A member of Sharon Lippincott’s and Jerry Waxler’s Lifewriters Forum Yahoo Group found a great article by Lisa Koning about the benefits of doing research when writing your memoir or lifestories. Lisa says that while memoir is based on personal experience, it doesn’t hurt – and may actually help – if you do some research into facts and details around those experiences. Not only can adding historical fact and additional personal details enhance the stories by providing more information and a broader perspective, but research can remind you of stories and feelings you had forgotten. Reading books, searching the internet, asking friends and relatives what they remember about your stories, these all help to corroborate and add to your stories – and perhaps most important, that research will prevent problems of inaccuracy that might lead others to be suspicious of your writing or downright reject your stories as a bunch of tall tales or lies (see the Feb 6, 2009, post Liar! Famous Memoir Fakes).
Linda Austin
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