Every morning

Every morning I come into my office,

sit down at my desk, record the date and time,

and for thirty minutes, sometimes longer, 

I open my journal, select a pen, and write.

The first words, the first thoughts,

sometimes play hide-and-seek,

wanting to sleep a few more minutes

before playing on the page,

shy, perhaps, about revealing themselves,

or still sleepy, unsure if they're

ready to begin.

Once the pen touches the paper

and a spot of ink appears

beneath it on the page,

those words and those thoughts

gain courage and strength

and begin to race each other

onto the page to see who will be

the first to appear, 

flowing like a stream,

gaining momentum and force,

like a river merging with the sea.

Each word another drop of water,

the letters like sea spray

released by waves crashing

onto the shore,

rivulets forming in the sand

as the tide retreats.

You can feel your breath

ebbing and flowing

at the beginning

and end 

of each line,

leaving diamond crystals

glittering on the sand,

and shells you've never seen before

waiting to be picked up

and carried away.

Notes on writing a memoir

A memoir is built on memories—memoire is the French word for memory, after all, but also the word for memorandum or record—and, since a memoir is a story that relies on memory, how you remember, what you remember, and why you remember will determine the kind of memoir you write.

Memories have the ability to transport us to another time and place, to allow us to relive a moment with someone who is gone, to recapture an emotion that we long to have again, a relationship, perhaps, with someone who inspired us to be who we are or to do something that set us on a new path. Our memories can be filled with love and joy, with laughter and kisses and hugs… with tastes and smells… with sights that brought us much pleasure at one time in our life.

But some of our memories can be dark, as well, and dangerous. They can contain an event or a person that we’d rather forget. A time when we might not have been our best self. When we might have done something we still regret. Memories can be filled with disappointment, fear, anger, frustration, sadness, grief, loss. They can be places we don’t want to ever return to, places we have blocked off with yellow police tape that warns us: DON’T CROSS! But they can offer us rich material for stories, too.

The kind of memoir you write will depend on your willingness to look back—honestly, unflinchingly—into the past.

A good way to understand what a memoir is …is to view it as describing an important moment in your life, a pivotal moment,  a moment that you recreate using the tools of a storyteller. 

Your feelings and assumptions are central to the narrative. Unlike in an autobiography, which would explore your entire life and focus on the facts (the who, what, where, how, and why), you have more flexibility writing a memoir.

You can tell the story as you remember it. The focus is on your way of understanding your experiences… your feelings and your assumptions. Plus, you have the freedom to tell the story in chronological order. Or not.

The process of writing a memoir is multi-layered. For the sake of simplicity, let’s divide the process into three-steps:

1. Finding a memory or memories

First there’s finding the memory, recalling the event or experience. How do we find memories. Here are some suggestions that might prove helpful:

• Your own recall—based on your memory of a certain experience,
• Photographs/albums/slides/movies. 
• Letters/journals.
• Magazines/newspapers (digital collections in the Library of Congress and elsewhere).
• Family stories.
• Maps - of cities or neighborhoods, or, even better, make your own map (maybe of the house or neighborhood where you used to live).
• Smells, scents that linger—what your mom made on Friday night, your dad's aftershave?
• Sensations — a mother’s goodnight kiss, the feel of a basketball in your hand.
• Tastes, food that you remember — ice cream on the Fourth of July, apples in the fall.

2. Writing down the details of the memory

Second, there’s writing down the details of the memory. Here are some suggestions to get you started: 

• Use a journal or a pad of paper or a computer… find a favorite pen. I started using a fountain pen a few months ago.
• All you’re doing is sketching, putting down as many details as you can recall, including any dialogue or conversation that you remember.
• You don’t have to put the details down in order chronologically; just write them down as you recall them, as they come to you.
• Let the image or images form in your head. Take a few moments to remember before you start writing. Then use words to describe the image that you see. What is there? Who is there? Where are you?
• Some writers can view their memory as a film and can control the pace of the film and what the camera focuses on so they can view the scene or image in slo-motion and watch it unfold… and writing becomes an act of describing what they see.
• Don’t worry about each sentence or making it perfect; all you want are the words to help you recollect a memory. Use broad strokes.
• Put whatever you've written aside for a day or two, come back to it fresh, look at the page and what you created with words, the emotions, if any, that you can feel… and find the places where the emotions are strongest, the images clearest, and begin there. 

