This week I wrote about family: about my own struggles with capturing my family on the page and some techniques I’ve used to face those struggles. Today’s Great Stuff for Writer’s Friday (coming to you a day late) presents some of the resources I came across when researching writing about family. I have five offerings for you.
Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching, and Publishing, edited by Carol Smallwood and Suzann Holland (Key Publishing House). The editors of this volume present fifty-five short articles from an array of essayists, memoirists, and journalists. The book’s premise is that women are uniquely interested in and adept at writing about family (a claim that might be disputed by fans of Frank McCourt, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Tobias Wolff, Robin Hemley, and a host of other male memoirists). That aside, I believe women and men will both find some sound advice in Women Writing.
Listed as one of the “Best Books for Writers” by Poets & Writers Magazine, this easy-to-read guide covers everything from how to write about family skeletons to how to promote your work to how to build your confidence as a writer. It has a section of writing exercises and includes an interview with Meredith Hall, author of the acclaimed memoir Without a Map.
Although male writers can find much of interest here, the book is geared toward women, whose generally larger roll in child rearing, caregiving, and household maintenance may give them a different take on family issues (and unique ways of writing about them). The chapter on balancing work, family, and writing, for example, is especially relevant to women, and much of the advice in the collection is directed to mothers, daughters, and wives.
Four Good Blog Posts. In addition to books on writing about family, there are a variety of useful posts on the topic across the blogosphere. “Advice on Writing a Family Memoir” on Writingwell.com offers some advice on getting started, aimed mainly at beginning writers. It includes the absolute best suggestion for anyone interested in writing about their families: “Listen first.”
On About.com, “Ten Steps to Writing Your Family History” offers tips for anyone who is thinking about writing about their ancestors. Family histories are often the project beginning writers feel drawn to—and soon get stuck on, as the task becomes more complex and time consuming than they imagined. If you’re one of them, the simple steps listed in this post will go a long way to getting you focused and organized.
“Memoir or Family History? A Deeper Lookat the Differences” on Lynette Benton’s Polish and Publish website takes a somewhat more sophisticated approach to writing about family. (Oddly, this is actually a repost from a blog by author and literary agent Virginia Lloyd. Benton credits but does not provide a link to the original post). By looking at the distinction between these two related but distinct genres, Lloyd offers insights into both of them, especially with respect to content, focus, roll of the author/narrator, and marketability.
Finally, in “Legal Writes: Writing about FamilyMembers,” Attorney Kohel M. Haver offers writers information about the possible legal repercussions of writing a memoir. Although this brief discussion shouldn’t substitute for actually consulting with an attorney if you have any serious concerns, it can give you some general guidelines to keep in mind as you write.