Tell Me Why I Don’t Like Memoirs

Submitted into Contest #198 in response to: Start your story with somebody getting called to the principal’s office.... view prompt

42 comments

Fiction Creative Nonfiction

Damon, a ghostwriter, finished the editing of yet another memoir he had written for a successful business person. Someone who climbed the corporate ladder and managed to become CEO of a large company, for a few years. And then, reading between the lines (Damon was good at that), the CEO was let go for underperformance. 


In interviews, the CEO was pleasant, if dully conventional. The type of man women want to marry, and then not talk to their friends about much afterwards.


Damon’s draft title for these sorts of memoirs was invariably, Tales of a Typical Midwestern Childhood Much The Same As Everyone Else, until something more poetic, if less descriptive, came to his mind.


The CEO hoped for a best-selling memoir that could be his calling card for his next career phase as a public speaker. Making a living by dropping words of wisdom from his mouth, as his favorite TED speaker does—the one he mentioned 200 times within 30 interview sessions.


To celebrate finishing the final draft, Damon opened a chilled bottle of Pinot Grigio that he had been saving for the occasion. After a few glasses, he wrote a letter to himself about the tired tropes of memoir writing. The ones he had seen too much of that should all be flushed down the toilet. Technically some of them were clichés, but ‘tropes’ had a more literary sound to it, and saying that word impressed his clients. They knew they were dealing with a literary sort of person. After another glass of crisp Italian white wine, Damon accidentally emailed it to his entire client list.



The 10 tropes of memoir writing that should be flushed down the toilet:



The story of when I was called into the principal’s office.


The writing assignment this week. Let’s gut this standard inclusion into most business memoirs. Everyone knows it’s a trick to make you, a rich and/or famous person, relatable. You are not.


In 1984, you received a stern talking to from the principal for stealing Joanne’s eraser? It doesn't make up for the thousands of workers you terminated last year, or the personal assistants you’ve bullied. 



“Things my dad taught me”


Your dad didn’t have the internet. Next.



Where I was when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded.


I don’t care. No one does. If you insist on keeping this in your published edition, I will ask NASA to restart the space shuttle program just to launch all 200 copies of your memoir into the sun.



My childhood shaped me into the person I am today.


No. I don’t think so. If you are a pop singer, please don’t make us think that your mother scolding you when you didn’t do your homework when you were 6, is the reason you were born with genetically perfect vocal cords and went on American Idol when you were 19.


Talking of music, I’m now listening to Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance on repeat, and singing Bad Memoir over the chorus. Time for another glass of Pinot. Which leads into…



“My parent (usually Dad) was an abusive alcoholic, and I managed to SURVIVE.”


Statistically, 99.99% of children of alcoholics survive. That alcoholics are so proficient at making babies, while being so bad at taking care of them, is an unfortunate quirk of Darwin’s Theory that we all just have to live with. 


This one cuts closer to home for your ghostwriter. I was born into the most alcoholic, yet un-abusive family, to one day hit the pages of a best-selling memoir. 


Mom drank ten beers, then fell asleep on the sofa. 

The next day, she did the same thing again. 


A real page turner!



I was bullied.


When the well-built handsome men and gorgeous women I interview say they were bullied in school, it means something different for them than the standard dictionary definition of "bullied."


Being the smallest boy out of two hundred in my high school class, I don’t need to read how you weren’t invited one weekend to a party that everyone else went to.


Your struggle was one of popularity.


My fight, was a fight for survival.


But some tropes exist for a reason, so why not?


“Being bullied in 7th grade at Greenfield Middle School gave me the internal drive to one day prove myself and achieve what I have today. I said to myself, one day I will return to the halls of GMS, holding a copy of my own memoir, and those who bullied me, will know I paid $50,000 to a fabulously talented ghostwriter to have it created, and they will apologize.”


As for me, despite being 20lbs lighter than anyone else at school, I was not bullied. Bullied kids were predictable. A bully would kick the back of their chair, they would look back for one second, say “cut it out”, and then go back to their studies. The next day the exact same thing would happen again in that order.


If my childhood in a family of alcoholics did anything for me, being unpredictable, or using the jargon of adolescence, “being weird”, was one of them.



My family (in West Virginia) was so poor that….


