The Truth of Memoir: How to Write about Yourself and Others with Honesty, Emotion, and Integrity

by Kerry Cohen

Overview

Baring the Truth in Your Memoir

When you write a memoir or personal essay, you dare to reveal the truths of your experience: about yourself, and about others in your life. How do you expose long-guarded secrets and discuss bad behavior? How do you gracefully portray your family members, friends, spouses, exes, and children without damaging your relationships? How do you balance your respect for others with your desire to tell the truth?

In The Truth of Memoir, best-selling memoirist Kerry Cohen provides insight and guidelines for depicting the characters who appear in your work with honesty and compassion. You'll learn how to choose which details to include and which secrets to tell, how to render the people in your life artfully and fully on the page, and what reactions you can expect from those you include in your work—as well as from readers and the media.

Featuring over twenty candid essays from memoirists sharing their experiences and advice, as well as exercises for writing about others in your memoirs and essays, The Truth of Memoir will give you the courage and confidence to write your story—and all of its requisite characters—with truth and grace.

"Kerry Cohen's The Truth of Memoir is a smart, soulful, psychologically astute guide to first-person writing. She reveals everything you want to know—but were afraid to ask—about telling your life story." —Susan Shapiro, author of eight books including Only As Good as Your Word, and co-author of The Bosnia List

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781599637990
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/19/2014
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	1,083,759
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kerry Cohen is the author of two memoirs: Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity and Seeing Ezra: A Mother's Story of Autism, Unconditional Love, and The Meaning of Normal. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times Modern Love series, The Washington Post, Literary Mama, and many other anthologies and journals.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 truth and dare: Are You Ready to Write a Memoir? 5

Chapter 2 blood on the page Writing About Family 24

Chapter 3 because i said so Writing About Children and the Disabled 63

Chapter 4 dangerous liaisons Writing About Spouses, Friends, and Exes 90

Chapter 5 shame me twice Writing About Sex, Drugs and Bad Behavior 125

Chapter 6 just between us secret telling 156

Chapter 7 talk to my lawyer The Legalities of Writing About Others 175

Chapter 8 expect the unexpected The Media's Response to Your Memoir 200

Appendix 220

Editorial Reviews

"The Truth of Memoir illuminates, with graceful detail and revelatory examples, the fears and joys of writing and publishing a memoir. If you're scared to write a memoir, read this book. If you've written a memoir but are scared to publish it, read this book. Cohen reveals her first-hand experience of overcoming these fears and includes stories of other memoirists who have also found their inner strength. This book bravely enters the sometimes dark and tangled world of memoir writing—and finds light and clarity on the other side." —Sue William Silverman, author of Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to Memoir

From the Publisher