Sitting in the comfy living room of author Abigail Thomas one chilly afternoon, amidst her scads of “outsider art” that nearly covers the walls, her cushiony chairs, her table tops and shelves full of intriguing objects, both sacred and not-so-much, and her three affable dogs, I felt myself affirmed by life. It wasn’t the arrangement or the ambient lamplight or even the abundance of all this personally chosen, meaning-imbued stuff that gave me a sense of well-being. It was, I think, the author’s intention behind the display: to affirm life in all things.

Her home décor radiates the vibrancy of the people who made these pieces of art. Absorbing the vibes given off by Thomas’ collection has you thinking about the vitality of the artists who dared to produce visual expressions of themselves. These are the works of regular folks—and of some not-so-regular in their handicaps, like the drawings of an autistic child or a schizophrenic man. Every piece says of the unknown artist, “I am alive. This is who I am, what I feel, right now.” I feel it, too.

It shouldn’t be surprising then to read in Thomas’ Thinking About Memoir (Sterling, 2008) the importance, the value of sharing one’s unique observations of being alive. She brings the act of writing a memoir down from its lofty shelf and plops it onto your very own un-famous lap. She encourages carrying around pen and paper to record the obscure details that stand out—the little things, like what passengers on the train say into their cell phones that make you marvel, or your friend’s news that she watched an ailing fish die in a bucket and how it made you love her more. You never know if or when these tidbits might come in handy, show up in a story. The point is: just noticing them and getting them down on paper causes you to be actively engaged in your own life, whether you use them to write a bestseller or not.

“Be engaged in your own life!” is a dictum that emerges from these pages. Be curious. Be honest. Be willing to tell the truth, as you recall it. Be kind to yourself. And write it all down. Throughout the book, she assigns imagination-provoking prompts that cause the reader’s mind to wander, like: “Write two pages of something you expected to turn out differently” or “Write two pages that take place in a waiting room.” Easy, right? Memories of marriages or recipes, births or auto inspections might drift into your thoughts. Thomas says to pay attention to whatever hooks you and drags you deeper.

This morning I read “Write two pages of what you had to have,” and laid out five paragraphs about recently buying a Dansk ceramic coffee pot, after looking at it multiple times in a second-hand shop for at least two years. I had to have it. It called to me every time I drove by this little shop. After resisting no longer, I brought it home, filled it up, and discovered a hairline crack that slowly leaked coffee into a puddle on my countertop. Disappointed, I considered asking for my $35 back. But in writing about it, I understood that I love the shape of the thing as much as the function. I don’t want to take it back; anyway, $35 isn’t so much to spend for something stunning to look at, even if it’s flawed. That truth emerged for me, and I said so in writing.

The exercises encourage self-examination and a probing contemplation that might lead to insight. Or it might lead to deeper perplexity. “I love to see the way a mind works—how, on the page, a mind has been figuring out what it’s writing about. You discover things along the way you had no idea you were doing or thinking. It’s a way of sorting out and clarifying things that I don’t understand about myself or about what’s been going on.” Everyone’s life is full of puzzling, sometimes tragic, events. We’re accustomed to our own default reactions—either assuming what befalls us to be somebody else’s fault, or the will of God, or maybe just random good or bad luck. We live with the cards we’re dealt, one way or another. Thomas suggests looking more closely at the cards.

Start with something in very clear focus, some “delicious detail” that you recall out of the myriad ones you’ve forgotten, and write about that. What exactly happened? How did you feel? What stays with you in sense memory? Then step back in the context of family or time, and look to discover what it might mean. Keep going until you run out, sleep on it, and look at it again. It may not be done, or it might be that what’s left becomes its own story. Be alert to a sense of clarity, of ending up somewhere you wouldn’t have thought when you began.

Her two recent memoirs—each heart wrenching, poignant, funny—are examples of Thomas’ habit of close examination. She’s plucked sensual impressions from her memory bank and assembled them in a way that allows the reader to absorb the author’s experience vicariously. Her accounts are not chronological—“I’m bored to death by my own chronology!”—but are presented as an extemporaneous jumble, as if she’s sitting next to you and remarking on the past as it occurs to her in conversation. What’s left out, what isn’t said, can be as pivotal to the plot of one’s life story as what is included.

