Hemingway’s signature move. I agree that every word should earn its inclusion in your memoir. Don’t be reckless with wordiness, don’t supply two adjectives when one will do, don’t offer a second story that just replicates the first and, most important, don’t indulge yourself by telling stories that go outside the lines of your memoir’s theme.

Within those parameters, though, you do get to have your own style. Not everyone writes clipped, Hemingwayesque prose. You go be yourself, and if your writing is not quite as brief as another writer’s work, that’s okay because it’s authentically your writing style.

I’m curious about how many of these 7 tips you practice. Leave a comment if you’d like to share.

Photo is courtesy of World Digital Library.

Family gatherings reveal a lot about a life through dialogue-rich stories.

My mother died on November 25, 1991. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving, which was November 28 that year. This year repeats that exact pattern, bringing back thoughts of that unusual Thanksgiving, when one of the people in the small group of family who had traveled to the previous day’s funeral reminded the rest of us that it was Thanksgiving Day. We bought deli turkey and sat at Mom’s dining room table, sad to have her seat vacant. A dramatic event like that is only one way to show how Thanksgiving—or any holiday—can fit into your memoir.

Holidays provide a constant measuring stick to mark changes in your life. Any other “Friends” fans here? Nine of the ten seasons of the popular comedy series featured a Thanksgiving episode in November, and the funniest one included Thanksgiving flashbacks. You probably can picture Monica with a turkey on her head. Just seeing all of the Thanksgiving episodes gives you a good idea of what was going on with the characters each year. “The Simpsons” follows a similar path with its succession of Halloween episodes.

An annual occasion with a consistent routine organically comprises many dynamics of a life:

1. People. The individuals sitting around the holiday table will likely vary over the years. Babies are born, divorces occur, maybe a pair of brothers aren’t speaking so one stays home or an aunt brings a different “plus one” every year. Just the head count can indicate the state of the family. You’re also watching everyone age and their relationships with each other ebb and flow; in later years maybe the kids’ table morphs into the old people’s spot. In our family, Thanksgiving is poignant not only because of my mom’s death but because the one deceased sister in my husband’s large family used to be a fixture, always stirring the gravy and mashed potatoes at the stove. She didn’t live locally, so Thanksgiving was one time we could count on seeing her. There’s always a little bit of emptiness now that she’s not with us.
2. Place. Perhaps your most memorable Thanksgiving took place at a restaurant because that year no one could host it for some reason. Or it was at your parents’ home until the year you moved them into an assisted living facility. These types of developments can be revealed through the holiday story instead of just rolling them out in a chronological but unrelated thread. We moved from the Chicago area to Florida, so now we travel back up north, rent a house and host from there. It’s slowly feeling as if the rental house is our holiday home. Including that in a memoir would illustrate how important it is to us to keep holiday traditions going.
3. Food. Many memoirs make food a major player, with some authors describing meals in detail and including in the book their most beloved recipes. Food brings people together, gives a peek into personalities and serves up something every reader can relate to.
4. Football or a movie. Whether your family plays it or only watches the games on TV, American football has a hold on what’s happening Thanksgiving Day. You can find creative ways to weave football through the stories you tell about yourself and your family’s Thanksgivings. Or maybe your family watches the same movie every year. This adds color to your memoir.
5. You. Your book is about you, your journey, your challenges and triumphs. What are you feeling one year in contrast to the previous year? How does this family gathering—or Friendsgiving if you spend the holiday with “chosen family”—change you from year to year? If you’re not American, which holidays are important in your culture? Thanksgiving Day 2014 was significant for me because of a health issue I’d ignored for eight days. I knew my heart was racing off and on, but I didn’t know that a chord on my mitral valve had ruptured and I needed heart surgery. On Thanksgiving Day, I looked down at my chest and could see my heart beating even through my heavy sweater. The next day I finally went to the doctor. This surgery was a major event in my life, and by chance it neatly fits into a Thanksgiving theme or chapter.

Structure Within a Memoir

With all of my Thanksgiving-related situations, a chapter called “Thanksgiving” could become a vessel to hold those memories. I could insert it at the 2014 point, relate my heart scare, and then flash back to all the notable things that happened at earlier Thanksgivings. We even take our annual family photo at Thanksgiving.

