Is Your Memoir Really Just Venting?
Writing about your personal experiences can be therapeutic, but turning that writing into a general-interest work of nonfiction requires more objective craft choices.
—Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
Some books submitted in the Memoir category of the North Street Book Prize read more like private journals, suggesting that the author might still be in the trenches of processing their experiences. And, sometimes, these books read like plain ol' venting. Winning Writers is looking for more polished memoirs that show maturity in topic choice, main argument, structure, prose style, depth of perspective, and more. Read on to learn what, for us, feels like memoir and what feels like venting.
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Book topics: Venting
My topic has been written about by other authors in similar ways, but I'm expecting my book to rise to the top of the field because this time, the topic concerns me.
Book topics: Memoir
My topic is unique and strongly attractive to readers. I know that there are few, if any, books that already cover it, or cover it in the same way.
Unique topics or angles are a must for North Street winners in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir. We receive many submissions about love, death, sickness, caregiving, and family histories, and while these are important topics, the angles chosen by the authors can be too general to stand out from similar entries. We get enthusiastic when we come across topics and angles we've never seen before.
For example, the 2020 First Prize memoir winner was Alicia Doyle's Fighting Chance, about her career as a female boxer. In 2024, Circus Smirkus founder Rob Mermin's Circle of Sawdust: A Circus Memoir of Mud, Myth, Mirth, Mayhem, and Magic took top honors in this genre. These one-of-a-kind topics boosted both books right to the top of our shortlists.
Meanwhile, 2023 Honorable Mention Sarah Birnbach's A Daughter's Kaddish: My Year of Grief, Devotion, and Healing was about mourning the loss of a parent, a topic we often see. But Birnbach's memoir has a unique angle, focusing on eleven months in which she said the Kaddish—traditionally only a prayer to be made by males, and requiring a quorum of ten people—for her father twice a day. We were fascinated by the personal, religious, social, and political complications of this moving story.
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Choice of story: Venting
The story I'm telling uses another person's struggles or suffering to magnify my own actions, emotions, and sense of self. I depict loved ones in vulnerable moments that show a) how difficult they are making my life or b) what a good person I am.
Choice of story: Memoir
The story is truly mine to tell. I do not exploit others' struggles or suffering. When applicable, I address any potential biases on my part (privilege, classism, racism, and more).
When choosing a story to tell, memoirists sometimes have to ask themselves difficult questions about ownership: "Is this story truly mine, or is it my interpretation of someone else's?" "In telling this story, am I planning to use someone else's struggle to create interest in, and ultimately sell, my work?" "Am I telling this story for my own sake, or for the sake of the person or community it happened to?"
Depending on the answers to these questions, follow-ups might be, "Does my purpose in telling this story, or the way I plan to tell it, keep the telling from being exploitative?" and "Will my telling of this story benefit the person or community it actually happened to?" If the answer to either of these questions is no, it might be good to keep searching until you find a story that's truly yours to tell.
As Waters Gone By, a 2021 Honorable Mention memoir by Asome Bide, is about a landslide in Bide's country of origin, Cameroon. Bide's connection to the event is close: It directly impacted his home community and family, some of whom perished in the disaster. As a narrator, Bide never courts the reader through exploitative depictions of others' suffering. Instead, he analyzes complex social, spiritual, family, political, and geopolitical currents vis-à-vis the landslide and its aftermath, to help readers understand why it may have happened and how to prevent another one.
Her Widow, Honorable Mention in 2019, consists of author Joan Alden's letters to her late wife, Catherine Hopkins, who passed away from ovarian cancer. Alden does show the slow process of Hopkins's death. However, final judge Ellen LaFleche noted that she "does so in a way that honors Catherine's bodily privacy while honoring their enduring love for each other." The narrative emphasis is on the writer's reaction to the loss and how social, cultural, and familial issues shaped her experience of grief.
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Structure: Venting
My book is episodic and stream-of-consciousness, like a journal, and lacks a strong climax.
Structure: Memoir
My story's structure is intentionally crafted to maximize the impact of the material.
Many of the memoirs we receive simply tell their story from beginning to end. There's nothing wrong with that, and sometimes it really is the best choice. Sometimes, though, it pays to play with structure if it helps to build tension and interest. An author might go back and forth in time, hold back certain information until later, use vignettes, play with pacing, or explore other structural techniques.