What’s more Midwestern than the Midwest? West Virginia. All aspiring writers should spend a few months of their childhood there to gain the street cred to write into the myth of third-world poverty in WV.


Or be radically different, and admit your childhood was middle class like most people, and The Seventies Show reminds you of it. It does me.



In the days before the Internet, we had to do things (in nature, with physical objects) or else we would be bored.


Yes. We ALL know that. And isn’t it great that now, we don’t need to be bored, and even nerds can find friends and even be popular, on the internet. 



My quirky hobby is…


This can have potential, if your hobby is not baseball, football, singing, dancing, computers, or any of the dozens of other normal ways teens occupy their time, by thinking they might be on the edge of greatness with something, that they are not actually very good at.



My one chance at true love left me, when I was __ years old.


I hate to break it to you, but...Stacy with the great hair, or Greg with the soulful eyes, was not the love of your life. It was just the hormones. If you were on a desert island, like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, you would also have fallen in love with the volleyball. So, if your infatuation was based on the way he/she smiled that melted your heart, we don’t need to hear more.


An astute reader, adept at detecting subtext, will have figured out by this point that I did not meet the love of my life in high school.



My close beloved relative died young (and became very important to me afterward).


I wrote something very snarky here. That I just erased. Because, yes, the pain of the human experience can really hurt. But straining to make lost ones sound more significant in your life than they actually were, by hyperfocusing and trying to create meaning out of small memories, may sound hollow.


This is reminding your ghostwriter of the time (and it was only the one time) that his 10-year-old cousin, and best friend at the time, committed suicide, and your ghostwriter didn’t cry at the funeral, and people asked him why he wasn’t crying, but he didn’t have an answer, and people thought that was weird.



I’m suffering from a very special medical condition (which makes it impossible to keep pizza down before noon, poor me)


I have news for you, EVERYONE is suffering from a medical condition. The narcissist in all of us turns our brightest and healthiest face to the world. But, when I have attained most people’s confidence, they will tell me of some difficult issue they are dealing with, that they would rather not have the whole world know about.


But, if your condition is truly something that only a few people in the world have, please let us know about it. 


Nicholas Vujicic, who wrote 50,000 words in Life Without Limits without having any arms or legs, is a good example. You might have a few inconveniences. He needs to ask someone to push the elevator button to survive.



I’m important because, I made important decisions in important meetings (and I’m rich)


There are a million people in America that have been a “senior manager” at some well known company. Good for you, getting paid for all your hard work and study. But it doesn’t make you interesting.


If you were a stripper in Barstow Califonrnia, that would be far more intriguing to the average reader, who simply reads books to escape from the tedium of daily existence.



I found God, Yoga, and/or a Plant Based Diet.


Shove your plant based diet up a koalas rear end. My bad. Koalas eat nothing but eucalyptus leaves. They must walk around smelling like the yoga studio before class.


Thinking about it more, these topics are not suited for a ‘General purpose memoir’ but could be a bestseller in the ‘Here’s Another Thing to Control in Your Life’ category.


The human mind finds almost nothing more satisfying than having something to control. If you put test candidates into an empty room with a red button on a table, 100% of them will study the button, push it, and then push it some more, and then talk to it to see if that makes anything happen.


Give us your unique spirituality practices, your rigorous exercise routines, and your highly controlled diets, so we can push those buttons, and tell our friends about it.



And then everything was fine.


In a good novel, at the end of every chapter, things are not fine. The cliffhanger is what makes us begin reading the next chapter. All the boring parts will be packed into the middle of that chapter. Those words function mostly to make the cliffhanger at the end fun again. Finally…something is happening again!


In a bad memoir, at the end of every chapter, the world is at peace again after the narrator (who gained useful some useful life skill by being cleverly perceptive) fixed the problem or situation he was just facing. Often, a ‘luxury problem’ such as how to get into Harvard Business School, or getting that other Co-CEO fired for abusing the expense account


Writing these guidelines has been much more satisfying than writing my own memoir. Someday I will get that started. I’m going to get all my clients to stop wasting my time with their run of the mill childhood stories, and get them to tell me some real stories by sending this to them now. [send]


And one last thing, I always thought the song, Tell Me Why I Don’t Like Mondays, was by a Northern Irish band singing about their experiences in The Struggles. I just learned they were rich kids from Dublin who made it all up while they were on tour in America.

