I get about five memoirs per week in my mailbox, and few of them inspire anything but a desire to pick up the channel changer.

As a memoirist, I strive for veracity.

Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver.

I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities.

If you lie to your husband - even about something so banal as how much you drink - each lie is a brick in a wall going up between you, and when he tells you he loves you, it's deflected away.

If dysfunction means that a family doesn't work, then every family ambles into some arena in which that happens, where relationships get strained or even break down entirely. We fail each other or disappoint each other. That goes for parents, siblings, kids, marriage partners - the whole enchilada.

A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.