This past weekend, at the Austin SCBWI conference, I had a conversation I’ve had before.
Numerous times.
It was about rhyme.
The writer really wanted to write in rhyme.
Her story had come out that way.
She couldn’t stop herself.
"But I know I shouldn’t," she said, "because editors don’t like rhyme."
Whereupon I gave my standard response.
"Editors don’t like bad rhyme. That’s a whole ‘nother beast. Good rhyme is good."
I’m reading Mary Karr’s Lit right now, for pleasure.
If reading about somebody walking through the depths of psychic hell can be pleasurable.
But y’know, it’s Mary Karr.
She’s so … smart.
And funny.
And man, can she turn a phrase.
It occurs to me that I feel about memoir the way editors feel about rhyme.
A little skeptical.
A bad memoir can peel the paint off even a very well-made day, and there are so many bad memoirs.
But a good one?
I can’t put down…
I used to be anti-memoir, too, until I read Liar and A Girl Called Zippy. (I’m not counting the fiction that’s actually memoir…)
a writer once told me…
…that sometimes you’ve just got to make your own rules. And do the thing that your gut tells you to do. Not the thing that the rule books state is the right way to do it. Didn’t you hear that too???
Bernadette
I’m in a reading slump (as in, books for grown-ups), so thanks for the Karr tip. I’m going to explore.
Jules
7-Imp