May 19, 2023 09:33

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42 comments

Michał Przywara
21:19 May 21, 2023

Ha! It had a promising opening, and when we hit "After another glass of crisp Italian white wine, Damon accidentally emailed it to his entire client list." I knew we were cooking with butter :) The rant is amusing and probably quite true in general. Digging deeper, what does that mean? If most people have the same kinds of unremarkable events happen to them, why are some lives worth reading about in a memoir and others seemingly not? Is it just luck? Or maybe we don't care about the actual events themselves at all. Maybe what's interesting...

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05:40 May 22, 2023

That's a good insight, what you said how an event affects the person is what make it interesting. I'm sure some writers could make many of these mundane things in my top 10 15 things not to write about, fascinating by bringing us into the character and their reaction. I've read some hilarious rants by David Mitchell in The Guardian that were about tiny observations really. And there's a rant by Jenny Lawson in "Broken" about simply losing a shoe that's the funniest thing I've read in years.

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Amanda Lieser
13:57 Jun 07, 2023

Hi Scott, This was such a cool piece to read for me because I am currently reading a memoir for work. It was a story that was particularly life-changing for our owner so all of us get to have the opportunity to read it, and I have to admit that I see a little bits and pieces of cheesiness, that you mentioned in this story in the book itself. I can see the merit of choosing to read a memoir, because hopefully you can learn about a celebrity who you might already admire or might be curious about and then you feel like you know them personally....

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Sophia Gavasheli
14:35 May 31, 2023

I had to write a bit of memoir in a creative writing class, and I remember how difficult it was to choose a "suitable" portion of my life. It felt like I was squeezing meaning for something pretty un-extraordinary, so I can definitely relate to Damon's struggles/gripes in this piece. It's kind of ironic though, that he's listing these tropes, but he's kind of falling into them himself. Would his memoir be better than the others? I like how you touch on how so many of us have similar life stories, and yet only a few become famous/published. ...

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03:48 Jun 01, 2023

Thanks so much, it really helps to get feedback that someone read and enjoyed it! I've been feeling a bit stuck with regular short fiction plots, so tried something different in this. Happy to hear some of the pompous mc's rants were amusing. Interesting to hear you also tried some memoir writing in class. That was my original idea to learn writing, but then when I thought about, Why would this be interesting to anyone else? It became a lot tougher. Maybe through learning fiction, we can also improve our own stories (at least that's my ho...

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Will Oyowe
19:40 May 23, 2023

I have to admit this made me chuckle at this, and I had to read it twice, and it does hit home truths that even if we think we are unique, we are really not, according to Damon. At least, that's what I took away from it. I felt this was more of a "diatribe" than a "story," but I guess that's what you were going for. It was a good rant but it didn't grab me as a narrative. I hope that makes sense.

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01:00 May 24, 2023

Thanks, nice to hear you found it amusing. You have a good point, there could have been more a story arc of why the ghostwriter was making the list, and what happened next as a result. As you say, it was mostly of a rant, one that came into my mind the day before the deadline about my own thoughts of how hard it is to write interesting memoir.

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Will Oyowe
09:54 May 24, 2023

Yeah a good first draft, but incredibly poignant subject matter. That's just me I am more like personal characterization. Very curious to know about Damon.

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Katy B
15:29 May 22, 2023

This is another clever, funny, realistic piece with both perfect irony and pathos. Thank you for sharing, Scott!

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10:53 May 23, 2023

Thx so much for reading and letting me know you enjoyed it;)

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Russell Mickler
02:14 May 22, 2023

Hi Scott! Fiction/Creative Non-fiction? WTF? I mean, it _drips_ with sarcasm, but there’s a lot of truth to this. The banality of washed-up CEO’s imparting their wisdom on others as if they were another incarnation of the Buddha. The trite, snarky ten you’ve got are pretty funny, too. I think what appeals about this piece is a cry for help from another writer :) It’s like empathizing with a fellow traveler on the Titanic and leaning in to say, “We paid for this, right? This is what we both decided to do with our lives?” I liked the-l...

