Second Post: Memoir Reflections

Prior to this unit I didn’t fully comprehend what a memoir was. I had read several biographies, but had never understood the difference between the two things. The Glass Castle being the first memoir I have ever read, I learned from it the style and format of this type of writing. It wasn’t really like anything I had encountered before. The author’s writing was kept short but still very descriptive. The writer was particularly good at effective opening and closing sentences and I’ve noticed that has started to rub off into my writing. Every time I encounter a new writer it seems to help develop my personal style a little more.

            Though I would have liked to, I didn’t finish reading the Glass Castle. From the portion that I did read I think The Glass Castle’s message was about growing up and how your views of people change as you do. It also had to do with changing understanding of things, for example the author’s belief in the glass when she was young and how she begins to see through the empty promises as she grows older.

            Initially the task of writing a memoir, even a short one, was daunting. As I’ve said I wasn’t very familiar with this format of writing and writing about my personal life was not appealing to me. Because the memoir was only two pages we had to choose events with great significance. At first I was stressed about it, as there is no exciting, life changing event in my history that I could have written about. Once I chose the theme, which in itself was no easy task, the writing wasn’t as challenging as I thought it would be. The most difficult aspect of the project was capturing the theme, the people and my own views in such a short space. The limited pages forced me to reduce my writing to its most basic form and constantly revise and shorten sentences.

            I don’t think my writing itself has changed substantially from this assignment but I might say that I’m no longer so against writing about my own life. Though I’ll always prefer the stories of others to my own, writing the memoir was an interesting experience.