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"Memoirs can never be wholly true, since they cannot include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that."
English novelist Anthony Powell
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Writing your memoirs will lead you into emotionally difficult territory. How much of what you write will be the truth? And how do you select what to write about?
We asked Martin Amis and Lisa Appignanesi to describe the difficulties they faced when writing their memoirs (both recently published) and to offer advice and encouragement to anyone wanting to write an account of their own life.
The memoir in you
Be prepared for a complex journey of self-discovery and soul-searching. Memoir writing can be a therapeutic and beneficial experience, but it is emotionally exhausting. And it will demand emotional honesty and bravery.
"I can't stress enough how different it is to write about the real and the unreal. When I started writing my memoir my whole metabolism changed. I'd just turned 50 and I assumed it was just age, but I didn't want to get out of bed in the morning and I had the most delicious lie-ins of my life! It was just sheer emotional exhaustion, I now realise. Communing with your significant dead is what it amounts to, and that is an exhausting thing. Not unpleasant, but still hard work."
Martin Amis
"Writing a memoir means that you've probably reached a certain age, an age where mortality seems close to you, either because your parents have died or are dying, or because your children are growing up and abandoning you in one sense or another. And I think that's the age at which people begin to think about the past. It will lead you consider all kinds of questions about truth and the workings of memory."
Lisa Appignanesi
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