3. Shaping the memory into a story.

Third, there’s shaping the details of the memory into a story that recaptures the memory so others can experience it through your words. Here are some things to think about as you begin shaping your story:

• Begin at the beginning and write all the way to the end. That’s what one of my writing teachers once told me.
• How do you know where to begin? In the middle of the action? Or before the action starts? Or after it’s over, using the story as a flashback? It’s your decision. Read other memoirs. See how other writers begin their stories.
• How do you know when to end? This is harder. It’s not always clear to the writer when to end the story. Usually you can feel the story shut like a door and there’s a satisfying click at the end when it’s over. The ending should let you hear that satisfying click.
• Think of a narrative, a story, with a rising arc. 
• Figure out if there’s any conflict in your story.
• Is there any tension? Where’s it coming from?
• Are you in the story or just the narrator?
• Use dialogue (conversation/inner dialogue) to draw the reader into the story.
• What’s your relationship to the memory, to the people in the story?
• Why is this memory important to you? 
• Why do you want to share it? (This can help you identify its theme, and possibly the conflict.)

Voice is an essential part of writing a memoir, as well. Often, a narrator’s voice can make you feel as if she is sitting beside you telling you her story. Almost like she's revealing a family secret.  

Details draw us in, too, and our sense of a potential conflict.

As you read memoirs written by other writers, consider what compels you to keep reading. Is it voice? A sympathetic character? Conflict?

Here are a few more questions to think about:

• Are you able to tell your story using a natural, non-pretentious, inviting voice?
• Does your story have a beginning, middle, and end?
• Is there a dramatic moment, a compelling incident, that grabs our interest, on which the story turns?
• Does the background setting play a part in our understanding of the story and the characters in the story?
• Does the story have a deep meaning for you, and are you able to convey the depth of your emotion to the reader in an intimate way?Hope these notes help.

For more information about writing memoirs, visit: 

https://celadonbooks.com/what-is-a-memoir/

https://nybookeditors.com/2016/03/how-to-write-a-memoir-that-people-care-about/

http://www.literarydevices.com/memoir/

https://thewritelife.com/how-to-write-a-memoir/

Riptides and Tidepools

If you think about writing as a flow—a flow of words, a flow of thoughts and images, a flow of consecutive days that you can sit down and write—you begin to notice differences in the rate of flow, the speed that writing takes place on some days, the slowness on others.

There are moments when it can feel like the flow of your writing is as strong as a riptide, and you find yourself caught by the current, unable to escape, forced to go where the flow is taking you.

These riptide moments are exciting, like unexpected gifts taking you to places you might never have found if you hadn’t let yourself go with the current, let the words take you where you needed to go. 

There’s no time for gazing at the waves curling into shore or watching clouds floating overhead, no time for searching for shells on the beach or for digging sandcastles. 

There’s only the riptide current and the constant effort of trying to keep your head above water as the words rush over your head and past you, and your pen is trying to keep up with the flow, trying to catch the words and thoughts and images as they speed by.

But then there are moments when everything seems to come to a halt, when the words seem to stall and get stuck somewhere, and the flow—that current that was so full of energy and life which took you so quickly into a different world—all but stops.

What do you do then?

Those are what I like to call the tidepool moments. 

Years ago, when we spent part of our summer vacation in Maine, we rented a cabin on the rocky coastline north of Bar Harbor. 

Every morning, after the sea retreated, my wife, daughter, and I would go down to the shore and explore tidepools glistening in the morning light.

Each tidepool was filled with gifts from the sea—starfish and crabs, sea anemones, shells, sand dollars, and more.

In tidepool moments, instead of worrying about where the current is taking you, you can slow down, inspect the water, play with words as if the words themselves are gifts from the sea.

You can walk along the edge of the tidepool, watch the sunlight glistening on the surface of the pools, enjoy the tickle of icy sea water on your toes, and discover what’s been hiding beneath the surface of the sea because it’s now accessible and waiting for you.

In a tidepool moment, the flow of writing is calmer, more introspective, more self-aware, and more conscious of everything around you, unlike writing in a riptide moment, which can be frantic and filled with fear of the unknown. 

Each moment, whether a tidepool moment or a riptide moment, offers us another way of writing, of experiencing the flow of writing, of exploring the world. 

We can’t predict which kind of moment we’ll find waiting for us when we sit down at our desks each morning. 

Riptide or tidepool? 

Let’s head down to the shore to find out.

For more information on writing fast vs writing slow, visit:

https://thewritepractice.com/fast-and-slow/

https://alifeofproductivity.com/the-joys-of-writing-slow/

https://annejanzer.com/scribe-muse/

https://thejohnfox.com/2018/05/a-manifesto-for-slow-writing/

https://www.darcypattison.com/writing-life/should-you-write-fast-or-slow/

The Ten Truths of Writing

The first truth of writing:
You don't know anything.

The second truth of writing:
You know more than you think.

The third truth of writing:
Your fear of not knowing is an illusion.

The fourth truth of writing:
Unless you learn to push through the illusion,
you'll never write anything.

The fifth truth of writing:
Everything you need to know is already inside you.

