1189. This week, we talk to Grant Faulkner, co-founder of Memoir Nation and former executive director of NaNoWriMo, about what makes writing a memoir different from writing fiction. We look at why memory is more story than recording, how trauma fragments the way people use language and narrative structure, and why you don't need an extraordinary life to write a compelling memoir. Grant also explains what a flash novel is and why the form is taking off, and he shares his advice for anyone ready to sit down and start writing their story.
1189. This week, we talk to Grant Faulkner, co-founder of Memoir Nation and former executive director of NaNoWriMo, about what makes writing a memoir different from writing fiction. We look at why memory is more story than recording, how trauma fragments the way people use language and narrative structure, and why you don't need an extraordinary life to write a compelling memoir. Grant also explains what a flash novel is and why the form is taking off, and he shares his advice for anyone ready to sit down and start writing their story.
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[Computer-generated transcript]
Mignon Fogarty: Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and today I'm here with Grant Faulkner. Grant is the co-founder of Memoir Nation and also the co-host of the Memoir Nation podcast. He is the co-founder of the Flash Fiction Institute, the co-founder of 100 Word Stories. I mean, all these co-founder things. I think he works well with other people.
And an executive producer on America's Next Great Author, and he was the executive director of National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, for 12 years. Grant, welcome to the Grammar Girl podcast.
Grant Faulkner: Thank you so much. And when I hear my bio read, I'm like, "That's a lot of co-founding," you know? But it's much better than just founding.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. It's fun to do things with other people. Well, I think that your Memoir Nation work is really interesting, and we were sort of talking about that before when we were talking about having you on as a guest and how writing memoir can be really different from writing other things. So can you sort of talk us through that?
Grant Faulkner: Yeah, it's interesting to me because when I first started the podcast with Brooke Warner, who co-founded Memoir Nation with me, and we initially called it Write Minded back when you were our first guest, I think, maybe second guest. Anyway.
Mignon Fogarty: Early.
Grant Faulkner: That was fun. But we rebranded it Memoir Nation when we decided to launch Memoir Nation, the organization. And early in the podcast, you know, I hadn't read a lot of memoirs. Brooke was kind of our resident memoir scholar. She's been very passionate about them, for a very long time. And so I used to just say, it’s all storytelling, you know? Storytelling in memoir and storytelling in fiction, it's just pretty much the same, more or less. And -- But then I wrote my own memoir, or I'm still writing it, and the more that I read other memoirs, I realize, yes, that is true. It is storytelling in its fundamental form, but it's a different type of storytelling because you're telling your story, and you're trying to tell the truth.
You know, you're trying to have it be nonfiction. I think we all have storytellers' brains, though, and, you know, there's a fallibility built into how we view the world, right? Mignon, I'm sure you've experienced the same. Some people tell the different stories about the same experience.
Mignon Fogarty: Oh my gosh, I have a funny story about that. So, I am adopted, and when I met my biological parents separately, they had very different stories about the night I was conceived. I won't go into the details, but, like, you wouldn't even think it was the same event.
Grant Faulkner: That is so interesting. And, and it's so-, when it happens to you, I mean, it's so perplexing, right? Because, like, it seems like memory is a recording, you know, and we're just recording the world. But memory is a story, and I've even heard that memories change every time you re-remember them. You're rewriting them.
You're putting a re-story or re-storying them. I think Lidia Yuknavitch coined that term. And yeah. And so I think there is a fallibility or a fictionality to the way we view the world. You know? It's going through-- When we experience something, it's going through a lot of different filters.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. And you can, you can tell a different story for a different audience too. You know, when I talk about my background as a writer versus my background as an entrepreneur, it can be a very different sounding story.
Grant Faulkner: Right. Exactly. You change your story for the audience. That's a really good point. And you change it. That's the thing about writing your story too, is, like, I found in my memoir, my story, the way I've conceived it, changes in the writing of it, you know?
Mignon Fogarty: Does it?
Grant Faulkner: Yeah. It's very fascinating, because I'm triggering different memories, you know, and they're-- I'm unearthing them, and I'm also remembering them differently, I think to your point, that I'm presenting them on the page for a hopeful audience, which is different than just having them in my interior, you know?
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah.
Grant Faulkner: And so it's an interesting process, and you know, some memoirs have gone, you know, like David Carr for his memoir, “Night of the Gun,” he was going back. He's a New York Times reporter, sober for like two decades, and he went back into his years of addiction to try to figure out, you know, who he was in that period. And so he brought all of his reporting talents to interview people who shared those experiences. But beyond them having different versions, they were also addicted to drugs, you know? So there were some things that could not be figured out, including “The Night of the Gun,” is like, what happened with that gun that night? So yeah, it's very interesting what happens to us.
