My advice to memoir writers is to embark upon a memoir for the same reason that you would embark on any other book: to fashion a text. Don't hope in a memoir to preserve your memories. If you prize your memories as they are, by all means avoid writing a memoir. It is a certain way to lose them. You can't put together a memoir without cannibalizing your own life for parts. The work replaces your memories.
Annie Dillard in Inventing the Truth, edited by William Zinsser, 1998
Annie Dillard in Inventing the Truth, edited by William Zinsser, 1998
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