The sixth truth of writing:
Touch your pen to the page and begin.

The seventh truth of writing:
Write until there is no more ink left in your heart.

The eighth truth of writing:
Let the well refill itself.

The ninth truth of writing:
Begin again.

The tenth truth of writing:
And again.

Wondering About Words

On some mornings I sit down to write wondering where words come from and, if they come, why they come to me or to anyone else, really.

I wonder if words come from some secret place hidden beneath our feet—somewhere deep under the earth, perhaps?— or from somewhere high above, way beyond the clouds, way beyond the moon and the stars?

I wonder if words are simply invisible until they appear on the page, which is the reason why we can’t see them floating through space like foreign objects that come to earth carrying a message from another planet sent especially to us.

I wonder how we find the words we need to express what’s hidden in our hearts, words that describe the mix of thoughts and feelings swirling inside us.

I wonder if maybe it isn’t that we find words but that words find us, as if we’re magnets that can draw to us the words we need to help us explain how it feels today or how it felt yesterday to inhabit this body, to dive into the unknown not knowing what we’ll find, just hoping words will appear to help us understand what we need and who we are and where we belong.

I wonder every morning — or whatever time of day I sit down to write — if the page is really blank or if it’s filled with words I can’t yet see and which only come into being the moment I begin writing. 

I wonder if words are inside us, locked in some mysterious storehouse, and how we’re supposed to find the key, and then I wonder if words are all around us, waiting for us to catch them, how a writer is born with a net in his or her hand to capture them like butterflies before they get away.

I wonder about words which flow on some days like a steady stream and on other days like a trickle and I wonder how on other days there's nothing more than a dry creek bed where words once flowed.

I wonder how words became as much a part of our lives as the water we drink, the

air we breathe, and equally necessary for our survival.

I wonder why we wait and wait and wait, never knowing if anything will appear on the page in front of us, until one day a word appears… and then another.

The Essence of the Process

If you read only one book about the writing process this year, I hope you'll consider John McPhee's Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process.

It contains eight essays on the writing process that were previously published in The New Yorker, the magazine where McPhee's work has appeared since 1965, and where you may have read some, or all, of these pieces.

If you have read any of these essays before, I recommend reading them again, since I find McPhee's work so rich that it can easily sustain multiple readings, each time offering up some new jewel that the reader may have missed or overlooked. And if you haven't yet read any of them, you are in for a treat.

You'll discover a man's love of the craft of writing, and a devotion to the process of putting words on paper reminiscent of a religious scribe, a man passionate about language and its usage and the delight that it provides for reveling in life's joys and mysteries.

McPhee believes wholeheartedly in revision as the core of the process. "The difference between a common writer and an improviser on a stage (or any performing artist) is that writing can be revised. Actually, the essence of the process is revision. The adulating portrait of the perfect writer who never blots a line comes Express Mail from fairyland."

If you take away just one nugget of truth from this book, let it be this one: The essence of the process is revision.

One of the things that I love about McPhee's approach to writing, and his willingness to teach writing to others (he's taught students at Princeton University, his alma mater, for years), is his understanding that each writer is cut from different cloth and approaches the problem of getting words on paper differently.

He gives us as examples the different ways his two daughters deal with the process.

"Jenny grew up to write novels, and at this point has published three. She keeps everything close-hauled, says nothing and reveals nothing as she goes along."

But keeping things close-hauled isn't the way his younger daughter Martha goes about the process.

"Her sister Martha, two years younger, has written four novels. Martha calls me up nine times a day to tell me that writing is impossible, that she's not cut out to do it, that she'll never finish what she is working on, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth and so on."

Two writers, two different ways of approaching the process.

Actually, three writers. There's McPhee himself who shares his own approach.

"It is toward the end of the second draft, if I'm lucky," writes McPhee, "when the feeling comes over me that I have something I want to show other people, something that seems to be working and is not going to go away. The feeling is more than welcome, but it is hardly euphoria. It's just a new lease on life, a sense that I'm going to survive until the middle of next month."

There's a wealth of information in Draft No. 4 that will provide sustenance for you as a writer for weeks, if not months and years, whether you write fiction or, like McPhee, nonfiction.

And if you love reading The New Yorker, you'll love learning a bit of what goes on behind its cover and pages since McPhee generously shares stories about his working relationships with editors at the magazine who have nurtured and guided him along the way.

If you're curious about the kind of advice McPhee offers, here's a link to his essay, "Draft No. 4," as it appeared in 2013 in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/29/draft-no-4 

And here's a link to the book, if you want to take a look: 
https://www.amazon.com/Draft-No-4-Writing-Process/dp/0374142742

And if you're interested in The New York Times' review of the book, click this link:  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/13/books/review-draft-no-4-john-mcphee.html