A Quote by Sheila Heti
For me, a memoir is supposed to be understood as a representation of your life, whereas a novel is self-consciously symbolic.
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The difference between memoir and autobiography, as far as I see it, is that a memoir is there primarily to tell one particular story, whereas an autobiography tries to be a full account of a life.
Going from memoir to fiction was fantastic. I had been afraid to move away from memoir; I'd written some novel drafts, but they weren't well received by my agent at the time, and it had been drilled into me that "memoir outsells fiction two to one" (not sure if that's true anymore, or if it ever was), so I felt like the only smart thing to do, professionally, was to keep mining my life for painful moments to recapitulate.
The things that make me laugh are considered smart or whatever, I guess. But stuff that's self-consciously intelligent or self-consciously hip or cool, that doesn't do it for me either. You just try to be funny.
I've been thinking a lot about why it was so important to me to do The Idiot as a novel, and not a memoir. One reason is the great love of novels that I keep droning on about. I've always loved reading novels. I've wanted to write novels since I was little. I started my first novel when I was seven.I don't have the same connection to memoir or nonfiction or essays. Writing nonfiction makes me feel a little bit as if I'm producing a product I don't consume - it's a really alienating feeling.
Man is symbolic to the sun. The sun is dealing with a ball of fire and didn't go out yet. Me being symbolic to the sun, that's what keeps me going, that's like my hunger. That's like my fury, my self esteem. That's the elements within me that keep my body motionable. The fire is self esteem. Inner strength.
A memoir forces me to stop and remember carefully. It is an exercise in truth. In a memoir, I look at myself, my life, and the people I love the most in the mirror of the blank screen. In a memoir, feelings are more important than facts, and to write honestly, I have to confront my demons.
With memoir, you have the clay of your life to work with. When you're writing a novel, you have to make the clay first.
There's a difference between doing memoir and writing a novel. If I had put the story of the boy killing my dog - and that was Eric also, what a little monster he was! - in a novel, even if I took it directly from life, it would be fiction.
A memoir is a book about some particular thread or theme or moment in a person's life, whereas an autobiography is the entire life.
I had wanted to write 'The Possessed' as fiction, but everyone told me that no one would read a novel about graduate students. It seems almost uncivilized to tell someone writing a novel, 'No, you have to call this a memoir.'
For me writing is an organic process that starts with engaging the language and then thinking about the structure of the novel as you move along. Especially in revision you start to notice correlations. Things come up, not self-consciously, because you're busy feeling your way through sentences and trying to push the language into new places.
I think, when you're a young composer, you're told constantly that what you're supposed to do is figure out what your voice is. "What is your thing supposed to sound like?" You know: "What's the thing you do," that everyone can recognizably tell from a long distance is you and then you're supposed to be in search of that marker and you're supposed to find it and you're supposed to live there for the rest of your life. And it seemed to me, from a young age, that was what I was encouraged to do. You find a sound and that's your sound! That's what you do.
For whereas the mind works in possibilities, the intuitions work in actualities, and what you intuitively desire, that is possible to you. Whereas what you mentally or "consciously" desire is nine times out of ten impossible; hitch your wagon to a star, or you will just stay where you are.
In my real life I had to confront the sins of the father, but it's also a symbolic journey - a social, psychological, sexual journey for women and minorities who must pass through patriarchy and the symbolic order in order to claim a self.
I look for the moment(s) in the story where the writer risked abandoning the glory of the self in favor of the possible relationship with an other. I don't ever let the market tell me what a memoir is. The first best memoir I ever read was Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.
Be your authentic self. Your authentic self is who you are when you have no fear of judgment, or before the world starts pushing you around and telling you who you're supposed to be. Your fictional self is who you are when you have a social mask on to please everyone else. Give yourself permission to be your authentic self.
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