Our 2021 Grand Prize, C. Vargas McPherson's memoir Inheriting Our Names, uses a braided narrative, moving between past and present storylines. Her grandparents' lives during the Spanish Civil War provide most of the book's drama and forward movement, with Vargas's present-day life included when it shows the long-term impacts of those events.
Francesco Granieri's Pavarotti and Pancakes, the First Prize memoir in 2018, is a family saga that uses a circular narrative. It opens with a family crisis in the "present" of the book, then skips back to an earlier part of the family's history and proceeds chronologically to the present. When we see the episode again, we recognize the characters from the first time, but, having come to know them as they were before, we feel a new level of empathy for them.
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Main arguments: Venting
My book has no main argument or a vague main argument.
Main arguments: Memoir
My book has a strong main argument that it develops with every artistic choice.
Virtually all successful mainstream books, fiction or nonfiction, have an underlying argument. The temptation with memoir is to let that argument be general or vague, for example, "this is how I came to be who I am today". North Street judges are looking for books that get more specific in their underlying arguments.
In She's Such a Bright Girl, Honorable Mention in 2018, author Petula Caesar identifies parallels between racism, colorism, classism, sexism, and colonialism, and demonstrates how these dynamics played out in her own family. In creative nonfiction, "developing an argument" doesn't mean academic-style writing, but using literary devices to envelop the author in scenes showing what the author is talking about. Caesar's style is accessible and immersive, with powerful scenes using setting, sensory detail, character words, emotions, and more.
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What to keep in and what to leave out: Venting
I'm including this episode because it happened to me, or because I feel strongly about it.
What to keep in and what to leave out: Memoir
I choose to include an episode when, as well as supporting my main argument, it intersects with social, political, emotional, psychological, or other elements that the reader is eager to know more about.
A memoir is your chance to say whatever you want, which can be incredibly satisfying and validating. Keep in mind, though, that readers' purchasing choices (and North Street judges' judging choices!) are guided by their interests. A book is in the memoir sweet spot when the author's satisfaction of expression is combined with awareness of what their readers want to know.
Mark S. Robinson, author of 2023's First Prize memoir Black on Madison Avenue, includes real-life examples of racism in the world of professional advertising, as well as fascinating episodes from his career. For instance, he publicized the boxing match that became famous when Mike Tyson unexpectedly bit Evander Holyfield's ear.
Meanwhile, in her 2020 Honorable Mention memoir A China Story, Yian Qian gives specific examples of how she and her schoolmates were indoctrinated into the ideology of the Cultural Revolution and devotion to Mao, and also how she came to question the ideology later on. The cover-to-cover interest of both books is due to their excellent judgment of readers' interests and high-quality editing that omits information that's less important to the public.
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Depth of perspective: Venting
My narrative doesn't acknowledge any ideas contrary to my own. My perspective is the only one that matters.
Depth of perspective: Memoir
I show ideas that contrast with mine and actively engage with them through narration, scene, motifs, and other literary devices.
An important function of some memoirs is to justify an action or policy taken by the author. That can be a really good thing, especially when the memoirist makes the effort to address contrary views.
From Mormon to Mermaid by Lorelei Kay, First Prize in 2022, is a great example. Kay cites news sources and LDS Church documents as she engages with the exact points of Mormon doctrine and practice that motivated her to leave the Church.
In Mind Your Head: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Suicidal Queer Christian Missionary Kid, Honorable Mention in 2016, author Jordan Cosmo describes the evangelical theory and culture in their community of origin as part of their narrative of finding a happy marriage and their true spiritual identity.
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My character arc: Venting
I, as a character, stay the same. It's others (or the circumstances) who need to change.
My character arc: Memoir
I, as a character, have a distinct plot arc. I chose this particular life episode for my memoir because it shows me changing.
Memoir presents a paradox for readers and writers. As readers, we like to read about characters who change in the face of a challenge. Yet in our real-life challenges, one of our central goals is to be changed as little as possible. Maintaining our sense of self during trauma is something we can rightly be proud of. But if "proud to still be me" translates to "static main character" in the memoir version, readers might not be as pleased!
Writing our own character development is not easy. Changing despite struggling not to is itself a form of trauma, and plunging back into memories of difficult times to analyze how those changes happened is something few of us want to do. That's the task memoirists take on as they trace their own plot arc on the page.
