The Reason I Don't Like Memoirs

CREDITS

Originally published January 26th, 2026

Written by R. Jam

Every single time I have a creative writing class, I have to write a memoir. Every single time I’ve despised it.

It just becomes boring after a while having to always write about yourself, especially when you are not an interesting person or just don’t have an interesting life. If you’ve been lucky enough to not experience the death of a close loved one, or a major debilitating injury, or some other sort of terrible trauma you can write about for a good university entrance essay — well, there’s not really any point in writing a memoir. Nobody wants to hear about a nobody.

But with school assignments, I get why they make you write them. It’s the easiest thing for a kid to write since it involves the least amount of thinking. The author already knows all the characters, and the settings, and the plot, and every single story beat. You don’t have to spend hours rearranging an outline or scrolling through babynames.com looking for the exact right character name. A memoir is a quick, easy introduction to creative writing for a young first-timer; and especially easy for the students who don’t want to write anything at all, and are just taking the class to up their GPA.

They don’t always make you write memoirs, of course. Sometimes you get to write about a historical figure! It’s still memoir-adjacent, you just lose the prefix in the biographical. Do some research and write a story from their old-timey shoes. Making your history classes more engaging from within the stifling walls of your high school classroom, one step at a time. I’ve had plenty of non-creative creative writing assignments, too; write a letter about yourself to a dead soldier, pick a distant relative to pen a poem about, and all those sorts of things.

Writings like this — of which memoirs are included, in my mind — fall under the category of “creative nonfiction.” An oxymoron of a genre. You’re using creative ways of expression to tell a nonfictional story, but the thing is that nonfiction is also synonymous with truth. It’s the book of animal facts in your elementary school library, and the documentaries they play in class when your teacher is out sick, and the overpriced collection of essays your professor has you buy every year. 

Memoirs stand out, though. With other nonfiction, it’s never really trying to be anything it’s not. It’s always just the truth as it is currently perceived. Maybe there’s a bit of wiggle room for some subjectivity depending on how closely you ascribe to the motto of history is only written by the winners, but for the most part, there’s something to back it up. Facts. Figures. Years and years of people citing each other in circles, making your head spin.

But the thing with memoirs is that memoirs are only written by those that remember them. The “pact” of the memoir, like other nonfiction, is that you have to tell the truth. 

In this case, it’s the truth about yourself and your life and the way you remember how everything went down. You make a promise to your audience that everything is factual. Your readers are trusting your interpretation of events. They are trusting your memories that you are putting to page. The memories you are writing about in these fantastical, fictional ways.

Let’s explore an example. What time is it for you right now? I’m writing this when I should be sleeping, so I don’t want to look at my clock and remind myself that my morning alarm is suppose to go off soon. So, let’s start there. A clock in a story can represent a coming doom, or a reminder of the passing of the time, or it simply can just be death. The eleventh hour, the ticking of a stopwatch, the way a broken clock is right twice a day, and all those sorts of things you learn about in high school Eng. Lit. 101.

What’s important to note about the clock as a symbol is that the author controls the meaning when they put it in the story. The audience controls the meaning when they see the clock and go, well, that’s obviously a metaphor. Or some people go, well, that’s obviously just a clock, what are the rest of you even talking about? but, hey, they still assign meaning to the clock. Even if that meaning is nothing. 

But let’s say you’re having dinner at your grandma’s house and her old, chiming clock goes off in the middle of your conversation. It’s actually a few minutes late because it hasn’t been wound in over a decade, and the rest of your family keeps talking over it, because this clock does not just chime. It also sings. A simple little melody you’ve heard every time you come over, and the birds inside of the clock spin around in a pretty little dance. Your parents and aunts and cousins have heard this clock sing even more times than you have. Your dad says it’s annoying. Your mom says it’s kitschy. 

You love it. So as your family keeps talking, you stop and listen to the melody, and the conversation moves on around you.

You cannot say the author put the clock there for symbolism/metaphor/the eleventh hour/a fear of death/stopwatches/etc/etc/etc/etc. The author put the clock there because their grandmother had a clock and they think the clock is important enough to mention in their retelling of this dinner. The audience cannot assign any other meaning to it because the clock was not put there with the intention of being a symbol. It was put there because the clock was a symbol to the author, and obviously, the audience wasn’t at the dinner. The rest of the family weren’t at the same dinner the author was experiencing.

That’s the reason I don’t like memoirs. In any other story, you can assign whatever meaning you want to it. You can arrange events however you like, cut a character you hate and add in another to fulfill whatever fantasies you need, and the plot only moves forward if you sit down and write it out. And in this writing you can make as little or as much sense as you want until your head starts to spin.

The truth does slip in sometimes in these types of stories. You can never help it. The main character might have your same tics, the high school classrooms are always just as stifling as your classes were, and the stories always have a happy ending.

But a memoir cannot have a happy ending if the happy ending hasn’t yet happened — or else you’ve broken your promise and you’re lying to everyone and everything and every you. It is no longer a memoir. A memoir has to be the truth, and the truth often isn’t as pretty and simple and clean as stories are. So this, in it of itself, is still a lie. An oxymoron of a writing style.

Stories have a meaning with thought behind it. Even subconscious thought is still thought. Even unintended meaning is still meaning.

Life does not have that. You cannot control anything in life besides yourself, and even then, that’s often hard to do. Parents and authors both search on babynames.com, but only one of them is able to change the name to fit the symbolism better. A character experiences the death of a grandparent but you can just as easily make them go on a picnic; in real life, everyone knows you cannot control death or the weather. Or taxes. Characters in stories never have to pay taxes.

A memoir is a just story decked out in the truth. Fiction is just the truth covered up with a story. 

So, I really hate writing memoirs, and I don’t like reading them either. Obviously it’s fine if you all want to write and read them but I do really wish professors and teachers and university admissions offices would stop making us. Plus, I don’t really have a particularly interesting life. Nobody wants to hear about a nobody. It’s a lot more interesting for me and for all of you if I don’t have to tell the truth about myself all the time.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, my grandmother promised I can get the singing bird clock when she dies. I’ve only recently learned why I like the melody so much, but I ain’t telling you.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

This sounds like a school assignment and technically it wasn’t, but it was based on a school assignment which I didn’t end up going with because I knew my prof would not like the topic. So, here we are. I guess.