Patti Miller - Writing True Stories: The complete guide to writing autobiography, memoir, personal essay, biography, travel and creative nonfiction

Photo Credit: Sally Flegg

PATTI MILLER is an award-winning memoirist and nonfiction writer, whose 2012 book, The Mind of a Thief, was longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Nita Kibble Prize, shortlisted for the WA Premiers Prize for Non-Fiction, winner of the NSW Premiers Prize for History and on the syllabus for English for the VCE in Victoria. Her most recent memoir, Ransacking Paris, was released in April 2015 to critical acclaim. Her two previous writing books, Writing Your Life and The Memoir Book, have been continually in print since publication. Patti is a highly successful life-writing teacher and mentor who offers courses at the Faber Academy, as well as many other writing centres around Australia and in Paris.

Praise for Writing True Stories

An essential companion for anyone considering embarking on a memoir or other form of creative nonfiction, packed with practical advice on ways to set the minds juices flowing. Miller is an experienced guide who can help navigate all the dangers, mistakes, excuses and forms of self-sabotage that plague both the novice and the seasoned practitioner. She writes with calm clarity, breaking down the daunting task of a book into manageable segments, providing a voice of steady encouragement and purpose. A rich, practical and accessible source of wisdom that celebrates and forensically analyses every aspect of the writers craft. This is the complete tool kit. CAROLINE BAUM

Patti Miller believes we all have a story to tell and she has a unique ability to coax it out of us. Whether writing for others or for personal record, Patti helps us to ask the right questions, to jog our memories, and to write stories from our lives. The life-writing process, with Patti as gentle guide, is as much about our own self-discovery as sharing our story. Without Patti, I would never have discovered my creative voice beyond writing the news. JACINTA TYNAN

By the same author

Writing Your Life

The Last One Who Remembers

Child

Whatever the Gods Do

The Memoir Book

The Mind of a Thief

Ransacking Paris

First published in 2017

Copyright Patti Miller 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Every effort has been made to trace the holders of copyright material. If you have any information concerning copyright material in this book please contact the publishers at the address below.

Allen & Unwin

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100

Email:

Web:www.allenandunwin.com

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

www.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 9781760293086

eISBN 9781760638719

Internal design by Romina Panetta

Index by Garry Cousins

Set Post Pre-press Group, Australia

Cover design: Romina Panetta

Cover photograph Peter Hatter / Trevillion Images

Contents

Write what should not be forgotten.

ISABEL ALLENDE

Writing True Stories has grown out of two earlier books, Writing Your Life and The Memoir Book, both of which were based on writing workshops I first conducted at Varuna, the Writers House in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, and have since given all over Australia and in Bali, Fiji, Paris and London. The workshops were designed for those who wanted to write the story of their own or a family members life.

Since then I have found that many people want to explore a wider area of nonfiction based on their own life experience: travel and sojourn writing, memoir and biography, personal essays, true crime, nature writing and the whole vast territory of creative nonfiction. Writing True Stories explores all these areas and offers practical advice for anyone wanting to try these genres.

Expressing the nature of being is an ancient impulse. A few years ago, I saw cave paintings in Les Eyzies in France where Cro-Magnon tribesmen had painted images of bison, horses and ibex on the dark walls of their subterranean gallery. They had taken red iron and black magnesium oxides, mixed them with water and blown the mixture through bone pipes to create the drawings. As I gazed at one magnificent bison painted 14,000 years ago, it struck me that the tribesman had, in a way, left a memoir. He had given me his perception of a significant part of his daily life. More than that, he let me see him recalling, selecting, concentrating, creatingbeing human.

A pen or computer is not so different to a clay pipe, a drawing not so different to words. The Les Eyzies paintings affirmed my belief that it is not an indulgence but a requirement of the human spirit to try to communicate the curious nature of being.

Knowing our story will help us to know ourselves, others, the mystery of life, and the universe around us better than we had before.

ROBERT ATKINSON

What is it like for anyone to be in the world? This is the vast and private knowledge that each one of us hasand the great mystery. No one else can really know what it is like for you to be here on this planet. Others could conceivably find out everything that has happened to you, your entire history, but they still could not know how you experience being here. For me, this is the starting point for writing true stories: a desire to express how one experiences lifeits shape, its texture, its atmosphereand a consuming curiosity to know how other people experience it.

Whether you want to write autobiography, memoir, travel narratives, personal essays, creative nonfiction, biography or even edge towards the borderlands of fiction, this book will help you write true stories.

You have experienced being here in the world, have known the joys and perhaps heartaches of life, faced challenges, had adventures, fulfilled dreams, witnessed change, made observationswhatever your achievements or trials, your stories are worth writing. You may have worked as farmer or scientist, prime minister or office administrator, high-school teacher or computer-game designer; you may be famous, unemployed, disabled, wealthy; in every case you have lived your own unique life. Experience of living and a desire to write are the starting point of writing your stories.

It does not matter how old you are or whether you have done anything others consider extraordinary or not. Writing is first of all observation, and then putting the observation into words. For good life writing, the quality of your observation is key