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02:57 May 22, 2023

"washed-up CEO’s imparting their wisdom...as if they were another incarnation of the Buddha" haha great description, yeah that's exactly what I was aiming at, and the pain of the ghostwriter dealing with these big egos. I'm a ceo, of three people, so maybe there's some self-satirical projection in this.

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Chris Miller
16:36 May 21, 2023

A great idea and use of structure to respond to the prompt in a creative and entertaining way. I enjoyed reading it. Lots of nice snarky jabs. I like the way the writer injects his own memories making it part memoir and proving his point at the same time. Good title too. I got it, but I was pleased you confirmed it at the end. The truth about the Boomtown Rats is up there with Shane McGowan being a public school boy from Kent.

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05:32 May 22, 2023

Thx Chris! You're the first one to comment on the title. I just put every random snarky thought that was spinning in my head down onto paper (whatever that's called digitally) I must have heard the song last lately as I often listen to youtube autoplaying oldie songs while I'm at work. Didn't know that about Shane McGowan, quite a string of rich public schools in his history for a leader of a punk bank.

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23:51 May 20, 2023

Love the voice of the MC in this and it's very fun and clever. Nice interpretation of the prompt. And so many on the button insights into the memoir template. Great stuff Scott!

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05:27 May 22, 2023

Thanks so much for reading Derrick

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Aeris Walker
19:39 May 20, 2023

The exasperated, alcohol-laced attitude of the MC was fantastic. I liked the small details woven throughout--the personal examples and illustrations. The things I found most funny: Midwest comments: Growing up in Ohio, which is like a gateway Midwestern state, nothing. ever. happened. Nicholas Vujicic's memoir: You couldn't have chosen a better book to show everyone how truly uninteresting or unchallenged (comparatively) their lives may be. Humorous but also dead on. "I found God, Yoga, and/or a Plant Based Diet"--Have you noticed how man...

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03:06 May 21, 2023

Good point about cookbooks, they seem to be more about the celebrity author's life now than about the cooking. Or things like 'a journey through Italy in 12 recipes'. (I think you may have just inspired me to write a comic take on this genre someday) Ohio! Yes, before social media really took off, it just felt like nothing was happening in the midwest. Milwaukee where I grew up has a really similar industrial vibe to Ohio and Michigan perhaps. Doing anything artistic there felt impossible, but now its great how the playing field has been l...

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Zack Powell
17:39 May 20, 2023

I don't think I've seen the Fiction and Creative Nonfiction tags used for the same story. That's a nifty genre combination, isn't it? Anyway, as for the story, I greatly enjoyed this, Scott. Love the title. Love the formatting and the experimental structure. Love the sarcasm. Lots of good quotes and one-liners and nuggets of truth in here. The tropes had me laughing hard because, let's be real, if you pull a random memoir of a bookshelf, chances are you'll find one of these things (at least!) inside. The bullying, the childhood, and the al...

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03:13 May 21, 2023

Thanks for reading & commenting, Zach. I'm happy my random rant turned into something funny and possibly instructive. A few months ago, I had watched a youtube video of a ghostwriter very delicately coaching authors on what type of stories would be more interesting (that's when I gave up writing my own memoir lol) and thought what if she just went on a wild midnight rant about all the things she's tired of seeing. Being a sort of restless person myself, I'd find it hard to listen to someone talking for hours about every detail of their fami...

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Kate Winchester
15:56 May 20, 2023

Clever! You make some great points in a funny way. I love the line about being more interested in a stripper’s life. It’s true! I’d rather read about someone doing something different than achieving “successes.”

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02:56 May 21, 2023

Thanks! Agree good non-fiction is almost always about the unusual. There are so many really fascinating podcasts about frauds & scammers these days, even though none of us would ever want to be around them, they just so different and interesting to read.

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Kate Winchester
04:26 May 21, 2023

Welcome 🤗 Exactly!

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14:35 May 20, 2023

One of your best writings yet. I loved this! Snarky snark snark. Totally my cup of go-f-yourself. Anyway. I have the scheduler for Ted Talks on line 1 who wants you to present this material at every writer's conference in the free world, should I put her through? :)

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02:53 May 21, 2023

Thx! I haven't written a really voicy story since Your Cat Customer Service, and thought I'd let loose a bit of a rant through a grumpy narrator and see how it goes.

