About the Memoir Suitcase
Hello! and Welcome to the Memoir Suitcase!
This first entry, which will remain on the "about" page, expalins a little as to what this focus of this blog is to be. Just getting started so I ask for your patience as I am currently preparing the first couple of blog entries.
Although I have long been interested in creative non-fiction, I am relatively new to the topic of memoir. In my internet wanderings, preparing to set up this blog, I encountered many a how-to-write-memoir blog and blogs reviewing memoirs so rather than competing with these existing popular memoir blog structures, I’m looking at doing something a little different.
For my blog, I intend to discuss some of the writing constructs and devices present in memoir. I would like to start a casual conversation about memoir reading strategies. The idea is looking at and talking about academic concepts present in memoir in an accessible way. I am engaged in learning these tools myself so my readers and I will learn together. The goal of this blog is unpacking the strategies author’s employ in memoir. Hence my blog’s name: The Memoir Suitcase.
I find the suitcase to be an apt metaphor for the memoir genre suggesting traveling into another person’s life and the intimate items we we will find once we’re in there – memoirs are the underwear and socks of writers. The details of a life are many and try as they might there is no way any writer will ever fit them all into one suitcase!
What would you pack in your memoir suitcase?
Each memoir is a carefully packed suitcase so when we read it we are essentially unpacking it, seeing what’s in there, why, and the packing strategy that was used. So, instead of how-to-write memoir my blog is a how-to-read memoir.
The tools of reading memoir are a complimentary set for those looking to write memoir. Understanding the devices at work in a piece of memoir could ultimately be brought to bear in writing a memoir so being a skilled reader is as important for a would-be writer of memoir as being a skilled writer – after all, reading and writing go hand in hand. So, if you are a writer, this blog may still be of interest to you.
Nevertheless, rather than the writing end, this blog comes at memoir from the reading end – the end that many of us may already be coming at memoir from, which is simply as interested readers some of whom may have no plans to ever write their own memoir and simply want to engage more deeply with the reading experience.
