Manguso — Writing a Book
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The most recent Poets and Writers contains an article on Sarah Manguso and her new memoir. I’m a bit memoired out. However, this sound like a real-life, true, and understated memoir, so I may have to read it.
Can I step out of this blog post for a minute to say that Sarah Manguso has some gorgeous dresses? Check this out —>http://www.sarahmanguso.com/about.html And then take a look at the latest P&W for more groovy shots of her.
The whole reason I’m writing this post is to talk about the writing process. Manguso says that she wrote her memoir in a series of vignettes while at an artist’s colony. She made rules for herself that included not worrying about what order she wrote the vignettes in and writing 1000 words per day. In one month, she had the book.
Lest that sound oversimplified and make you feel bad you’ve taken 10 years to write your own book, keep in mind everyone has a different process. Also, the article mentions she’d had these ideas in mind for seven years, so ideas had been percolating for a long time.
I really, really like this idea of writing vignettes. Without calling it that, that’s what I’d already started to do with a prose book idea I have. I decided there were not enough books on a topic I want to know more about, so I’m writing one.
Vignettes are manageable. When balancing a FT job, mothering, wife-ing and all my other -ings, vignettes seem downright easy.
I had not been making the writing a regularly scheduled event. My life is rather unpredictable with a schedule that changes a little bit each day, and I’m not sure schedules work well for me anyway. I’ll give it a go though.
What do you think about creating a book by writing vignettes? What are your thoughts?
- June 26th
What do you think about creating a book by writing vignettes? What are your thoughts?
Hi Deb,
I read that articlein PW as well and the one thing she kept repeating was she wanted to make it accessible. I think if you’re writing in vignettes, it have better be accessible to the memoir reader–meaning, you can get away with that stuff in poetry, but I think the larger audience won’t allow for too much random fancy poetry thought, if that makes sense.
Peggy Shumaker has a great memoir written in a similar way. They had started off as small poems then grew.
When I read the PW article, I actually preferred the article *about* the book and Sarah over the actually excerpt they had selected. I’m going to wait before I make a finally judgment though because I have only read such a small part of the book, though also as someone who has been reading a lot of memoirs, I’m sort of memoired out as well. But I do like Sarah as a poet, so most likely I’ll get the book and give it a try. (I always want to support those poets…)
I think the smaller the format the better. I’m a huge supporter of eloquence in brief. Short but powerful. Short, simple, and profound. I can never get tired of the simplicity of haiku, or Zen writings, or the Tao Te Ching.
I also love the idea of adult literature in the format of children’s stories. As adults, a lot of us don’t have time to read novels every week. However, I love to read children’s books. Even as my son grows I still buy him younger books that come out new. There are still so many great lessons coming out and they are written simply. We still need that.
Also, sometimes life just gets more profound than a novel allows us to feel. Sometimes, we need to relate to something greater than a story. We need a symbol, something simple, something known to remind us of the goal, to remind us there is one ending, there is nothing different, do not worry, this symbol will remind you, life is simple.
The vignette can do the same. It can be small, precise, brief to fit into our schedule, and profound enough to move us into the next moment. It can be the symbol of a window or door opened just wide enough to let us feel included in the wealth inside.
‘not worry about what order she wrote the vingnettes’
this is the key for me, and hard to do. i have a constant feeling of panic when i am writing something out of sequence for my novel.
This seems to be the way Deborah Digges wrote her memoir, The Stardust Lounge. Or at least, it seems to have begun that way and maybe she did some blending and sewing chapter to chapter after writing the vignettes. Good advice!
I did not know that about DD and haven’t read that book yet. I’ll check it out. Right now, I’m reading the memoir of a medical student and her experience of dissecting a body during anatomy class. Yuck.