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"I believe the greater the handicap,
the greater the triumph."
John H. Johnson
the greater the triumph."
John H. Johnson
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It was a Saturday morning in January 23rd, 2019 and precisely at 10am when I walked into one of the restaurants on Baltimore Pike in Pennsylvania for a meeting with three great writers for an interview with them on “writing skills”. The interview was based on my personal research on the difference between writing memoire and other writing skills. As I was about opening the door a man behind me offered to do so with a statement “pretty ladies with beautiful African attires should not be allowed to open the door themselves, let me do it, and by the way my name is Don, Don Murray” was what he said as he opened the door. He happens to be one of the three author I am to interview.
As I finally sat with these three great authors, Mary Karr, the author of The Arts of Memoire explained the difference between Memoire and other writings in this statement “Reading through history cultivates in a writer a standard of quality higher than the marketplace”. This of course truly gave me more insight on the subject as I responded with the following statement “does that mean memoire is based on life experiences”? I wanted to be sure of that fact. Mary responded in her statement “before you can work consciously, though, you go through a phase of developing a critical self, which makes a writer wicked self-conscious” because of her conviction about writing memoire. As the teaching or discussion went on, I asked in my statement “how can somebody learn to write”, I asked because of the benefit of those who want to learn. According to Don Murray, the author of “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product” “Not overnight, for writing is a demanding, intellectual process;” which got me more interested, and Ann Lamott, the author of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life gave me this insight to writing with her statement “The first useful concept is the idea of short assignments” to enable a writer gradually develop a story. According to Ann Lamott “Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts, though I did not understand but she was able to explain better to me during the meeting. When Mary was mentioning names of some memoires, she said this in her statement “One of the greatest memoirs of all time is G. H. Hardy’s A Mathematician’s Apology”, the title of the memoire caught my attention and I thought of getting it. Another question I asked in my statement was “Can I give my draft to friends or family members to read” because I felt people could copy my works but Ann in her statement said “Whenever I’m giving a lecture at a writing conference and happen to mention the benefits of finding someone to read your drafts, at least one older established writer comes up to me and says that he or she would never in a million years show his or her work to another person before it was done; But I am suggesting that there maybe someone out there in the world – maybe a spouse, maybe a close friend-who will read your finished drafts and give you an honest critique. This meeting certainly gave me an insight on how to write memoire with processes and assignment as well as getting critiques to read my drafts.
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April 2019
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