You don’t have to create a separate chapter, of course. You could sprinkle several Thanksgivings—or Christmases or Mother’s Days or your own birthdays—throughout your memoir. Maybe you mention that at one Thanksgiving you introduced your family to your future spouse, but a decade later you broke up. Then you could say something like, “That year, by the time November rolled around, I had no one to bring to the Turkey Day dinner.” From there, you could recall a few other family gatherings when you’d brought your spouse.

Authors are always asking how to write a memoir. Using a device such as a recurring holiday, as long as it’s meaningful in your life’s story, can help you jump from one point to the next while providing the continuity you need in your book.

Open is compelling, dramatic and raw

I hate finishing a memoir—I always miss the author. I want to tell you about the one I just finished, Open, because Andre Agassi’s memoir teaches memoir authors a lot of lessons, and because I’m missing the tennis legend and writing this drags out the goodbye.

Audiobook Issues

Do yourself a favor, though—read it, don’t listen to it. I listen to celebrity memoirs while I run, and it’s like having the celebrities running next to me and telling me about their lives. Not this one. Instead of narrating it himself, Agassi has actor Erik Davies doing the narration for the audiobook. I understand why non-actor authors conclude that they’re not the best choice to read the book aloud. Keith Richards didn’t read his excellent memoir, either. So let’s start out with the benefit of the doubt and say fine, let this Erik Davies do the audiobook.

Davies does an adequate job until there’s dialogue. Then he uses one higher-pitched voice for all the women and one lower-pitched voice for all the men except for Agassi’s father, for whom he must add an Assyrian-Iranian accent, which I doubt he does very accurately. It sounds ridiculous when this man goes into a higher pitch every time a woman speaks and fakes a deep voice for all the men. It’s what you do when you’re eight years old and playing house and you’re supposed to be the mom or the dad. In at least one instance I noted, he also changes the voice for Andre himself. So wait a minute. You’re reading this memoir, written in the first person, as if you’re the person who wrote it. But in dialogue, your voice is different?

Excellent Ghostwriter

Agassi farmed out the writing as well, hiring a “collaborator” to ghostwrite the book. I don’t really have a problem with that. I ghostwrite or heavily edit memoirs for people, and I think that’s fine. Interviews with Agassi and his collaborator indicate that they worked very closely together, and I believe their contention that Agassi went over every word and gave input.

And unlike the narration, the writing is really good. It should be, since collaborator J.R. Moehringer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Published in 2009, Open is widely regarded as one of the best pro athlete memoirs ever released. So what can Agassi and Moehringer teach us about writing our own memoirs?

1. Present tense can be effective in some cases. Despite my preference for past tense in a memoir, Open works well written in present tense probably because there’s so much point-by-point tennis play. The present tense still began to wear thin with me, but I can understand the choice in order to create excitement during the sports action.
2. Rely on records. Every match Agassi played as a professional tennis player most likely is available on video somewhere. I picture Moehringer and Agassi watching the match together as Agassi describes what he was thinking at every moment, and then Moehringer writes it up. In all likelihood, you do not have video footage of key moments of your life. If you kept a journal, you are one lucky memoir author. Otherwise, gather what you can—letters, artifacts, photos, home movies. Your memory is not as good as the contemporaneous records.
3. Stay honest, forthcoming, candid. In some places, I would say Agassi overshares. That doesn’t mean we hear about any sexual exploits. We don’t, and graphic descriptions are not necessary in a memoir unless they’re pertinent to the theme. But fearless, raw candor is the lifeblood of memoir. If you deliver that, the reader will understand your motivations and vulnerabilities, accept your mistakes in life and continue to root for you. In Open, it often seems as though the author doesn’t realize how off-putting some of his actions are. That’s okay. At least he’s not hiding them.
4. Remember the four descriptors. In my last post, I suggested four adjectives to keep in mind as you write your memoir. I advised you to make your book entertaining, relatable, informative and accurate. Open is all of that. You wouldn’t think a memoir stuffed with sportscaster-level competition descriptions would be entertaining, but somehow it is. That’s compelling writing. These accounts go up to the precise line of where compelling turns to boring without ever reaching that line. It’s relatable because of the raw honesty. No one knows more about the game of tennis than Andre Agassi, so it’s informative. While his first wife Brooke Shields disputed some of the facts, the reader understands that every memoir is told from the author’s point of view, and this narrative comes across as accurate.
5. Be careful with your account of other people in your life. Agassi’s life is intricately involved with the lives of his parents, then his coaches, one lifelong friend and, at different times, an early girlfriend and his two wives. He talks a lot about all of them, and while nearly all of it is positive, I still feel that he must have asked them for their blessing before publishing, because some of what he tells us about them could be considered private. One coach has a very sick daughter for a while, for example, and Brooke Shields reportedly asked him to change some parts. She comes across brainy and small-minded all at the same time; tennis great Jimmy Connors is the other one portrayed as less than appealing. But that’s about it. So be honest about people who matter in your life, but don’t dwell on the negative more than necessary.
6. Every life, every journey, is significant. Agassi has a nearly groupie admiration for the late Nelson Mandela, whom he gets to meet. He sits and listens to a speech Mandela gives, and he quotes Mandela as telling the audience that every life is worthy. That’s a great thing to keep in mind as you write your memoir. Your life is worthy in telling and worthy in itself.

