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Creative writingphysical work, such as agricultural or industrial labour, and the knowledge this brings. Therefore, although new writers might possess a range of information that would seem
incredible to their forebears, it is sometimes uncoupled from physical reality, and does not carry distinct details mined from the face of life,
from
real landscapes, and from weathers unmonitored by any thermostat.
Remedy this by setting out to gain experience, even if that simply entails interviewing members of your family and getting experience secondhand. The paucity of real detail,
or the forgery of detail, can undercut a memoir. It will read like a forgery of life, or simply under-researched,
unless the details are real, and you have some experience of them (through travel or work, for example, or are ready to find and interview people with real-life experience (see Writing about people and the world below. For example, in the cartoonist Art Spiegelman’s account of his father’s
experience of the Holocaust,
MAUS (
1986
), the author makes the interviews with his father an important and poignant part of the story, in that they reveal both the best and worst of their relationship, and the son’s changing reasons behind the desire to tell his story.
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