On Reading: What I Read When I Write

When friends found out that I was writing a book about the year I changed my life by following the advice found in women’s magazines, they all said the same exact thing.

“Do you know what book you should be reading?” they shouted. “Eat, Pray, Love.”

I ignored their directives, of course, but for a reason that may surprise you: I didn’t want Elizabeth Gilbert to psyche me out.

Even though Gilbert’s method was different (her inner makeover occurred as she globe-trotted through Italy, India, and Indonesia), our basic story line was the same. Like Gilbert, I was just coming out of a divorce, dating a woefully inappropriate guy, and feeling profoundly lost and unhappy. And like Gilbert, I write candidly and often with a self-deprecating sense of humor. I was worried that if I read her book as I was writing my own, I’d be plagued with the sense that I’d never measure up. Even worse, I was afraid that my story wasn’t compelling or worthy to tell. After all, how can a stack of women’s magazines share the transformative properties of an authentic Neapolitan pizza?

But I find it impossible to write in a book-less vacuum. Good writing demands better reading. Like tennis, if you want to improve your game, you have to play against someone who’s more adept.

So below are some of my opponents, all memoirists. (And just so you know, the moment I handed off my manuscript, I did accept my challenge with Gilbert. She beat me handily.)

Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott
Lamott’s Bird by Bird is required reading for any writer, but I read this book, a chronicle of her first year as a mother, to get a lesson in structure. Since my book also followed one entire calendar year, I used Lamott’s book as a roadmap of sorts. I also marveled at how raw and honest she was, admitting at one point she just felt like throwing her newborn son against the wall during one of his terrible crying jags. Writing memoir is often an ugly process, where horrifying thoughts get put down on the page. In a way, Lamott was giving me permission to express and ultimately excise my own inner monster.

The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen
I am a mega Franzen fan—from his modern-day classic The Corrections to the complex and touching essay he wrote about his father in The New Yorker (and even to his completely misguided snubbing of Oprah)—I think he is the master of the written word. And when I heard that he was writing a memoir about his neurotic beginnings, well, this book shot the top of my reading list. Here, Franzen writes with such biting humor and with an almost fond self-awareness of his loser status, I felt an amazing kinship with him. Which helped me understand that maybe if I wrote about my own struggles with fitting in, as I do in my memoir, I’d be able to connect with readers in a similar way.

Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander
Auslander is one pissed off dude and I like that in a person and especially in a writer. Raised in an ultra Orthodox community, Auslander was schooled in God’s unpredictable, vengeful, and bloodthirsty character, lessons he soon rejects. The aftermath, including his repudiation of both God and his family is bold and blasphemous and terrifically funny (if you can believe it) territory. I went to his reading at the DC JCC and had him sign my book, a treasure that sat next to me as I poured my own lessons learned onto the page.

My Holly Hobby diary from 1979
There is no better memory jog than seeing your own scrawling, 13-year-old handwriting. When writing personal essay or memoir, the vital importance of primary source documents cannot be underestimated. Not only did I read and reread this diary (in which I discovered my boy troubles reached far, far back), I coughed up a box of old letters, emails, and dismally overwrought poetry from A.P. English. Regressing into my past lives helped me stay honest, which is one of the most important things to be when writing memoir.

Click over to Dawn’s review of Cathy Alter’s new memoir, Up for Renewal, for a chance to win a copy in our current giveaway!

Cathy Alter, a Washington, D.C.–based writer whose articles and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Washingtonian, Self, Fitness, and McSweeney’s, is the author of Up For Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me about Love, Sex, and Starting Over. Read more about her work at www.cathyalter.com.