The results can be magnificent. In our 2020 Grand Prize winner, Mine to Carry, we see author Christine Mulvey in different stages of her life: as a very young woman terrified to reveal her pregnancy, as an adult unwillingly separated from her child and moving through stages of grief and anger, and eventually as the older memoirist with the strength and grit to write the memoir, which Ellen called "by far the strongest book I've encountered" as a North Street judge.
On the other hand, the protagonist of a good memoir doesn't have to undergo a complete life transformation in order for their story to be compelling. Alexander and Dale, the gay, middle-aged protagonists of 2019's Honorable Mention River Queens, make a river journey from Texas to Ohio and discover that, as head judge Jendi Reiter put it in their judging feedback, the men's "rugged mechanical skills and courageous journey outweighed their hosts' perplexity at their ‘lifestyle'." The two men go home again much as they were before, while having learned that the rural South is not a monolith in its attitudes towards homosexuality. It takes skill to show precise changes as opposed to general ones, and North Street judges were impressed.
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Me as a main character: Venting
The book is mainly about events, others' actions, and their effect on me. My role is passive.
Me as a main character: Memoir
The story shows my purposeful actions, why I took them, and what the result was. I solve a specific problem in a way that's unique both to me and to our times. My role is active. I chose this life episode for my memoir because it shows me being active.
In real life, the way forward is not always clear. That's one of the reasons memoirs are so attractive: they're about times when the author took action. Reading a memoir, we, too, can take strength in the author's sense of purpose, resourcefulness, and perseverance.
2024 Honorable Mention Here, Where Death Delights portrays its author, forensic pathologist Dr. Mary Jumbelic, as an active responder to major events like 9/11 and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Leslie Sussan's Choosing Life: My Father's Journey in Film from Hollywood to Hiroshima, First Prize in 2021, has two active protagonists: the memoirist's father, a mid-1900s war cinematographer thwarted in his mission to expose the true horror of the US's bombing of Hiroshima, and Leslie herself, continuing his work in the present day to break the silence around the trauma.
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Prose style: Venting
I don't edit my prose for style. How can readers truly know me unless I'm absolutely straightforward?
Prose style: Memoir
I edit my prose to present the underlying ideas in the most aesthetic and immersive way I can.
Allen Ginsberg's "First thought, best thought" seems to have been misunderstood by some authors as "no editing"...or perhaps the misconception is just too convenient to pass up for those who secretly want to vent. Don't give in to the false temptation of "unalloyed spontaneity"! North Street judges are more interested in books where the author has searched out just the right language for the content. (Ginsberg himself edited assiduously to find the words that best expressed his own "first thoughts".)
2015 First Prize Waking the Bones, by Elizabeth Kirschner, and 2017 Honorable Mention The Sea is Quiet Tonight, by Michael H. Ward, rose to the top of their respective entry pools with language that the final judges called "lyrical and polished" and "gorgeously styled".
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Handling detail: Venting
Setting, time period, sensory information, and other characters fade into the background as I prioritize my own opinions, feelings, and experiences over everything else.
Handling detail: Memoir
My narrative includes concrete details about setting, time period, sensory information, and other characters. I'm actively trying to make the reader feel involved and immersed through craft, not just plot and characters.
A good memoir is about the author—but for the reader. We recognize a winning author by the great care they put into crafting an immersive experience. The wealth of concrete detail in 2016's First Prize, Red Blood, Yellow Skin, by Linda L.T. Baer, made her childhood in war-torn North Vietnam so real to us that Ellen called it "one of the most compelling books" in the history of the North Street Book Prize at the time. Dennis Reed's Migration Memories (Honorable Mention, 2020) and Linda I. Meyers's The Tell (Grand Prize, 2024) give us similarly vivid experiences of Queens and Manhattan, respectively.
In all three books, time period, sensory detail, and other characters are carefully designed to create a unified, absorbing experience for the reader. We start to suspect that books are "venting" when they don't seem interested in the reader's experience.
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Conclusion
Personal satisfaction is always important when writing, especially in memoir, our chance to tell our own stories. That said, crossing the line from self-expression to venting can hurt sales and reader opinion. When considering whether part of the purpose of your memoir is venting, a good question to ask might be, "Am I making this content decision for my own sake, or for the reader's?" If the answer is "both" or "the reader's", that might be the mark of a good choice. But if the answer is "my own sake", it could be a sign of venting.
Categories: Advice for Writers, Annie in the Middle