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Viga Boland
23:51 May 19, 2023

As a memoir writer, a memoir writing coach, and a book reviewer, your messages here really hit home. It’s amazing to me what some people think others will want to read about their lives. Thanks for the chuckle, Scott. I could so relate to this! I hope everyone who is thinking about writing a memoir reads this story first! 👏👏

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02:35 May 20, 2023

Being told this was funny by a real memoir writer and coach, is the highest compliment I could imagine receiving! Thank you.

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Viga Boland
14:22 May 20, 2023

Awesome!

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Mary Bendickson
13:00 May 19, 2023

Oh, bully! Now I have to delete my memoir this week. I scored high on the boring scale.😴

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13:18 May 19, 2023

Im sure it could be a great story and therapeutic to share with us! This story is told from the voice of a very jaded mc. And short stories from real people are very different than those self promoting memoirs from celebrities written by ghostwriters

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Lily Finch
12:21 May 19, 2023

Extremely satirical look about the memoirs of CEOs. I wondered about the lives of writers while reading and in particular writers who pay the bills with writing that pretty much compromise who they believe they are but find necessary for living. -- What could be more dreadful for a writer? But you say creative non-fiction so it does make me wonder which part of this story is true. The concept of the writer or the CEO tale? Either way it is the struggle with the writer that precludes the writing that gives the sense of angst here in the st...

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02:39 May 20, 2023

My dreams of being a famous ghostwriter haven't been realized yet;) That part is fiction. Most of the backstories from the MC are mine, if slightly exaggerated.

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Lily Finch
04:50 May 20, 2023

D) LF6

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Tommy Goround
23:27 May 20, 2023

I'm not paying you 50k, Scott. I want a discount.

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Lily Finch
00:25 May 21, 2023

I'd buy it. Just sayin'. LF6

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Delbert Griffith
12:06 May 19, 2023

The ghostwriter is definitely suffering from "I'll write that bestseller soon, but I have to keep on writing this shit to pay the bills, as unfulfilling as it is." Like Damon, I'm reading between the lines. The tropes-clichés are hilarious because they're true. I think every ghostwriter who pens memoirs should download this list and present it to their clients. We'd start seeing more interesting memoirs. Great piece, Scott. Highly original and written well. One minor error I saw: "It means something very different for them, then the dictio...

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02:48 May 20, 2023

Thanks Delbert. Happy my little rant was a fun read. I recall being bored with the last few business biographies I've read, and then thinking, I feel sorry for the ghostwriter who had to write or edit those chapters. The Steve Jobs one, that was great though. He didn't break any of these rules. And, judging from the comments on this one, I must bring back the pompous, unself-aware protagonists more often. My two winning stories had those.

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Mike Panasitti
11:42 May 19, 2023

Immensely clever and sardonic assessment of a writerly life that pays the bills, but most likely compromises the writer's sense of self. "Creatively non-fictive fiction?" How many of these things have you had to slug through, Scott? And if you haven't written any memoirs for CEO's, I'd be interested in hearing about the process behind this story. Well done. Best of luck with the contest.

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12:19 May 19, 2023

Thanks for reading! I wasn't really fully satisfied with where my fictional story went this week, so decided to just write a voicy random rant and see where it leads me. The stories told by the ghostwriter are mine except for actually being a ghostwriter. And also, I was probably only the third-smallest kid at school which makes a big difference at that age. Its all ancient history now, I was more picking my brain for things that were really different than the typical childhood memoir. I had read a lot of memoir/autobiographies for a while,...

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Mike Panasitti
12:24 May 19, 2023

Great melding of fact and fiction! Thanks for revealing the experiences that informed the creation of this story.

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Martin Ross
23:41 Jun 27, 2023

I would love to see an anthology of your stories and essays. Financial and corporate paradigms laced through with history or fantasy or here, wise and dark and snarky and revealing humor. And I love a Jerry Maguire moment — I did it once in a fit of pique not just to the entire division but to the entire organization and its affiliates. The division director realized either he could look petty and vindictive or do what he did — tell me publicly how refreshing my missive was🤣🤣🤣🤣. I’m sure if I’d ever done it again, my ass would have been on t...

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Philip Ebuluofor
07:43 May 29, 2023

Like your works. It must hold interest and this did too.

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