Mignon Fogarty: Because memories are fuzzy. So when you're working with people to write their memoir, how much work goes into figuring out who the audience really is? Like, you know, you imagine a lot of different people write the book, but as a memoir writer, you probably... Different people have different audiences in mind.
Grant Faulkner: Yeah, definitely I think so. I think one of the principles of writing a memoir is that no matter... You know, we all have unique stories, and some of our stories are so unique, you know, that almost no one on earth has experienced them, right? Certain types of trauma, for instance. And, so you’re always writing, the general guidance is to write with a sense of universality, you know? So if I haven't had a child who died at seven years old because of some tragic illness, I can still read that memoir and it will speak to me, you know, like on some level. And so yeah, it's both. I think like some memoirists though probably are, you know, thinking that they'll reach more of a prime demographic depending on the subject matter that they're dealing with. But yeah, I think that universality is something to really reach for and try to achieve.
Mignon Fogarty: You probably won't be successful if you're writing it, "I really wanna make sure Grandma reads this so she feels, she realizes what she's done."
Grant Faulkner: Yeah, well, yeah, exactly. You're not-- There's a lot of warnings about not to write revenge memoirs, you know? Especially if you're gonna publish them for a wider audience because, you lose credibility. You know, people don't trust your point of view if you're just, if you're the righteous one, like, "I did it all right. Grandma was wrong. Grandma was mean and cruel." Yeah, so we all have, you know, whatever. There are villains in the world, and you can feel them as evil and bad characters, but I think you have to reach to find their humanity and their point of view. This goes back to my novel writing days, but, one bit of advice in writing villains for novels is that villains don't see themselves as villains,
Mignon Fogarty: Right.
Grant Faulkner: They rationalize their acts. This is like one of the disappointing things about humans is that we're brilliant at rationalizing things we do to make them right for us. So I think you have to write characters and try to give them-- try to observe all their contradictions and find their goodness, because I do think almost everybody, if not everybody, has some goodness in them. So, yeah, I think that's the toughest part, though, with memoirs, because so many memoirs really are about being wronged, or victimized in some way, and so that's really hard to do.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. I'm sort of, I'm thrusting this question on you unprepared, but I've long pondered what the difference is between a villain and a monster. It's more of a general fiction question, but I wonder if you have thoughts on the difference between those two.
Grant Faulkner: I've never thought of this, to tell you the truth. A villain and a monster. I mean, a monster... I mean, it's a funny word, right? Because you can act monstrously, right? A villain can act monstrously but not be a monster. Maybe that's it. Maybe a monster is pure evil, and maybe a villain is a human being with many kinds of sides and angles and passions and loves and contradictions.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, so yeah, sure. No, I think, yeah. So maybe in a memoir you could try to avoid turning people into monsters and explore their villainy.
Grant Faulkner: Exactly. Yeah, I like that.
Mignon Fogarty: With compassion or understanding.
Grant Faulkner: You're good with, you're good with words.
Mignon Fogarty: I couldn't tell you off the top of my head the origin of either of those words, but it's probably revealing.
Grant Faulkner: Yeah. Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. Listeners should know I've been trying to get Mignon to write. She has written at least part of one novel and I’ve been trying to nudge her into finishing it. So hopefully you've got plenty of monsters and villains that will draw you back to the page.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. You know, that is one, that is actually one of the problems I have with my quarter-written novel, is I can't decide who the villain is and, and why, what motivates them. And all the motivations seem too small to me. And then I read other people's novels and their villains' motivations aren't, you know, earth-shattering. It can be something as simple as, you know, petty academic rivalries or just plain small greed. But for some reason, I feel like my villain has to be, you know, the world's worst ever.
Grant Faulkner: Yeah, no, I'm much more interested in petty grudges than I am in grand villainy, you know? I mean, like, because most humans hold petty grudges for no one's benefit, including their own usually, you know? I think that's what's interesting about a lot of the antagonism between humans, is that sometimes neither side wins.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. So often. Yeah, what else makes writing a memoir different from writing a, or not writing a novel?
Grant Faulkner: Yeah. well a memoir, you know, it's- we're really living in the golden age of memoirs. I think this kinda golden age started in the ''80s and '90s. And I think one I think, like, the reason that you, one can be like 43 years old and have seven memoirs is that memoirs are actually like slices of life. They're about experiences, you know, and they can be small or large. So I think, like, sometimes people think, maybe like you did with your villain, that you need to have this tremendous villain, and I think a lot of people hesitate to write their memoirs because they think their life is too ordinary or boring, and that, of course, is false.
