This
week I'm traveling to one of my favorite places: Madeline Island and
the Madeline Island School of the Arts, where I teach each summer and
fall. I'm about to welcome a group of twenty-three writers who will be
attending my workshop/retreat and my independent study week. We'll be
diving deep into our book projects for five days, free of
interruptions. Looking for breakthroughs.
One of the assignments
I offer the group is to draft their final chapter. Because the group
is varied in writing experience and progress with their projects, this
suggestion often gets astonished reactions. "How can I possibly write
my final chapter when I don't know what the rest of the book is
about!?"
Friday, July 21, 2017
Friday, July 14, 2017
Instant Gratification: Dangers of Seeking It When Writing a Book
When we start
writing a book, we have no clue how long it will take. Most first-time
book writers think maybe a year, two at the most? A colleague was both
relieved and dismayed to learn from a graduate-school panel of published
writers that memoirs typically take seven years to write. Rebecca
Skloot, author of the best-seller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,
said her book took ten years and it couldn't have gone any faster--she
needed all that time.
But we're seduced by workshops and craft books that promise a completed manuscript, ready for agents, in nine months. I recently saw a workshop that was called "Novel in a Month." I participate in Nanowrimo regularly (National Novel Writers Month) and have even published a novel from that marathon, but it didn't come out finished--it needed a couple of years of revision before it was ready for other eyes.
But we're seduced by workshops and craft books that promise a completed manuscript, ready for agents, in nine months. I recently saw a workshop that was called "Novel in a Month." I participate in Nanowrimo regularly (National Novel Writers Month) and have even published a novel from that marathon, but it didn't come out finished--it needed a couple of years of revision before it was ready for other eyes.
Friday, July 7, 2017
Why a Memoir Is Not an Autobiography
My elderly aunt finished her memoirs. She mailed me a photocopy.
It was great fun to read--she's always been entertaining storyteller
with interesting experiences and a great understanding of people. She's
97 now and lives in an assisted living community where a fellow
resident helped her write up her life stories. She calls them her
"memoirs," and indeed they are--an an act of remembering and a legacy
for the family.
Memoir comes from the Anglo-French word memoirie
(from the fifteenth century),meaning "memory" or "note," an "account of
someone's life." A wonderful gift to pass on to those who know you and
who want to hear your past.
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