As a writer, I've long mined my personal experiences -- and exploited those of some of my closest friends and family -- for stories. But through a compost process, I take my own experiences and those of others I know and combine them, filling in the holes as I go with my own imagination.
One thing I've never really given myself credit for is living a life interesting enough to write about without expansion and exaggeration. Maybe that's why I've been fascinated by memoirs lately. Some of my favorite memoirs include Anna Fields' Confessions of a Rebel Debutante and Cyndy Drew Etler's Straightling. Now I'm reading My Week with Marilyn, the memoir by Colin Clark, the young man who got his first job in the film industry, working as third assistant director on The Prince and the Showgirl.
I'm only a few pages in and already I'm delighted by Clark's literary style and, surely, intrigued by the experiences that provided Michelle Williams the opportunity to step inside Marily Monroe's skin. Here, I'll share with you the first paragraph of the memoir, which immediately struck me.
"All my life I have kept diaries, but this is not one of them. This is a fairy story, an interlude, an episode outside time and space which nevertheless was real. And why not? I believe in magic. My life and most people's lives are a series of little miracles -- strange coincidences which spring from uncontrollable impulses and give rise to incomprehensible dreams. We spend a lot of time pretending that we are normal, but underneath the surface each one of us knows that he or she is unique."While reading, I often highlight or note with a pen those passages which strike me as profound and relevant to real, everyday life. This passage is now between blue ink brackets to be referred to again and again.
Have you read any memoirs? Which are your favorites?
(Above photo property of the Weinstein Group. I'm just borrowing it.)
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