I ask Thomas: Who are we, to assume that we have something important enough to impart by writing about ourselves? Few of us are famous, few have been exceptionally adventurous, and fewer still have saved lives or invented a modern convenience or done anything at all noteworthy. Why would anyone care to read about my broken Dansk coffee pot purchase? Her answer is emphatic: “We are who we are! Why are we here if it doesn’t matter? That’s that cosmic depression feeling: ‘What does it all mean?’ I don’t go there. I went there once, and I came back. I don’t have the ‘meaninglessness of it all’ thing going, because it’s all so interesting! So much to observe and listen to! [Some of it is] horrifying, ghastly. It’s in the details, where you are right this minute.” The hairline crack details.

And there is the personal satisfaction the process brings. “It matters primarily for me in the beginning [of the writing process]… . Do it for yourself. Don’t think about the audience. You’re doing it to please yourself … . Later it becomes a record, even an apology for your children.” Thomas’ Safekeeping (Anchor Books, 2000) became an apology that eventually prompted talk amongst family members, a way to clarify—if not resolve—what had happened. She reiterates that writing one’s life actually allows one to let go of the past. “Letting go is one of the major things we have to learn.”

Letting go of one’s illusions and self-protecting impulses—which might result when candid writing happens—can become a sort of gift to future generations. Who has not wondered about their ancestors’ personalities, their dealings, their very thoughts? Thomas remarks on how common it used to be for whole families to basically stay in one place, and family stories would get passed down through aunts and uncles, to be repeated and embellished on for years. “We don’t have that anymore. We have to tell our own stories. What would have been told by my grandmother, I have to pass down.” Such accounts give us a personalized view of a culture, an ethnicity, a history. As essayist Phillip Lopate notes in his anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, the core of memoir is the supposition that there is a certain unity to human experience, diverse though we have become.

Thomas cautions against the impulse to write memoir in order to get revenge or justify one’s actions or blame another. “Poor me” (or “good me”) does not make for authentic subject matter. And if an incident is out of bounds in terms of reporting on real people who may or may not have perpetrated bad acts, Thomas suggests telling about it in a different way. Turn it into fiction. Make up a story and alter the characters enough so as not to be recognizable. On the other hand, she abhors any writing that purports to be non-fiction that has been made up, as certain “memoirs” have recently been exposed to be. “I don’t understand the arrogance … why the life you live is not enough. I don’t think there’s a reason to [invent]. There may be a pathology at work in people who do it, [or] unspeakable arrogance.”

In direct contrast, the act of recording simple, everyday impressions as honestly as you can, is a way to let someone know who you are, should they be at all interested. And Thomas maintains that if you are curious about life, surely what you include in your writings will be interesting to read. “We’re all curious. We like gossip,” she maintains. What’s more, memoir can impart an essence of something that the reader might never encounter in her own path. Certainly one wouldn’t pursue the experience of witnessing a husband’s long, painful decline; yet reading an exquisitely sensitive account—like Thomas’ in her book A Three Dog Life (Harcourt, 2006)—creates an intimacy, a relationship between writer and reader that serves to honor the humanity in each. Memoir broadens, amplifies one’s sense of possibilities—both in the writing and the reading.

A former editor and literary agent, Thomas has written three works of fiction: Getting Over Tom, Herb’s Pajamas and An Actual Life. She taught fiction writing in the graduate program at The New School in New York. Although she loved teaching, she claims that when you’re doing your own work, writing something that you’re supposed to be writing, everything goes in—every random thought, every bit of creative energy. At work on another book of non-fiction—no hint at what it’s about—Thomas does private workshops and conferences, such as the Utah Writers at Work in June in Salt Lake City, Utah and Tin House Writing Workshop in July in Portland, Oregon, among others. (See www.abigailthomas.net for more information.) She will appear at the Catskill Mountain Foundation (map) Bookstore on Main Street in Hunter on May 17 at 2 pm to read from Thinking About Memoir and discuss the craft. Come chat with this funny, accessible, and charming local resource. Call 518 263 2050 for more information.