Best books on writing memoir

The idea of writing your own story is a daunting one. At first, it may seem easy; after all, you know your own life better than anyone else, and who could be better equipped to tell the story of your life? But the act of putting pen to paper and actually beginning your own memoir is much harder than that. Where to begin? How to sift out the important things from the mundane? What if your writing upsets your loved ones?

If there's anything that writers like more than writing, it's writing about writing that, and talking about writing about writing. And it makes sense: writing is a weird, lonely pursuit. You spend hours in a room, alone, typing and deleting one sentence over and over again until you give up and eat a bunch of dry cereal and call your mom to declare that you'll never write again. It's tough. You need to vent about it every once in a while. And if you're a young writer who's just starting to figure out how you like to write and what you like to write about, it can help to read memoirs from writers who have been there, too.

By the time you get to the point of submitting to agents or publishers, you should be very well acquainted with the genre. You must read both of those. Also anything by Lamott. Meanwhile, create a reading plan for yourself. Set a goal for the next year or so of reading at least 20 good memoirs and 5 books about writing memoir.