Stop With the Prescriptive Memoirs

Back in May, I got a referral from a fellow editor friend. She had a client who was looking to write a book proposal and thought we could be a great fit.

Then I saw two dreaded words in a sentence that always makes me shake my head.

I’m writing a prescriptive memoir . . .

No. Just no. You’re not writing a prescriptive memoir — and neither is anyone else.

That’s because there is no such thing.

Your book is either prescriptive — meaning how to, as in the prescription you get from a doctor —

Or it is a memoir, a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources. (And yes, I took that from the dictionary.)

Why this gets twisted is the result of a short-lived fad within traditional book publishing where prescriptive memoirs were briefly (and in my opinion, terribly) a thing. What you need to know about that incorrigible trend was that it’s not happening anymore because it didn’t work.

And it didn’t work because of a little thing we call category.

Meaning, when I walk into a bookstore or peruse a website like Bookshop.org (or Amazon) I’m typically looking for something. As a reader, I’ve got a book in mind. I want to read a personal story, or maybe a…