With a graceful curtsey to Tina, who sent me the link, we have additional advice of a different type to go with our discussion below. Courtesy of Slate magazine, we can definitively list all the required points for anyone creating a memoir that is in fact, well, not fact at all. When I Write a Fabricated Memoir, I Will….
Ooh…do I sense a new Best of Bitches contest? The best fabricated memoir in 200 words or less? *grins evilly and rubs hands*
I’ll write one, only if I can borrow, uh, steal the best opening ever to a fictionalized memoir:
“I was born a poor black child.”
Steve Martin, The Jerk.
If we can agree to this, then I’m in.
Next stop: the mirror, so I can start practicing my “offended” look.
Ok…..Terrell, NeeCee (and I’ve never seen it spelled that way), and ….Margaret??????? Perhaps another suggestion should be…“make sure your ‘characters’ names are consistent.”
spaminator: half49…don’t I wish!
Theddy Phig was born a poor black child.
Wow, that’s a fabulous article! I second the idea for another contest, too.
Orangehands was born a poor white girl, but it was still very sad…
Hey as long as we’re looking at memoirs that aren’t, what about the flipside of poor and angsty:
I’ve been rich. I’ve been on every magazine, but fame isn’t everything. My mom sold me into slavery as a mouseketeer and now I sing in a thong. This is my story.
Heck, I could fabricate a serious non-memoir out of that!
I’m down with this one! Except mine will be ALL TRUE!! ha ha ha!
Ya know, I just don’t get why these “fabulists” (as Slate put it) don’t just write their stories as fiction. I mean, people were obviously willing to read them as memoirs, and they had to do all the hard work of making all that crap up anyway, so why not just go the literary fiction route?
And now … maybe they should tell their publishers … “Hey! Look, I’m a PROVEN writer. Sure, I didn’t tell the truth about this being true, but people LOVED the story!!! Let’s show a united front and tell the public that it was just a mistake that my story was published as a memoir. Big oops!”
I read somewhere that the publisher of the fake Oregonian(?) ganster memoir wasn’t willing to publish it as fiction. I have no idea how that even came out in conversation…
“So…theoretically…what if this were all fake?”
“Well, we won’t publish it as a novel.”
“Oh. Well, then it’s good that I’m a hard core ganster, then, right? Because I like my bling, homie.”
I fifth (or ninth or whatever number we’re up to) the “fauxmoir” contest.
When I cheat on my fauxmoir, I will… get it ghost written for pennies by some gullible young thing so that it at least rings true!
Maybe they don’t sell them as fiction because the quality of the writing is not up to the standard of what is expected from a professional writer. I think people tend to be more forgiving if the author is someone who is not supposed to be a writer, but just someone who went through extraordinary circumstances and lived to tell their story.