Author Q&AAuthor Q&A: Bill LoizeauxBy Beth Duris, WIW Member Bill Loizeaux will offer a session on "The People Story," for writers interested in biography and profile, at the 2004 Washington Writers Conference. He will also read memoir submissions in the manuscript critique program. He is the author of three books, including Anna: A Daughter's Life (Little Brown/Arcade), which was a New York Times Notable Book. What sorts of personal stories make for the best memoirs? The best memoirs, like the most compelling fiction and nonfiction, begin with a sense that something important is at stake. Stories about people who have faced trouble, where everything is at stake, where life can go one way or another—those are hard to beat. What advice do you offer aspiring memoir writers? Think for a moment like a fiction writer. What are the big moments or episodes? How do they fit into the overall arc of your narrative? What changes through the course of the story? Then think about the voice you are projecting. Is it engaging? Is it honest? Is it you? Remember, as a memoir writer, you can comment on the story and try, even tentatively, to make some sense of it. Then think for a moment like a nonfiction writer or—God forbid—a journalist. Do research. Provide historical context. Go to the library. Go up to the attic. Find moldering photos, letters, anything that brings the past palpably alive. What are the common pitfalls? Solipsism. Strange as it seems, your life is not necessarily of compelling interest to others. You have to make it that way by composing a narrative that at once is uniquely yours and resounds with whatever it is that makes us all human. Easy to say; hard to do. That's why you begin with something big—and human—at stake. |