How long should a memoir be?
That’s the million-dollar question. It must be. Someone asks a variation of it at least once a week in a Facebook memoir group I’m in. I hate to see this question; the only thing I hate more are the most common answers:
As long as it needs to be.
As many words as it takes.
Long enough to tell your story.
I honestly believe these answers are not meant to be flippant; I think they’re meant as kind, encouraging advice. But these answers are not only unhelpful, they are misleading.
As a book editor who has chosen to specialize in memoir, I always try to interject guidance into the conversation by giving a specific word-count range that is in line with publishing industry standards. I often include a link to such information. Then, the disagreements start.
Poo industry standards, they might say (or something along those lines). No one should tell you how many words your own story should be. Well, that’s true if you do not intend to publish in any form ever or if you don’t care whether your memoir sells after it is published. If those two circumstances do not apply to you, read on.
What is the Recommended Length of a Memoir?
Like any subject, thanks to Google, you can find any answer to any question that suits your needs. When I asked the question “How long should a memoir be?” in a Google search, it produced more than 89,800,000 results. Are they all the same answer? Of course not. But if you go with the credible results—publishing houses, indie publishers, memoir authors, editor and writer associations, book coaches, and agents—a common answer emerges: approximately 80,000 words. Or as few as 60,000 and as many as 100,000. There are outliers, of course, like 40,000 to 140,000. But 60K to 100K is the acceptable range. I always tell people that about 80,000 words, give or take 10,000, is a good target.
In an utterly unscientific survey conducted by me over the course of about four minutes, I found that, remarkably, several fairly recent bestselling memoirs (all by politicians or celebrities of one kind or another) contained 352 pages. That must be some kind of magic industry number. In any event, at 250 words per page (another industry standard), that comes to 88,000 words. Now if, let’s just say, Will Smith can write an 88,000-word memoir, I think you and I should be able to.
Why Does an Acceptable Length Matter?
As I said earlier, you can write a 250,000-word memoir if you feel you need to. Some folks in that Facebook group have written that many and are still writing. You can produce a 10-pound tome if it brings you satisfaction or catharsis. But these are the questions to ask yourself if you intend to publish (self-, hybrid, or traditional):
Who will want to read this long memoir about me? (Spoiler alert: very few people.)
How much will it cost to self-publish? (Spoiler alert: a lot.)
How much will I need to charge for it to recoup my expenses and make a profit? (Spoiler alert: a whole lot.)
Will a hybrid or traditional publisher want it at this length? (Spoiler alert: no.)
But, let’s pretend. . . How much would it cost a hybrid publisher to print it and what will they need to charge for it to recoup their expenses and make a profit for them and me? (Spoiler alert: way, way too much.)
Working with a Publisher
I am a manuscript assessor for a hybrid publisher in Texas. I read nonfiction and creative nonfiction manuscripts and write detailed reports about their pros and cons, including whether the word count is too slight or too extensive for the topic and genre. If either is the case, I then recommend that an editor work with the author to either bulk up the material or cut text to bring the manuscript to within industry standards for the genre. If I were to read a memoir that is 150,000 words in length, I would recommend a substantive edit, in which an editor works with the author to narrow the focus of the memoir and delete material that is not relevant to the specified theme.
It doesn’t matter how perfect or brilliant each word is—that is not a length for a memoir that will be marketable. Period.
Memoir is NOT Autobiography
I can’t stand another discussion about the difference between memoir and autobiography without wanting to regurgitate. Please don’t present me with the Oxford English Dictionary definition of memoir. The dictionary definition is not how memoir is defined by twenty-first century publishers. If you want to write an autobiography—or a family history— feel free, but don’t call it a memoir. A publisher will not consider it a memoir. I quoted Marion Roach Smith in my May 2020 blog post “How to Choose a Memoir Theme":
A memoir is not about you. It’s about something and you are its illustration.
A memoir is a story about something you know after something you’ve been through.
Dear folks, that is the definition of memoir from a publishing point of view. A memoir is a story from a life, not the story of a life.
Don't Ramble: A Theme Will Keep You Focused
And as I’ve discussed in my blog several times, the best way—maybe the only way—to stay focused is to have a clearly defined theme. In my blog post “Writing Memoir: Avoid These Common Mistakes,” I chose this as Memoir Writing Mistake #1: Trying to cover too much. I know from working as a writing coach and as a memoir editor, if you just start writing a memoir without a theme, it’s like going on a cross-country trip without an itinerary or GPS.