You know? I mean, just like as I said when I was at NaNoWriMo is everyone has a story to tell, and you just have to believe that your story matters to write it. And that goes for memoir too, and I think, like, plenty of memoirs that aren't about anything extraordinary happening. They're just interrogations of the self.
And so I think I find that very interesting, and I think the-- I'll say one more thing on, on a societal level. What I find really interesting and what really drew me to memoir, to starting this organization, was I thought about the changes, the genuine cultural changes I've felt in my lifetime, and a lot of them have been driven by memoirs, by people telling their truth, you know? And I think, like, memoirs have addressed so many taboos in our society, whether it's sexual orientation, addiction to drugs, sexual abuse, sexual trauma. You know, just the list, the list can just, is so long. But memoirs really kind of broke through and addressed those taboos, and a lot of memoirists personally suffered, you know, presenting their story for a variety of reasons. They were pilloried, you know, like trauma porn, you know? And I think, obviously I think a lot of memoirists are women, and so I think that they're being vulnerable and telling these stories. They've been, unfortunately, sexism has kind of tried to diminish their stories.
But I think we've had so many important stories that have changed the world, you know? Meaning that we have gay marriage because there were a lot of memoirs about that, you know? And, I always say stories precede policies. And so that's why I think that stories really are the most important thing that we have to give the world to change it.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. When we were preparing, you talked about fragmentation of language to express trauma. And I have to confess, I didn't really know what you meant by that.
Grant Faulkner: Yeah. So actually they, they've done psychological studies on this, and when somebody experiences trauma, they don't experience it like a normal cohesive, like, narrative. Like, like if you haven't experienced trauma, your narrative of what has happened to you is generally like an arrow.
It's one thing moving forward with a beginning, middle, and end. And it has a sense of resolution oftentimes too. That's the expectation of a narrative, a cohesive narrative. But trauma, when somebody's experienced trauma, you experience a more splintered, fractured world that is full of shards. And so oftentimes in the remembering of the trauma, it's… you don't have the language really. There's not a language to express that trauma. So the sentence structure or the narrative structure can really break down. It can be really very, very fragmented. For instance, like some of the... Oftentimes people use like really short sentences. Sometimes they use dashes where language fails them. Oftentimes they use the passive voice and, you know, usually the passive voice isn't encouraged or a good thing to use, but it obviously has its place, right? And so if you've been victimized in some way or harmed, you're more helpless, you know. So the passive voice helps explain that.
And one way that I think about this, just to put it into a personal story, not my story, but I interviewed Amanda Knox on our Memoir Nation podcast, or we did. And for listeners who might not know that name, she was part of this kind of global horrible scandal, in the early 2000s where she was an 18 or 19-year-old, college student who was studying in Italy. And in like the second or third week, while she was there, her roommate died this horrific bloody death, and Amanda was accused of it. Turned out, she was exonerated later, but she spent four years in prison. And what she said on the podcast was that what was interesting to her as somebody who experienced this trauma was that she lost the sense of herself as a protagonist. So, and I think most people think of themselves as a protagonist in their life, you know, and so they think of their life having this kind of cohesive story and following this path, and she lost that sense of herself as a protagonist. And I think that's what oftentimes happens with people who experience trauma.
And since we're using language to both express ourselves, but also mirror our experiences, you know, that's where language really fails us in a way, or the conventional rules of language fail us. And that's where I think a lot of writers then have to experiment both with grammar and the structure of their narrative in order to try to express, you know, what they went through. So yeah, it's very interesting to me. I should note that this idea, I first heard it from... I mean, there is a lot of psychological research on it. I first heard it from Adam Johnson, who's a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, and he gave this presentation once. And I think he recognized this as a creative writing instructor, that his students who had experienced trauma, their narratives were just different than other students. And so he presented a lot of this. very fascinating.
Mignon Fogarty: Fascinating. When people go through this trauma, does it affect their memory and how they even remember the stories? And then, you know, how can you write about it when you maybe remember it differently or can't remember all of it?
Grant Faulkner: From what I've read is that experiencing trauma is more about reaction than reflection. You’re still caught up in the trauma, you know, you haven't moved beyond it. And so like a flashback intrudes on your life. It's a disruptive thing. You don't exactly invite that flashback in. And so in writing, that's the challenge of writing too, is how can you represent how trauma is a disruption that reoccurs over and over again. And so a lot of trauma narratives there, there's a real circling through the trauma, a real, like looping, having a loop through your brain. You're reliving it a lot. I think, you know, I was reflecting on when I've- if or when I've done this in my own writing, and I went through some very severe insomnia when I was in my 20s, and I still carry it with me for the most part.
