the 826 autobiographerʼs handbook

826 valencia—mcsweeneyʼs
2008
nick flynn

finding your story

1. Did you have any false starts? Had you tried writing about
something else first?

nf: many many false starts, which seems essential to an honest

process of discovery, to me. I had no idea what shape it would take
when I began it, if it would be a poem, or poems, or something else.
[add bowie quote]

2. Do you have any tips for aspiring memoirists to find the part of their
life that would make the best book?

nf: I guess if one is an aspiring memoirist, I would hope that that they
would already have a glimmer of an idea that exploring one part of
their lives might be compelling. seems like part of the job title of
memoirist.

3. Did you ever consider writing the book as a novel instead?

nf: no, just because Iʼd never written a novel, and it seemed way too
intimidating to start out with that mountain before me to climb. also,
my father calls himself a novelist, and it didnʼt seem to go that well for
him.

characterization

1. Part of what makes your memoir so effective is that everyone in it

feels so real and well-rounded. Translating a person in your life to the
page is actually really, really hard to do. What were some of your
strategies for depicting them fully and accurately?
nf: very nice of you to say that, but perhaps the only truly well-
rounded characters are my father and me. with me, well, sure, its
hard to get any perspective on oneself, but the very act of writing, the
choices one makes, are revealing, especially of oneʼs unconscious
concerns. as for my father, the entire project of the book was some
attempt to understand who he is and how he ended up where he did,
and nearly everything that went into the book had to somehow
deepen that.

2. Do you have any suggestions for aspiring memoirists who are

struggling with this? Do you do any exercises?

nf: I videotaped my father for two years before I wrote about him, and
part of the writing began from simply transcribing what he said, his
stories and memories. part of that was to internalize the rhythms of
his language, his syntax.

prep

1. Did you do any research before you start writing? If so, what
background materials and resources did you find useful?

nf: generally I donʼt do research until after I have exhausted my

memories, for the interesting thing about memoir is how your memory
transforms the past. anyone could google some historical fact to find
“the truth,” but thatʼs not why we read memoirs. that said, at some
point research is essential, if only to layer what you remember, to see
where you misremembered.

2. Did you use any memory-triggers, like music or pictures or food?

nf: I use whatever I can. returning to the scene of the crime seem
essential, whether as a road trip or in dreams.

3. Did you conduct any interviews? Would you recommend it?

nf: along with interviewing my father, at some point I interviewed a

sample of people who knew him at various stages of his life. what I
found was interesting was that everyone had a differing perspective
on him, on why he did what he did, on whether he was an artist or a
fraud. in the end it seemed more telling about those I interviewed than
about my father.

background

1. How did your poetry background inform your writing?

nf: I am primarily a poet, in that itʼs the way my mind processes

information, it seems. I donʼt have a seamless narrative running
through my days. I think I ʻm more interested in fragments of an
experience, a phrase or an image, than in a contained story of that
same experience. this is to say nothing against contained stories, its
just not the way my mind works.

getting started

1. There may be no literary form that lends itself to procrastination as

much as the memoir does. When youʼre writing about your life, the
temptation to just go live it can be overwhelming. How did you
manage to get going?

nf: such an interesting idea, that “no literary form lends itself to
procrastination as much as the memoir does.” if thatʼs true, then
maybe procrastination is an essential part of the process. the idea of
being tempted to go live ones life instead of writing about it wasnʼt a
problem for me, so much, in that I was writing about a distinct period
of time which was located in a distinct place, that is the shelter I
worked in for six years. since I no longer worked there and hadnʼt for
many years I couldnʼt just go out and live my life instead of writing
about it, because that part of my life had ended.

2. Did you do any warm-up exercises?

nf: I do more of a daily writing practice, where I write for an hour in a

notebook, usually generating five pages. if Iʼm working on a longer
project I do the same practice, only steer the writing toward that
project, that container. as thich nhat hanh says about Buddha, “he
already had the water, he just had to discover jars.”

3. Any tips for the aspiring memoirist who doesnʼt know where to
begin?

nf: I do have something, a set of rules which will likely cause more
confusion than clarity, which might be a good thing.

the unalterable eternal rules for memoirs (from now on)

nick flynn

1. yr job is not to retell the stories youʼve been telling yr whole

life—yr job is to question these stories, why you invented them,
what purpose they serve in retelling them.

