Summary Of Donald Murray's 'All Writing Is Autobiography'

As a fellow writer, have you ever wondered why personal non-fiction writers such as Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Alice Walker are considered “great” writers? What do they bring to the table that other personal non-fiction writers do not? For starters, Joan Didion has an unmistakable writing style, and in one of her most famous essays “The White Album”, Didion gives her essay a unique jazzy tone. Annie Dillard’s eye for descriptive detail and imagery is impeccable throughout her essay “Total Eclipse”. The way Alice Walker is able to connect with her audience through her writing is absolutely stunning in “Looking for Zora”. So, the question “what makes an essay a “good” personal non-fiction essay evolves into the following question: how can three essays that are completely different all be considered “great”? The answer is simple. Didion’s, Dillard’s, and Walker’s essays are connected by one common factor. They are all memorable. In their own way, they are able to connect with their audience through different elements of writing. A writer’s goal in writing an essay is to be memorable and leave their audience wanting to read more; however, they must utilize the elements of writing such as style, tone, detail, imagery, etc. like great personal non-fiction authors to be considered great.

Literary works have become one of the most preferred ways for people to express themselves and voice their concerns and opinions on societal issues. Through such pieces of work, authors are able to educate and critique the society at large, often forcing people to reconsider their views on certain matters. This has an overall effect of pushing them to reconsider the effect of their actions and errors as regards the issues in question. For others, writing about real life situations is most effective in communicating with their readers. Victims of racial discrimination may opt to put their ordeals down in black and white, mush the same way those who find themselves at the receiving end of sexual harassment may choose to write about their experiences. Arguably, the effect achieved is greater, in opposition to that of works of fiction. Even where a book is fictitious, more insight and connection to real life is achieved if the story is built around real life events and situations. Nancy Mairs does excellent in expressing herself through her spiritual autobiography; Waist-High in the World.

In his article “Tracing Process: How Texts Come into Being” Prior mentions how our influences and experiences are the things that helps us construct text. Prior explains how “all writing draws on writers’ knowledge, beliefs, and practices, build up through experiences of socially and historically situated life events” (Prior 497). For example: watching something on TV can lead us into forming an idea, having a conversation with a friend can have an influence on us, and even going through a hard experience like a car accident can end up influencing us in many

Gordon Marino uses anecdotes, strengthening his argument and effectiveness by providing brief personal stories to include experiences he has witnessed. Dr. Marino uses an anecdote to open a personal experience; “Just the other day” (page 1, para 2). Then discusses how he attended an appointment a sophomore made to talk about his future profession. The sophomore was having difficulty deciding to either become a doctor or a philosophy professor. Later into the conversation he mentions he has been considering stand-up comedy. Also, expressing a personal experience, Marino states “My father didn’t do what he loved.” (p 2, p 2). Sharing the sacrifice his father made to work a job he disliked in hopes of sending his children to college one day.

Flannery O’Connor’s “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” and Nabokov’s “Good Readers and Good Writers,” both authors discuss the element of truth in their essays on fiction, however in O’Connor’s blueprint to writing fiction she states that the writer should dive into the truth in their stories with fiction. This is a contrast to Nabokov’s ideology, because he says that “Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature. Nature always deceives,” (Nabokov). This contrast in their essays presents a difference in O’Connor’s and Nabokov’s view on the element of truth in fiction.

"To write to be a writer, I have to trust and believe in myself as a speaker, as a voice for the images. I have to believe that can communicate with images and words that I can do it well. A lack of belief in my creative self is a lack of belief in my total self and vice versa- I cannot separate my writing from any part of my life. It is all one" (95).

In the article “All Writing Is Autobiography” the author, Donald M. Murray, discusses how writing in almost any form is autobiographical. Based on life experience, background, and childhood develops a perspective. Murray details his style of writing in the first person, as well as also writing using another character as he views himself; as he did in the poem “Black Ice”. This article was structured as Murray lives out his narrative/argument, which was laid out in his opening statement (paragraph one). He supported the argument with a multitude of poems, columns, and other writings specifically pointing out his autobiographical narrative.

When a student is given the chance to cater their personal stories to the audience, in an academic writing piece; the writing itself will make a change and help that student step out of that "academy", if and when encouraged. As I read this section of the article, I was able to make many connections to recent articles we have read and

Playwrights have the tendency to be written from the author own experiences for several reasons. This way of writing is really effective in order to convey a message to the audience. Watching a story unfold will have much more of an impact if it is believable. Otherwise without this the whole message is distorted and not going to be as strong as it could have been. These writers then rely on their life experiences in order to come up with play story lines. This makes for a dramatic and really sends a message to the viewers. It can actually in some cases have a big impact on someone’s life and make them change something about themselves. I can understand why Stephanie Arnold would bring up this topic in her book The Creative Spirit. Not only

As a writer you must trust your own lens of memory. It’s also a writer’s responsibility in telling the truth; however, what is our responsibility to others who share our story.

Lejuene defines autobiography as a “retrospective prose narrative written by a real person concerning his own existence, where the focus is his individual life, in particular the story of his personality” (4). Here, in this definition, Lejuene places emphasis on the idea of a “real person”, as the writer of any autobiographical text. It is this “real person” that represents the ‘I’ in writing that readers can relate to. This ‘I’, as Eakin puts it, “performs actions, possesses qualities and tells the story of one’s own existence” (3). It is the experience of this ‘I’ and its actions, qualities, feelings and emotions, that gives the autobiography its ultimate creditability, authority and truth. Lejeune’s concept of the autobiographical

During high school I was in speech and debate, in which I did oratory as my event. The event does not require a person to write a persuasive speech and perform it in front of judges, but it also must be personal and represent the person who is presenting. The way that a person writes must be the way that they talk in real life and there is usually a story about the person that makes the speech more personal. After reviewing my oratories over the years, I realized that what Donald M. Murray’s concept of autobiographies is quite noticeable in my own work. I believe that my oratories resemble my passions and myself, even Murray stated that his “pages reveal [his] obsession with war, with the death of [their daughter], …” (68). They tell the story

Both St. Augustine’s Confessions and Montaigne’s Essays illuminate the difficulty of achieving what the classical autobiography implicitly promises to the reader and the writer, namely, total self-knowledge, and/or self-mastery. In an organized essay compare and contrast how each author negotiates (i.e. respond to) this difficulty.

We all started somewhere and my debut was January 18th 1996 on a Thursday morning at 12:20am. I was born to Monica Reynolds and Eucal Holness in Philadelphia, PA. It just so happened that I was born at the same hospital as my mother, Parkveiw Hospital. I have 5 great siblings. My oldest brother is 18 years older than me with a wife, kids and a career in the army. I have triplet siblings, two brothers and a sister, which are 2 years younger than me. Lastly, I have a younger sister that is 15 years younger than me.

In Tono-Bungay by Wells, one sees that his style of writing is autobiographical. He attempts to portray his novel as inspired by his own life. This is seen in the opening pages of the novel when he is explaining the purpose of Tono-Bungay, “I warn you this book is going to be something of an agglomeration. I want to trace my social trajectory (and my uncle’s) as the main line of my story, but as this is my first novel and almost certainly my last, I want to get in, too, all sorts of things that struck me, things that amused me and impressions I got—even although they don’t minister directly to my narrative at all…I’ve given, I see, an impression that I want