Sometimes I review memoirs on Goodreads. You’ll see that I gave this one a lot of stars.

Your writing will become something you just do rather than strive to do.

I didn’t start running until I was 40. I was working, raising kids and going to the gym but too busy to spend a lot of time there. I asked myself, “What is the biggest bang for the buck in exercise?” I kept coming back to the same answer: running.

Nothing beats running for efficiency in covering multiple health benefits. Within about 30 minutes, I could simultaneously get my cardio out of the way, build leg muscles and work my core. I wouldn’t have to find a competitor or gather a whole team for a game of some sort; I wouldn’t have to supplement time-consuming walking with a cardio component; and I wouldn’t have to get to a class or schedule it at all. I could hop on a treadmill at the gym, or on decent-weather days, just walk outside my door and start running.

Problem: I hated running. That’s why, at 40, I found myself with no history of doing it. But I pretty much hated all exercise, so I decided that swapping the Stairmaster and walking for a shorter run was a pretty good deal.

Getting Into the Habit

Experimenting on the treadmill, I found that two 11-minute miles seemed to challenge me, and then I’d walk the remaining eight minutes to round up to a half-hour. Once I made the decision, I started running every day. It was my new habit, and I became obsessive enough that for years I missed very few days.

I’m 71 now—I know, I’m shockingly old—and still running. I run three days a week and walk the other days. Along the way I started competing in Senior Games track and field, which gives me an additional reason to keep up my running training. By the way, I still hate running. I don’t know what a runner’s high feels like; running doesn’t make me feel anything but exhausted. I do it for health and because I like being a senior athlete, something I never thought I could be.

What I want you to know about my running is that I never set a goal. I started a habit I didn’t even like, and it’s lasted more than 30 years. I started running two miles at a time daily or near daily, 30 years later I’m still running two miles several times a week, and in between then and now I never tried to get better. I didn’t set goals to improve or establish benchmarks to increase my speed and stretch my endurance. I just kept at it, status quo, same old same old.

Goal-setting Invites Disappointment

I know the idea is to start out with an 11-minute mile and try to inch it down until you hit some seemingly satisfying goal. If I increase my speed by five seconds a week…. That kind of thing. Where would that have led me?

I may have reached some loftyish goal, such as running an 8-minute mile. Then what would happen? Would I set yet another goal until I vowed to run two miles in zero minutes? Or add another mile at a time until I was spending more time than I wanted?

Aging is a formidable adversary of physical activity, so eventually I was going to be disappointed. Maybe I’d achieve a 10-minute mile but never get as good as the 8-minute-mile goal. Or I might not have been able to improve at all, which really would have felt like failing. Aging forces you to do just the opposite of goal-setting—become resigned to losing speed, strength and endurance.

Letting go of goal-setting gives me freedom from all of that. It means I’m never disappointed, I don’t get discouraged, and I don’t feel like a failure. These days I run more like a 12-minute mile, and the whole thing takes 24 minutes instead of 22 minutes. And you know what? At 71 I’m pretty happy with that outcome.