2. yr job is not to string these stories together, bookended with a

moral at the beginning and repeated at the end—let the reader
find his or her own moral.

3. remember: memory is fiction, imagination is shapely.

4. but, memoir is non-fiction: this means something did happen,

something that can be dated, placed, named—yr job is to locate
yr project in time and space—find the through-line (also known
as the backbone, the spine, etc.)

5. the through-line will reveal the central tension that holds yr

piece together. it will also suggest what is at stake, what is the
urgency of telling this story, what is the necessity of saying this,
for yrself, for the world.

6. once you find yr through-line you can then go anywhere, into

the realms of the imagination, into speculation, into the half-
 recalled, as long as you return to the through-line (this is what
james frey neglected).

7. hold off on research until you have written out everything you
know or remember or are uncertain about. research too early
will close a door.

8. re: narrative connective tissue (the “and then, and then”)

—a necessary evil, but you must make it sing, while avoiding
exposition.

9. a hypothesis: for exposition, go toward mystery; for description,

go toward clarity.

10. dialogue: though often accepted as real in memoir, is an

invention—what isnʼt? donʼt use it for exposition, donʼt use
exposition for anything (read pinter for dialogue).

10. write the opposite of what you remember—if you

remember, say, yr father as a monster, write him as a saint.
11. make yrself look worse than the “villain.”

12. yr job is to push further into the unknown—see

bewilderment, (fanny howe); duende (lorca/ed hirsch); leaping
poetry (robert bly); uncertainy; the unknown; the unconscious;
dreamscapes; night; shadow).

13. yr story is no better or worse than anyone elseʼs.

14. though self-pity, small heartedness, bitterness, longing,

ie the “lesser,” messier emotions are encouraged in drafts.

15. persona is good for the messier emotions—seek out

archetypes (biblical, literary, mythic, legends, fairy tales,
superheroes, etc)

16. you are not unique, you are not alone.

 17. allow for fallow periods.

18. question every assumption, make wild claims, trust the

reader to figure out what it all means, all is projection anyway.

the shape

1. How did settle on a shape for your book (essays vs. continuous
narrative, chronological vs. organized around a subject, etc.)? What
tips can you offer the aspiring memoirist on finding the appropriate
structure for their own story?

nf: I think the story itself will, if you pay close enough attention to it, if
you allow it room to be, will reveal its shape.

2. One of the hardest parts of writing memoir is controlling the

timeline -- in real life, things usually donʼt happen in a way thatʼs
narratively convenient, and the narration of one event can require
explanations that donʼt fit chronologically. Whatʼs your strategy for
keeping the timeline straight for the reader?

nf: again, I write out what I remember first, which will likely reveal
some confusion in the actual chronology, when you get around to
researching what it actually was, but this confusion, this
misremembering, is what is interesting. that said, the actual
chronology is vitally important, for example, I eventually discovered
that the two major stretches of jail then prison time my father did
came after his mother died, and then after his father died. by finding
that out the crimes he committed that led him to prison or jail could be
read as reactions to grief, perhaps, and thereby allowing me an
insight I wouldnʼt have otherwise had. and most insights, it seems,
lead to compassion, which is the goal of a memoir, as far as I can tell.

3. Transforming a life, with all its messiness and boring parts, into an
organized narrative with a plot is an incredibly tricky business. How
do you find that story in your life? How do you make the story build?
nf: I wrote whatever I could, and then I took two years to find the
structure, which took a lot of culling, distilling, attempts, failures.

4. What were the advantages and challenges of writing about a more

distant time of your life vs a more recent time of your life?

nf: the obvious answer is perspective, though Iʼve read some works,
Iʼm thinking of peter handkeʼs “a sorrow beyond dreams” which was
written in a fever of grief over his motherʼs suicide, which is
devastating.

what to put in, what to leave out

1.How do you decide whatʼs important to the story? Do you do a lot of

cutting? How do you know what to cut?

nf: answered above?

the process

1. Whatʼs your writing schedule like? Do you stick to a regular

schedule or write in bursts?

2. Do you find it easier to write in a community (like a writersʼ group)

or by yourself?

