Category Archives: Writing

Memoir Writing: No. 1 Wallowing

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Step One in writing a memoir is to acknowledge that you have a lot of stuff; you’re not sure where it is or where it will go but you know you have it.

Step Two, start rounding up the stuff.

No — No — No.

That’s all wrong.

Before you start gathering all the stuff, write an outline … on paper … in pencil.

I recommend paper so you don’t wear out your backspace key. Or your printer’s ink cartridge.

The outline for this puppy is going to change a hundred times … the first day.

Okay, so BEFORE you outline, just jot down ideas … in no particular order. Stuff you want to remember. Incidents. People. Places. (This jotting down process can be lengthy, and I recommend using a steno pad or a three-ring note binder. The steno pad is easier to carry around.)

My first list went something like this: Memoir … for kids … Laos after expelled from Viet-Nam … draft status … mugged in Bangkok … Hotel Constellation … crotch rot / writing in underwear. WHERE ARE JOURNALS. START THERE.

And so on.

During my 1991 effort to organize things, I compiled my handwritten lists and typed them into a computer file named “Elements.” The header for the file read “EVERYTHING THAT COUILD POSSIBLY GO INTO THE BOOK.” That file was later subsumed into a file named “Plan,” and on it went.

Elements_Everything Better

I believe in wallowing. Just soaking up information and generating impressions. I keep doing it until I get bored. Then I stop and try to find something constructive to do. Or move on to another project.

So, Step No. 1 to writing a memoir is to wallow in information, impressions, and sensations. Also, alcohol.

(To be continued.)

Blogging vs. Writing: Indecision Angst

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Writers must blog, must create a “platform,” i.e., round up a bunch of people who will buy their books — or so we are told..

The bigger your platform, the more likely an agent or publisher is to pick you up.

I beg to differ — about blogging, especially.

I was a social media content consultant back before anyone called MySpace a social medium and content was called “stuff” you put on a Web site. (I still prefer Web site to website, which looks like alphabetical diarrhea.)

Here’s the deal. We don’t, and can’t, spend all our time reading blogs by writers. Readers can’t either. Yet 8 bazillion (rounded up) books are published every year either self-dubbed or traditionally dubbed. If every writer wrote a blog or carried on on Facebook or Twitter, when would readers have time to read our “stuff,” i.e.,the stories we want to sell? Short answer: Never.

The same is true for writers: You can either write your stories (books) or you can blog. (Blogging takes time if the content is to have value.) So, do you write books or write a blog?

I vote in favor of books … and every so often guilt myself into writing a blog post. Even though I know no one is reading, and I hate doing it.

And that is Indecision Angst.

Writing Around Life

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You have to write every day, if you want to be a writer.

Everyone says that.

Okay, maybe not everyone, but enough people to make it seem likjune-children-s-day-calendar-symbol-white-cube-41085882e everyone.

But what about life? You know, living? Doing the living stuff, like sleeping and eating and earning money and taking care of the kids / elderly parents / needy loved ones. What about that stuff?
I began this writing adventure exactly three years ago when I finally discovered I had a story I wanted to tell. At that time I was a senior consultant with a hard-working wife, two adult children, the greatest granddaughter ever born, a large group of friends and a serious passion for nature photography.

When does a guy write?

I’m a morning person so I moved the morning up a couple hours. The alarm started its annoying buzz at 5 a.m. Not that bad for a morning person, especially in the summer when it’s lighting up out there at 5 a.m. During the winter, it got harder.

I kept this up until last year when we experienced a family health crisis. I found I could not write at any hour, much less 5 a.m. Two years and three books in the computer, and I couldn’t write!

So I stopped and dealt with life. Sometimes you do that.

Was I less a writer than I had been the previous two years? No. I wasn’t producing stories, but I was a writer with more important things to do.

When the crisis eased, I found I still couldn’t write until my wife asked me to take it up again. I told her I just couldn’t focus enough to make things up, i.e., write fiction.

Fine, she said. Write something else. I did. Ironically, or maybe not, I turned to working on a memoir about my two years in Southeast Asia during the Viet-Nam War. That is, I went back to doing what I knew: Reporting.

The project took a year — much longer than I expected — but it’s done.

Am I back to writing fiction at 5 a.m.? Nope. Still cleaning up the memoir mess. (Doing the maps took two weeks alone. I devote at least half a day a week writing customized pitches to agents and carefully filing their rejects.)

So am I a writer or not?

Yeah, I’m a writer. Sometimes life intrudes, and you need to clean up a mess or two.

I’ll be back to writing four to six hours a day like the old days, but I’ve already decided that I won’t be doing the 5 a.m. wakeup call again. Life is too short, and I’ve found other things I can trim.

Write on.