The Memoir Writer as a Boring Drunk

I started this post sometime back and kept it as a draft, but even though the book I set out to write for my client is about to be submitted to a publisher, (more on this in my next post where I reveal his identity!) I love the point, so here it comes, late to the party.

A quote I came across by Annie Dillard has sat on my shoulder these last months, whispering admonitions into my ear as I veered from the comforting path of "editing" onto the fearsome trail of the re-write. It was a journey I had balked at undertaking.

Ms. Dillard says this about the memoir: "You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader's arm, like a drunk, and say 'and then I did this and it was so interesting.'"

Now, even though it was not my story I have told this time around, I took her advice to heart. I asked myself, in trying to glean from my client his entire story, was I including passages of no real import? Was I boring the reader?

Killing My Darlings

By now, with the release of the new movie starring Daniel Radcliffe as the pre-Howl Allen Ginsberg, many of you will be familiar with the advice given to writers to "kill your darlings." You may even desire to know who really coined that phrase, meaning to cut all self-indulgent, superfluous, if masterful passages of your magnus opus during the revision stage. If so, read the article by Forrest Wickman in the online blog of the culture and current affairs magazine Slate for the short list of suspects. As for me, it is time to take that advice to heart.

It is round two of revisions on the memoir I am ghostwriting (though perhaps that phrase is not entirely accurate as my client has told me he intends to credit my labors in the "as told to" category). If anything, getting my name on the tome only heightens my anxiety at this stage to make a decent showing.