That’s my lesson to you in writing your memoir. Look, people who do well at setting goals should use that skill in writing their memoir. If you’re hitting your chapter-a-month goal, don’t fix what’s not broken. But if you feel that you’re letting yourself down as you’re writing your memoir, if progressing at a snail’s pace makes you feel like a failure, let’s remove that burden for you.

Tips for a Memoir Writing Habit

Islands of Brilliance, dedicated to addressing learning needs of neurodivergent minds, has a good lesson for anyone looking to extinguish goal-setting: “Motivation comes and goes. A habit, by definition, is something that you do reliably.”

So form habits! What habits can you form that will help you stick with writing your memoir?

1. Set up the mechanics, the when and where. Figure out the most convenient days, since writing doesn’t have to happen every day but should come around more than once a week. Determine what time of day works best for you. Figure out where you’re most comfortable and will be least disturbed. None of this is a new idea, but if you haven’t seriously tried putting writing into your schedule, give it a shot.
2. The first time you miss your day and time, or if you have to cut the time period short, don’t worry about it. But also don’t view it as the end of the writing habit. Maybe three months ago you scheduled a doctor’s appointment that conflicts with your writing time. Try to find a substitute slot in your day or week to take its place. Perhaps you decide to write during your train commute to your job just on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and one Tuesday a friend spots you and sits with you, so you end up in conversation instead of in deep writing thought. Don’t beat yourself up, but do shift that week to Wednesday and Thursday or Wednesday and Friday. Or let’s say you take a two-week trip. It can be anything from visiting relatives to touring Europe; either way you don’t have to accommodate your writing habit. Lots of habits will change during those two weeks. You won’t be cooking dinner at home or going to get the mail or watching your favorite shows from your favorite spot on the couch. When you arrive back home, you’ll go back to all of that, so also go back to your writing habit.
3. The first time a potential conflict occurs, nip it in the bud. Back to the example of talking to your friend during your commute instead of doing your writing habit as planned, another option is to apologize to your friend but be honest as you open your laptop—“I’m really sorry, but I promised myself that I would use my commute time on Tuesdays to do some writing I’ve wanted to do.” Or let’s say you get a phone call, and you pick up because it’s someone, perhaps a parent, who could have an emergency. Once you’ve determined that it’s not urgent, explain about your writing habit and say you’ll call back. Unexpected things happen. You wake up with a fever or your power goes out or your cousin happens to be in town just for the day. The key is that if you interrupt your habit, go back to it as quickly as possible.
4. Try stacking a second habit onto your writing habit. One obvious example of habit pairing is pouring your coffee and bringing it directly to your computer to start writing. If you decide to write first thing in the morning, this can work. If not, maybe you like a mid-afternoon snack and you can eat that while you’re writing. Or the first habit can be dropping your child off at some after-school sports practice and then you come right home and spend that time writing, however long it lasts. If you wait in the parking lot, you have your laptop and that hour becomes your writing time. Maybe there are a few days in the week that have no TV shows you watch right after dinner, so the habit stacking is that first you clean up the dishes, and then you grab coffee or dessert and go to your computer. You can reverse-stack habits as well. Maybe you don’t get lunch until after you’ve completed your writing time. Or you’ve taped your favorite show, but you must write first. Then the habit leads to a reward.
5. Don’t be afraid to be quirky. Sometimes we have to kind of trick ourselves. Maybe once you’re dressed on Saturday, you start thinking about all the errands you need to run. If staying in your pajamas keeps you in the cozy mindset of remembering your life stories, don’t get dressed until you’ve put in the writing time you’ve allotted. Or if you need all the blinds down to give you privacy, set drawing the shades as part of your habit.
6. Stay open to tweaking. If you find that the window of time doesn’t work out as well as you’d hoped, try a different day or time. If you wanted to work at the dining room table but you realize it’s too noisy, set yourself up in a bedroom or basement. A habit can change over time.

When you finish your memoir, your writing habit may be so ingrained that you continue and write other books, some poems or a diary. Or you use that time to start a project unrelated to writing. At first, you’ll probably fill the time slot with looking for an agent or publisher or working on self-publishing. But when your book is published, if you do stop the writing habit altogether, it will feel nothing like failing to reach a goal. It’s not disappointment; it’s just that your habit ended.