There was something - it's not that I made stuff up, but there was something untrue about them. I threw away 1,200 finished pages, pages I could've published, that were publishable, because they sucked. I actually broke the delete button off my keyboard writing that book, and I always say if I had any guts at all, I'd make a brooch out of it. And I think it's because I have generous friends and family. It's not sort of written like journalism or reportage it has a big interior surface.

I think it's because my voice is very distinctive, so the reader never loses sight that this is my point of view. The interesting thing - other than one minor anecdote across three books, nobody has ever changed anything. On loved ones' reactions to being portrayed in her memoirs This is my point of view, it's not objective history it's memory, which is a faulty form in terms of reportage. With Cherry I stopped putting things in quotation marks because I really wanted the reader to continue to understand or believe or think that he or she was in my head. Like most thinking people, you'll defend your point of view at the Thanksgiving table vigorously, and then I'm that person who goes home and lies in bed and thinks, 'Did that really happen that way?'. I've always sent my manuscripts out to people I write about, not because I'm afraid of landing all sweaty on Oprah, but because I kind of mistrust my own memories.

I'm such a worrier and a nail-biter and a re-thinker. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Art of Memoir Author Mary Karr

The art of memoir karr