But I wrote a story that was very focused on a character's insomnia, and I really did get into, like, presenting things with a different syntax, you know. Like, because when you have insomnia, it's like you're both neither awake nor asleep. You're in this different zone. Your circadian rhythms aren't really obeying the circadian rhythms of the world.
And so, I really did have to break down language to an extent because, you know, like also when you're, when you have insomnia, just your perceptions are so different, and you're having a lot of these intrusive thoughts, and you're trying to calm down. And, you have this simultaneity too where, where a lot of things are happening at once, similar to, to kind of the stream of consciousness that Virginia Woolf or William Faulkner, really, really were groundbreaking authors with. And so it was interesting to try to, you know, represent that very splintered world. So I think it was similar to trauma when I had insomnia.
Mignon Fogarty: And I imagine that the writing isn't all fragmented in the memoir. Even in a trauma memoir, it probably shifts into the fragmentation at certain points, but then other parts are more normally or, you know, standardly narrative.
Grant Faulkner: Very good point. And one interesting thing about trauma narratives too is that, you know, to express them, it has all that kind of splintering of language that I've mentioned, but there's also a lot of theories that to try to make a cohesive whole of your experience is the way to heal or the best way to heal. So it’s interesting how storytellers, we use stories to express ourselves, but we also use them to heal ourselves.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. And so you also mentioned that the fragmentation writing, it comes up in something called a flash novel, and I don't know what a flash novel is. So you said they're big now. So what is a flash novel?
Grant Faulkner: Flash novel and flash memoir. Yeah, the whole fan of flash aesthetic, I think, is taking off in a lot of ways. And I think it was about 10 years ago, I was on a panel, with some highfalutin literary critics, and I mentioned the phrase flash novel, and I was scolded for using it because I was told that that's impossible. So just for listeners sake, because a lot of people don't know what flash fiction is, it’s technically stories one thousand words or less. And so it is a fragmentary, story form by definition, and you're focused on brevity and compression and writing with constraints. I believe the constraints bring out a different type of creativity. And I don't know why it's a popular storytelling form right now. Like, I founded the journal or co-founded Hundred Word Story about 15 years ago, and it's led for me to an obsession, on the short form. And, I wrote a book called “The Art of Brevity” as well. I think there's something about the kind of, just our kind of pixelated consciousness, I guess. You know? Like, the internet is constant movement through stories. You know?
The world is kind of blurry and distracting. And we experience the world, I think, kind of like a collage, where we're getting all these little snapshots of life. And that's the way my memory also works. It's like a collage of snapshots. And so I think that there is a memetic reason to write, like flash. But I think there's also something happening larger in, in the cultural world and with the internet. Because when I notice this a lot, and this is totally anecdotal, but I notice that the flash form is super popular with writers under 30. You know? And I think that there's just something happening. I can't really express what it is. But it has become a trend. You know? Like, it used to be a sort of rare way to write a story is through this, this kind of elliptical stitching together of fragments. But recently, especially in the last, like, five years or so, I read a lot of novels that take this form, and more and more memoirs. And I think, like, I think, like, on one hand it can look like an easier way to write a book, but it's actually a much more difficult way.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, I think it would be harder.
Grant Faulkner: I think it's harder. I think it's deceptive. I think, like... I even read authors who've said, you know, like, oh gosh, Mary Robison, she wrote, oh, I'm forgetting what novel she wrote, but she wrote it all on little note cards. She said all the note cards could just be shuffled in any order, and it would be fine. But I think she was wrong. I actually think she was wrong. I think the ordering of the note cards and the way that you're developing character, escalation and plot escalation, all those things matter, no matter if you're writing in an experimental form or not.
Mignon Fogarty: Well, it reminds me too, I think that, you know, there used to be novels that were based on letters that people wrote back to each other, like epistolaries. And, there's a new one that's popular right now.
Grant Faulkner: "The Correspondence."
Mignon Fogarty: Yes, that's it, "The Correspondence." I was trying to look it up and see what it was.
Grant Faulkner: Do you know why I know that?
Mignon Fogarty: Why?
Grant Faulkner: Beyond it being a sensation and number one on the best-selling lists. I wrote an epistolary novel like 10 years ago.
Mignon Fogarty: Really?
Grant Faulkner: And I've been trying to sell it. It is gonna come out in a year or so, but, everybody told me no one wanted to read an epistolary novel, you know? So I was like, finally “The Correspondent” got published, and I was like, "Yes, they do wanna read it. You can tell a story." And that's why I wrote it, actually. It is a type of flash novel, you know? And so with the flash novel, the reason, just looping back to that question that you asked
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah.
