Justice Notes: Why I Write Memoir
A White-Collar Journal forum for criminal justice, lived experience, and the personal search for redemption
On the art of meaning over momentum. A few thoughts on why I keep returning to memoir as my chosen form.
Why Memoir
I’ve come to see memoir as the form that best suits the way I write and think. For writers who struggle with plot—or simply aren’t driven by it—memoir offers a different kind of architecture. It still needs a narrative arc, but it doesn’t depend on the relentless drama or contrived momentum that fiction and film often require.
As Tom Jenks, editor and co-founder of Narrative Magazine, once observed, some writers who find plotting difficult tend to favor lyric or thematic effects—seeking meaning over momentum. I recognize that tendency in myself. Plot has never been my strength. What comes naturally to me is tone, reflection, and a search for meaning. That’s why memoir feels like home. It allows for a play of emotional and psychological depth, for moments of insight that accumulate into understanding rather than climax.
That said, memoir still requires narrative elements and a sense of plot. The writer must select, arrange, and shape experience to create a story that moves—not through spectacle, but through consequence. Even the most reflective memoirs depend on tension, pacing, and change over time. The difference is that, in memoir, the movement is often internal rather than external; it’s the mind that evolves, the self that transforms.
Memoir is less about what happens than about what it means. It allows for pauses, digressions, and the layering of context. It invites reflection and commentary—the inner voice that questions, explains, and connects. For me, that’s where the real story lives: not in the sequence of events, but in the insight that follows them.
In a good memoir, reflection becomes action, and understanding becomes its own form of resolution. That’s the kind of truth I’m after.
Much of what I explore in White Collar Journal grows from that belief—that storytelling, at its best, is an act of reckoning. Whether I’m writing about incarceration, justice, or redemption, I’m less interested in reliving events than in re-examining them, finding their shape in hindsight, and giving them meaning through language. That, to me, is the real work of memoir.
If you’re drawn to the idea of storytelling as self-reckoning, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Thank you for reading White-Collar Journal. Subscribing is free, and I hope you’ll continue with me as I explore stories of incarceration, justice, and redemption.
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