Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Tips from Marion Roach Smith.

I recently finished reading The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Here are a few tips from the book.

This is an x and the illustration is y. Much of the book uses this formula. For example, this is a piece of humor, and the illustration is a day at the … The author uses this formula well and provides several longer pieces that she wrote using it.

You are not writing your autobiography when you write your memoir. An autobiography is a book-length depiction of one’s entire life while a memoir depicts a specific aspect of that life.

Write the details; the theme will come. Write, write, and write. The theme will come. Then delete all the details that don’t fit the theme.

Writer’s block is a myth. I had to mention this one as I never had writer’s block and I am glad to read that this author dismisses it as well.

The whole truth is a fool’s errand. Just go for little bits. Write those. Write little pieces—many of them.

Index card. Write the theme on one side of the card. Write the illustrating details on the other side. Now write the piece. If you are writing a book, each card is a scene in the book.

Long-form memoir—write one sentence. Each word in the sentence becomes a chapter of the book.

Indexing. Print you draft with a three-inch right margin. Read the draft paragraph by paragraph and write a short note in the right margin telling the topic of the paragraph. Now step through those topics. Do they each work as steps through the story?

What you kill is there for another day. Don’t delete material. Move it out of one computer file to another computer file. It is put away for now; it is not thrown away.