What is a theme? It’s a one- or two-sentence answer to the question, “What is your memoir about?” Yes, one or two sentences. That’s it. To understand this better, read “How to Choose a Memoir Theme.”
In addition, you should know who you’re writing for and what you hope they will learn from reading your memoir. Again, if you can’t pinpoint your audience and the reason you are writing a memoir, you will meander and overwrite, which will make for an unsatisfying, pointless read.
Final Thoughts
Memoir is not the same as autobiography.
A memoir theme is a one- or two-sentence answer to the question, “What’s it about?”
Decide who your memoir audience is. Keep them in mind while you write.
What’s the takeaway? What will your readers have learned when they’ve finished your book?
Happy writing!
Updated: Dec 13, 2020
In June 2019, I posted an article to this blog called "Sensitivity Readers Are Not Censors." At that time, controversy was swirling around the role and appropriateness of the so-called sensitivity reader (SR). I had a hard time finding clear, positive discussions of what an SR was and what one does. Even the prestigious New York Times ran that article titled “In an Era of Online Outrage, Do Sensitivity Readers Result in Better Books, or Censorship?” by Alex Alter that was as unflattering as you could get about SRs.
This go-round, I will tell you what SRs actually do and why now, a mere year and a half later, the need for writers and publishers to employ SRs is the norm and not the exception.
SRs Aren’t Going Away
The Chicago Manual of Style weighed in on these issues in Section 5.254: Bias and the editor’s responsibility. It says in part:
A careful editor points out to authors any biased terms or approaches in the work (knowing, of course, that the bias may have been unintentional), suggests alternatives, and ensures that any biased language that is retained is retained by choice.
Conscious Language
Conscious language is a term coined by Conscious Style Guide founder Karen Yin. According to Yin, conscious language is the art of using words effectively in a specific context. Who is your audience? What tone and level of formality do you want? What are you trying to achieve? Some words are more apt than others. The most important part of conscious language is the conscious part—our intention.
Conscious Style Guide described itself as:
…the first website devoted to conscious language. Our mission is to help writers and editors think critically about using language—including words, portrayals, framing, and representation—to empower instead of limit. In one place, you can access style guides covering terminology for various communities and find links to key articles debating usage. We study words so that they can become tools instead of unwitting weapons.
Yin’s website is replete with resources from scores of other websites (divided into sensitivity categories), a newsletter, blog, and, of course, the obligatory store.
What Sensitivity Readers Offer
Crystal Shelley is a full-time editor, proofreader and sensitivity reader who works as Rabbit with a Red Pen. In addition, Crystal is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW).
According to Crystal, authors, editors, and publishers employ sensitivity readers to accomplish four goals:
Strengthen the story
Identify potential harmful elements of the writing
Assess the effectiveness of the language
Evaluate biases
While the role of a sensitivity reader is most often associated with editing fiction, an SR’s specialty is applicable to all forms of writing, including blogs, memoirs, and long-form essays. Sensitivity readers strengthen writing by helping the writer with these elements:
Character description
Dialogue and character behaviors
Cultural elements and settings
The role of an SR is to flag problems with language, but, most importantly, they will offer alternative language and depictions.
How can a sensitivity reader strengthen writing? An SR reads with the goal of rooting out language that is:
Disrespectful
Excluding
Stigmatizing
Presumptive
Writing that is devoid of harmful, derogatory, and disrespectful language builds trust; readers can see the author cared enough to do their homework.
Diversity Baseline Survey
Lee & Low Books released the first Diversity Baseline Survey 1.0 in 2015. Before the DBS, people suspected publishing had a diversity problem, but without hard numbers, the extent of that problem was anyone’s guess. The goal was to survey publishing houses and review journals to capture information about their employees, their publishing workforce, regarding these categories:
Race
Gender
Sexual orientation
Disability (chronic, physical, and mental illness)
The results of DBS 1.0 were shocking. The publishers' survey respondents were identified as:
79 percent White
78 percent women
88 percent straight
92 percent non-disabled
As readers had begun to demand to see themselves depicted in books, the publishing industry itself did not reflect the diversity of our country's populace.
