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Write Your Way
Real talk + resources for writers
March 2024
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Hi & Happy Spring!
Time for some writing renewal and rebirth? You've opened the right email.
Let's get into it...
The ways writers order chaos
Writing is all about ordering chaos, in multiple β sometimes antithetical β ways. To write, you invite some chaos, request its presence, then command it (or try to). It's like sitting down at your desk and saying to the universe, your mind, the blank page,
"I'll have a bunch of chaos. For here AND to go, please."
Then, it floods in β ideas, half-drawn images, artifacts, memories, snippets of dialogue β and tumbles into your consciousness. Or it doesn't quite, so you dig and dig and throw everything you unearth into a pile to sort out later.
You must then put that in order (again, in more ways than one).
There's the straightforward (though not always easy) "order" of what goes first, second, next after that...in the middle...just before the end, and so on until "the (satisfying) end". Your book's structure and outline.
Then, that sequenced chaos needs to cohere, flow, be understandable and meaningful. Because it's not a book until it's no longer chaos. A few more revisions, another draft or two.
Spring clearing & corralling the chaos of your memoir
(That's not a typo above, but bear with me while I talk a little about Spring Cleaning first). The tradition comes from pre-Industrial (read: pre-vacuums and other modern home care essentials) cleaning habits, where the big items of the house (rugs, upholstered things, curtains, etc.) would be cleaned in the Spring after everyone had spent Winters shedding skin cells and otherwise creating dust, debris, and dirt.
Nowadays, though we don't have to, we still sometimes ride the renewing and refreshing wave of Spring to deep clean and declutter our homes, offices, and other aspects of our lives. "Spring cleaning" is still a thing, and plenty of people use it as a way to corral their chaos ordering into a set time frame instead of letting it dangle over them for months on end.
Which brings me to Spring clearing (not talking about your chakras or anything metaphysical).
I mean getting clear-eyed and clear-pathed on your memoir journey. Namely, getting clear on structure, outline, and narrative arcs ("plot"/story conflict arcs and emotional arcs).
The benefit of spending concerted time and effort to nail these down is this: The questions this work raises don't then have to hound you as you write your next (or first) draft. If you focus on and achieve clarity in a short-ish, self-designated timeframe, it will guide you going forward.
Clarity of direction brings confidence, like "April showers bring May flowers" (and Mayflowers bring Pilgrims, as the riddle reasons). And let's face it, confidence in the midst of this writing thing is one of the hardest things to access.
When confidence is hard to access, worthiness is hard to accept (and vice versa).
But knowing what your story is about, where it goes, what its boundaries and container are, and being able to reference that in plain English inked onto a page (be it virtual or physical) can remind you of your story's and your own inherent worthiness. It can be the supportive foundation or the scaffolding that gives you the confidence to keep climbing, keep building.
Two resources to help you order your book's chaos
Save the Cat Writes a Novel: The Last Book On Novel Writing You'll Ever Need
Sure, we've heard that "memoirs should read like novels" but what that means can be murky. A big part of understanding and internalizing how to give your memoir that novel-esque-ness (and/or novel essence) is recognizing and unpacking the elements, "beats," and rhythms of captivating novel-length narratives. This book helps you do that, step-by-step, with plenty deeply discussed of examples.
Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace
This book by Jennie Nash is a concise, compact, practical wisdom-packed, action-oriented gem. It's a great resource if your goals include selling your memoir well, because it gives a wide angle look at the what it takes, from writing craft (structure, outline, plot, character, arcs, etc.) to positioning and pitching your manuscript, to marketing your book. It's straightforward and includes lots of examples and breakdowns.
MWBC is back with these acclaimed reads
After a month's hiatus, we're going back in the club β the book club (whew, my knees and back just sighed relief).
Here's what we're digesting and discussing in the next 3 months, along with our meeting dates. The Memoir Writers' Book Club meets at 7:00pm Eastern.
April 29th: Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey
May 28th: Stay True by Hua Hsu
June 24th: Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H.
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