Fearless Confessions: A Writer's Guide to MemoirEveryone has a story to tell. Fearless Confessions is a guidebook for people who want to take possession of their lives by putting their experiences down on paper--or in a Web site or e-book. Enhanced with illustrative examples from many different writers as well as writing exercises, this guide helps writers navigate a range of issues from craft to ethics to marketing and will be useful to both beginners and more accomplished writers. The rise of interest in memoir recognizes the power of the genre to move and affect not just individual readers but society at large. Sue William Silverman covers traditional writing topics such as metaphor, theme, plot, and voice and also includes chapters on trusting memory and cultivating the courage to tell one's truth in the face of forces--from family members to the media--who would prefer that people with inconvenient pasts and views remain silent. Silverman, an award-winning memoirist, draws upon her own personal and professional experience to provide an essential resource for transforming life into words that matter. Fearless Confessions is an atlas that contains maps to the remarkable places in each person's life that have yet to be explored. |
Contents
The Longest Paragraph | 1 |
Savory Words The First Bite of Your Story | 10 |
Writing on Key A Few Notes about Theme | 23 |
Plotting Your Life | 35 |
Between Innocence and Experience Finding Your Voices | 50 |
Mock Moons and Metaphor Crafting Memoir into Art | 68 |
Writing in Style | 83 |
Marketing Your Memoir | 98 |
Confessional and Finally Proud of It | 112 |
The Meandering River An Overview of the Subgenres of Creative Nonfiction | 143 |
Three Confessional Essays | 158 |
For Your Reading Pleasure Four FullLength Essays | 174 |
Reading List of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction | 212 |
Works Cited | 231 |
Biographical Notes | 235 |