3.For your memoir, did you use an outline or write free-form?

nf: already answered?

writing about other people

1. How did the people who appear in your book react to being in
print?
2. As a result, have you developed any policies about writing about
other people? What are they?

nf: I think in ones drafts one should be free to write out whatever
small heartedness and pettiness and anger one can access, and then
slowly cook this raw emotion down. In general, I think itʼs a bad idea
to see writing a memoir as a chance to grind an ax, and so whenever
I find myself doing that I tend to keep it to myself. ax grinding is
perhaps better suited for op-eds or talk radio.

3. Did you show anyone drafts? Did they ask for changes? Did you
make them?

4. Writing about family presents its own set of problems. Any words of
warning or advice about writing about family?

writing about yourself

1. Memoir is the tricky business of making the personal feel universal.

What are your techniques for making the story bigger than yourself?

nf: that seems like a question about how one chooses to live oneʼs
life, for it seems clear that our stories are bigger than just ourselves.
weʼre all connected in such a profound way, to each other, to the
earth, to history, to some larger mysteries, that it is a folly to write
from a position of self-centeredness.

1. Do you have any policies about what youʼre willing to share?

nf: it seems the job of an artist is to say or reveal what others in the
culture can only glimpse, which isnʼt to say that the rest of the culture
doesnʼt have access to these deep emotions or states, just that the
artists can show that its alright to linger in the difficult or the sublime. I
donʼt think my “story” is any different from any one elseʼs, or more
heartbreaking—all of us struggle with our relationships with our
parents, everyone loses oneʼs way at some point in life, all of us need
to find our way back.

the hard parts

1. You tackle some very heavy stuff in your book, but you do it with
such a deft hand. What are your techniques for keeping it from getting
too mawkish or uncomfortable for the reader?

nf: by remembering that your story is no worse than anyone elseʼs. I

havenʼt met a person yet who couldnʼt tell me a story that could break
my heart, and that makes me feel less alone.

1. Did you do anything to protect yourself while writing?

nf: I always wear a condom when Iʼm writing, sometimes two.

the facts vs. the truth

1. For the sake of readability, a certain amount of license is required:

time must be collapsed, events elided, characters combined, dialogue
reconstructed. Russell Baker called the process “inventing the truth.”
What are your thoughts on truth vs. facts in memoir?

I think I cover that in “the eternal rules,” above.

2. In your own writing, do you have a policy on the subject?

getting unstuck

1. How do you move forward when you get blocked?

nf: since I try to make writing a daily practice, I donʼt really get
blocked. I write a lot of garbage, but I donʼt get blocked.

ending the story

1. Endings are always hard, but in memoirs most of all: your story
kept on going, and it can be hard to know where to end the
 book. Do you have any tips for finding the bookʼs ending?

nf: part of writing the book, it turned out, was developing a

relationship with my father, something I hadnʼt had before, (a jungian
might say that this was that was the unconscious reason I was
writing the book), but at some point I did have to decide on the
endpoint of this how I would present this relationship, which is still
transforming. part of how I did that was by making a decision, at
some point, to start the book with the word “please” and to end it with
the word “generous,” which created a container for me to work within.
the word “generous” is part of something my father said at one
moment, and this forced me to end the book on that moment. one
does need to find the end, I guess.

getting it published

1. Weʼd love to hear how your book found a publisher.

nf: I got a contract on forty pages, which had taken me about three
years, maybe thirty years, to write. I had a lot more written, but it
wasnʼt in shape to show anyone. you should probably ask my agent
how he did it, for it all seems a little mysterious.

2. Any tips for the aspiring memoirist on finding an agent and getting
published?

nf: I waited until I had those forty pages that I felt was solid, and then
I showed them around. it seems that you should go with whoever
seems to get your project, to get the deeper resonance, that really
believes in what you are doing, or attempting to do, that can
encourage you.

3. Then thereʼs the matter of film rights. Any advice or stories you can
share on that matter?

nf: again, the film stuff is all levers being pulled by agents, as far as I
can tell. I only got a glimpse of the inner workings.

also:

1. So this very personal book is published and out in the world. What
was that like? Was it hard? Do you have any coping strategies youʼd
like to share?

nf: just to repeat some things Iʼve already said—I keep in mind that
everyone has a story that could break my heart, and it is all projection
anyway, if youʼve written in a way that allows others to enter into your
story, and see themselves reflected in it.

2. Whatʼs the most important thing youʼve learned from writing and
publishing your memoir?

nf: to see my father with more compassion, in spite of the fact that he
still drives me insane.