The numbers provided by DBS 1.0 brought into sharp focus the need of publishers to place more books into the marketplace that represent our country's rich diversity, but initially, this effort was apparent only in the children's book market. Cultural events and political and social movements in the five years since the DBS 1.0 cannot be ignored by the industry.
Diversity in Publishing Matters
According to a Lee and Low blog article from January 2020, the book industry has the power to shape culture in big and small ways. The people behind the books serve as gatekeepers, who can make a huge difference in determining which stories are amplified and which are shut out. If the people who work in publishing are not a diverse group, how can diverse voices truly be represented in its books?
Are You Out of Step?
If you do not grasp the importance of diversity in writing, and the need to accurately and kindly represent people of different races, genders, orientation, and disabilities, you are out of step with the US publishing industry. One could argue you are out of step with humanity. If a discussion of sensitivity to “the other” in your writing doesn’t speak to your heart, I am reminded of a quote from Dr. Anthony Fauci:
I don’t know how to explain to you that you should care for other people.
Updated: Apr 1, 2022
Don’t believe the naysayers. The long-form essay is not dead. It is alive and well, but you have to know where to find it. Long-form personal essays are a mainstay of publications such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Sun Magazine, Creative Nonfiction Magazine, Dame Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, Slate, newspapers such as The New York Times and The Boston Globe, and too many other publications and websites to mention.
Reading long-form personal essays requires a patience and time commitment that stands in direct contrast to the itty-bitty nibbles we are served on social media and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sounds bites of 24-hour television newscasts.
What is a Personal Essay?
I have written about personal essays before, in my blog article of July 23, 2019, “With Creative Nonfiction, Reality Meets Great Storytelling.” Truthfully, I dedicated one paragraph to talking about personal essays, because the article was kind of a scatter-shot look at the genres within CNF.
So then, what is a personal essay? It is notoriously difficult to nail down but here goes: a personal essay is a combination of a super-short memoir, a touch of biography or autobiography, a pinch of journalism, and a slice of compelling nonfiction storytelling. Got that? No? Alright, how about this—
A personal essay is about a topical subject discussed from a personal perspective, yours or someone else’s. A personal essay must have, at its core, a discussion of an event, person, or situation to which the essayist adds personal experience and a unique point of view.
Personal essay is related to the op-ed, too. I’ll go into that in another article.
Examples of Great Personal Essays
In the event that this definition has only muddied the waters, it might be best to direct you to some great essays written by some great essayists. These are in no particular order, no particular category.
After the Shooting: A Year in the Life of Gwen Woods, by Jaeah Lee, The California Sunday Magazine, August 3, 2017
My Family’s Slave, by Alex Tizon, The Atlantic, June 2017
A Rattle with Death in Yosemite, by Kyle Dickman, Outside magazine, June 20,2018
Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong, by Michael Hobbes, Highline, September 19, 2018
I’ve randomly chosen essays that have been recognized for their outstanding quality. If you want to read others, visit longform.org. There you will find hundreds of quality personal essays. Categories include Health, Crime, Science, Politics, Arts, Business, Tech, and Sports. Don’t be intimidated. Get a feel for the purpose and intent of the long-form essay and give it a go.
A Good Length
The word count of the essay varies depending upon the publication. Suggested word counts for the top 20 magazines, newspapers, and websites that use personal essays span 800 to 15,000 words. The average is 800–1,200 words. Review the submission criteria of your target publications before you write. No need to construct a brilliant 3,000-word essay if the publication you have written for has a word-count limit of 1,000.
If you are an accomplished writer with name recognition, magazines and big-city newspapers will snatch up your essays. But if this is your first foray into getting published, Writer’s Digest suggests your chances of success are better if you submit essays in the 500- to 900-word range. A word count of 800–850 seems like the sweet spot for a newbie essayist.
Define to Impress
Tell your friends and colleagues that you hope to be a published long-form essayist. When they inevitably ask, “What is a long-form essay?” impress with the reply, “A universal truth with a personal perspective.” That’ll get their attention. Now, write!
In addition to working as a nonfiction and creative nonfiction editor and writing coach, I am co-author, with Dr. Terri Lyon, of the book Make a Difference with Mental Health Activism: No activism degree required—use your unique skills to change the world. Visit my website page Make a Difference and Dr. Lyon’s activism website Life At The Intersection to learn more about Make a Difference, including how to place bulk orders.