Grant Faulkner: So I've used it a lot recently and thought about it a lot recently because I have this book, “Something Out There in the Distance,” that just came out, and they are these little flash stories that are told to my friend Gail Butensky's photos. So I like the form because it's this, this interplay or this conversation between stories and photos. And so this form itself are all these little snippets and fragments that to me they add up into something bigger. So a flash novel is operating with these small little stories, but creating something bigger. And I call it a flash novel because it's my text, but these photos also give it kind of like the feeling of a film and that my text is like a voiceover for that. So there’s no technical definition for flash novel. It's more about an aesthetic, I think.
Mignon Fogarty: And do you distinguish between flash fiction and a flash novel, or is a flash novel just a thousand-word or fewer piece of fiction?
Grant Faulkner: Yeah. I think a flash novel is more about... Like, flash fiction does have this kind of technical definition of a story is under 1,000 words, and a lot of the subgenres of that are like 100-word story or six-word stories. They all are these kind of different subcontainers. A flash novel doesn't have that type of definition.
I mean, I think my novel's like about 7,000 words, so not many words. And I think a typical novella or novel is like about 50,000 words, 40 or 50 for a novella. So yeah, I think for me it's more a matter of that aesthetic and what you can do with brevity and what you can do with linked stories, and that's why I call it a flash novel. Because I don't think it-- it's not really a short story, and, so it's something bigger than that.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, that's what I was just gonna ask you next. So how does it differ from a short story? But you're piecing together different parts. It's not one contiguous story, right? It's more like little pieces together?
Grant Faulkner: Pretty much. It could technically be called a short story, you know? Like 7,000 words falls in that. But it's presented in a book, and it's also presented with white space, and it's formatted differently. And so it has this kind of prose poem feel. And like I said, it's like one character's voiceover that accompanies the photos. So I like to think that you could read it and feel like you went to a movie.
Mignon Fogarty: So to wrap up, you know, what advice, other than listening to "Memoir Nation," your podcast, what advice do you have for people who are interested in writing a memoir?
Grant Faulkner: Yeah, I think so often… I think you have to believe in yourself as a writer, and you have to believe in your story. And I say that because so many people will say, "I don't have a story to tell," or "My story is not interesting." But the fact is that we are storytelling creatures. That is the definition of being human. And all you have to do is identify the stories and be interested in the stories, and then start writing the stories. And you won't do that unless you believe that you're a writer and that you're a storyteller. So really it's about, identifying the stories in your life, whether they're fiction or nonfiction, and just being interested and believing in yourself and believing that there's a benefit for you to tell that story.
I mean, I never really think in terms of like money you're going to make from a story or making the best seller list or any of that, fame, fortune, doesn't matter. Because you're really writing the story as a gift to yourself to start with. But then if you want to get it out there, whether it's like earlier you mentioned the grandma who was evil or something, you know, you can also write the story. You probably could write that story if... just for your family if everyone experienced her like that.
Mignon Fogarty: If you wanted to blow everything up.
Grant Faulkner: Hopefully, you have other things to say too. But actually Memoir Nation started because when my father died, I said if he would've written just ten thousand words about his life, it would've been the most precious thing he left us, you know? And so I wanna help people tell that level of story. But also, yeah, publish memoirs too. I mean, often as writers, we want to put it out there for readers, and so I think, yeah, believing that this story is gonna resonate with a reader, that you're gonna be able, that your story matters on that level.
Yeah. So I think that's the main thing. And just jumping in too. You know? Don't get hung up on the rules. Don't think you need to take a lot of classes. Don't even think you need to join Memoir Nation. You know? The main thing is just to sit down and write and develop a practice, and once you develop a practice, you'll find inspiration and you'll find an invitation to write every day or whatever often.
Mignon Fogarty: Wonderful. Thank you, Grant.
Grant Faulkner: Thank you!
Mignon Fogarty: Grant Faulkner, where can people find you and your books and all your projects?
Grant Faulkner: I think pretty much just do a search on the internet. I'm all over the usual places. the webcasts, I mean, memornation.com, grantfaulkner.com. Do that search. You can join Memoir Nation, find all about it on the website of course, and my books are available all the usual places.
Mignon Fogarty: Well, thank you so much, and thank you too to the Grammarpaloozians who support the show. We have a bonus segment for you, that you'll find in your feed. Grant and I, you heard me mention white space. We're gonna talk about, white space as a type of grammar in a story, and we're gonna talk about joining writing challenges, so how you can get that motivation to write.
So look for that in your feed and thank you for your support. If you wanna become a Grammarpaloozian, visit patreon.com/grammargirl. Thanks so much.