Memoir Writing

Today we began our final unit of the year: memoir writing.  We began by differentiating between memoir and biography, noting that memoir allows for more flexibility with truth-telling.  Embellishing is allowed with memoir.  I shared the story of author James Frey's visit to the Oprah Winfrey Show, and how he was publicly humiliated when she discovered that he'd exaggerated some of the details in his book A Million Little Pieces.  Clearly, Oprah was not familiar with the definition of memoir!

I then shared a rubric (accessible at the link on the sidebar) for assessing memoirs, and I shared a memoir written by trey anderson, a Canadian writer/producer/director.  We noted all the aspects of trey's memoir which made it successful.  Students should attempt to achieve success with each of these aspects, in their own pieces: meaning, style, form and conventions.

We then created "Heart Maps," where we listed the moments from our past that we hold in our heart.  This was basically an opportunity to brainstorm for our memoir.  We now have a bank of ideas, from which we can draw when we go to write our first draft next class.

And now you also know the story of the day I got punched in the face.