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Are you writing a memoir or an autobiography?
What are you going to call your personal story? A memoir or an autobiography?
What’s the difference? Is there any difference?
It’s important that you are clear about this because your potential reader wants to know this right up front.
According to Writer’s Digest:
· An autobiography focuses on the chronology of the writer’s entire life
· A memoir covers one specific aspect of the writer’s life.
I’ve noticed recently in the marketing world of Amazon.com that many autobiographies are being labeled as memoir.
For instance, Michelle Obama’s book Becoming is called a memoir when in fact it covers her entire life.
I believe that this trend is happening because of the connotations for these words. Autobiography connotes heavy reading, like you had to do in college, while memoir sounds short, more exciting, and frankly more interesting and entertaining.
Because my book, Coming to Las Vegas, A true tale of sex drugs & Sin City in the ’70s covers just a three-year period in my life — focusing on my move from LA to Las Vegas to join a circus and then opening the original MGM as a cocktail waitress — it qualifies in the category of memoir.
