5 Memoir Writing Exercises To Help You Right Now
Stuck in that, “Now what?” phase? Let’s move you along.
“Memoir is about something you know after something you’ve been through,” says Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project.
Many memoir writers, once they’ve given themselves permission to write their story, get stuck after writing that terrible first draft.
First drafts are encouraging. We’ve finished something, which is amazing. We deserve to celebrate! Take a bit of time off from your writing. A week, a month, whatever works for you. Write something else, blog, doodle. Eat a cookie. Big fan of cookies.
Then, get back to it.
What do you need to do? Faced with a wall of text, many writers end up overwhelmed with how to outline or structure this behemoth, a seemingly impossible task. Staring at the screen, we often wonder: now what?
Here are several ways I’ve used in my own work, or when teaching memoir-writing workshop participants, or clients to power through this phase:
1. State Your Mission
What is the main reason you’re writing this story? As I mention in my article about writing a memoir,
