This month, Janet and Valerie join Crys and JP for another book club, this time reading Fast-Draft Your Memoir by Rachael Herron. They discuss hot takes, useful advice, and how they will incorporate this book’s lessons into their writing craft.
Question of the week: What were your hot takes from Fast-Draft Your Memoir? Share your answer here.
Show Notes
Fast-Draft Your Memoir by Rachael Herron
2k to 10k by Rachel Aaron
A Life in Stitches by Rachel Herron
Transcript
Crys: Hello friends and welcome to the Write Away Podcast. It is Tuesday, May 17th, 2022, as we are recording, and we are here for our book club episode. This month, we read Rachael Herron’s Fast-Draft Your Memoir, which I’ll say right up front before we even get into the discussion, before I even introduce anybody, it’s not only for people who want to write memoir because Rachael’s advice is so useful for writing, period.
But we’ll introduce everybody. We have a new guest, Valerie Ihsan. Valerie, would you say hi so people know what your voice sounds like?
Valerie: Hello, it’s me.
Crys: And of course, JP and Janet Kitto.
Okay, friends. For this book, what did you think of it and how applicable is it to what you write? How applicable was the advice?
Valerie: Well, since I write memoir, this is very applicable. I’ve actually read this book maybe three times already. And when I teach any kind of memoir, I always recommend that people read this book. So I liked it a lot.
JP: I actually liked this too. I don’t write memoir, but I found this super-duper useful. And I actually had a client who was working on a how-to, and this really applied heavily to that. And it’s also applied to just a lot in general.
I really liked it. I can find myself reading this multiple times, just because it has a lot of approaches to writing that I feel expand outside of memoir.
Valerie: Yeah, there were a lot of good exercises in there. Coming up with the six-word memoir, that’s really hard.
Janet: Yeah. So I’m not writing a memoir either. But I loved reading this book because I could hear Rachael in my head after listening to her for years through podcasts. It was just so wonderful. It was like I was with a friend again. And so I loved all of the advice that she gives in this book from her years of writing and teaching, and she’s always shared her life with us so this was just so comfortable.
Crys: It was fun to open this again because I also have read this book a few times. And one of the first things I did was look at my notes, and it was interesting, the only notes I have are about the six pivotal moments that shaped you as a human, which is one of the pieces of advice she has as you’re trying to figure out like what the story is. And seeing what pieces, because I have several of those notes from the different times I’ve read it, and like what six things I picked out each time were slightly different, and that was super interesting.
JP: That is interesting.
Crys: Yeah.
Valerie: One of my favorite chapters in here is actually the “when you’re not supposed to write a memoir.” I thought that was very good. Sometimes in our industry, you do come across people who are really not ready to write it yet, or publish it rather, you can write it whenever. But Yeah, trying to get other people’s eyes on it or have it edited at the point where it’s just the anger memoir or the expose, that’s the trying to get someone in trouble memoir. Yeah, nobody wants to read that. That’s just annoying and depressing. And I just liked the way that she said that so we could just point people to that one chapter.
Crys: yes. And I don’t think she said it this way, but I heard this recently on TikTok, of course, but the advice was, “Write from the scar, not the wound.” So while you’re still healing is not necessarily the best time to be writing things that you intend to show other people because you can’t see like all of the ripples that you can use to make your story very full and depth and show like the full effects of what happens with whatever the wound or scar is that you’re writing from.
Valerie: So in the memoir that I’m writing right now, it’s 15 years past, so I definitely have distance. And because of that, I feel like there’s not as much raw in it, so right now I’m going through journal entries, trying to find and excavate the raw emotion that it doesn’t really have any more. So just the opposite for me.
Crys: I find, and that’s one of the things that I’ve struggled with as I’ve thought about challenging myself to write memoir or including like more of like personal history in my fiction, is that once I’ve healed something, I often, for the most part, forget about it. And it’s really hard to even remember what the thing was that I have healed, to go back to and say, okay, what was it like then, that I can use?
JP: I really liked her talk about like truth and memory, and how you figure out what that room tone was to generate the scene. And I felt like that gave me permission cause I’m in the same boat as you, Crys, that if I ever wanted to approach writing something along the lines of a memoir, I am so bad with exact details.
And I feel like this is one of those things where it’s like memoir has this false facade that everything has to be exact. But this kind of gave that permission to be like, no, memory’s fallible, which I know, and just write from what you feel the scene was from your perspective. And as long as you’re within like that 80% range of whatever this person says in the scene is about 80% likely that the person who said it would say it, then you’re okay.
And I don’t know, I felt like that was good permission to give. I feel like there are a lot of people who are like, oh, I want to write this, but I don’t remember it a hundred percent.
Janet: Yeah. And I want to add to that too. Like I made a note about that we’re not only reporting something that happened, but what it means. And I think that to give that meaning to the reader, we have to get past that place where it gets uncomfortable for us and think about going there again and just finding out who you are because that’s what you’re giving the reader. Not just the facts, not just how you felt, but the real meaning that everyone can take.
JP: Definitely. So this was something I’ve been discussing with various clients and whatnot who have been trying to approach this memoir but have maybe put up that barrier. And so they’re telling more of that factual or giving that huge distance, and a reader really wants to sit in that moment with you. They really want you to be vulnerable because then they don’t have to be.
They want to feel what you felt, and they want to see your mistakes so that they don’t have to make those mistakes. Or so that they are validated that everyone makes mistakes, my mistakes are within that same line. I really feel like this had some of those bits and pieces in there where it gave that permission and that need to like really go deep into these scenes because it’s really the journey you’re taking, as if you’re holding someone’s hand through your memory, not a recap of everything that factually happened.
Valerie: I concur. I read in another book about memoir, about being careful not to just report on not telling the story of the story. And I think that’s what you’re talking about, JP, like being able to get underneath the story, the narrative that you’ve been telling yourself that’s what happened. So getting underneath that and getting deep enough to sit with the shame or sit with the embarrassment or whatever it was. And yeah, Jenna, like you said, tell other people like what you learned about it.
I think that’s the whole point of memoir really, for me, that’s why I read it because there’s gotta be a takeaway. There’s gotta be a reason why you read this instead of a novel, for instance. So there’s gotta be a reason why I read it. I need to grow or learn something about myself after having read it.
Janet: You mentioned about favorite chapter. My favorite chapter was chapter 12, do I really have to? I just want to write this memoir. Can’t I just share my story? Why do I have to know about story structure? And so like I’m shifting all of these ideas that you have and it even goes into an outline or it just goes on the page, but yeah, just because that’s how it happened. The next part is looking at the structure and we might have to add things in there to make the story work, or we might have taken away some of the things that we think are really important, and we want somebody to know we’re awesome and this happened, but sometimes we have to take that away.
Valerie: Yeah, it’s got to work with a story arc, or as Rachael said in the book, you could choose to write it in that structure, that time memoir with the beginning, middle and an end, the narrative arc. Or you can do the thematically linked essays which can also have an arc too, if you want them to. I’ve read memoirs like that also.
Crys: Just as a quick aside to like structure, and Rachael does a really good job of giving you an overview of the different ones that are really common in memoir. I’ve read several thematically linked essays, Rachael’s was one of the more like clearly defined. Life in Stitches is about 12 sweaters, and 12 essays about these sweaters that she made and what she learned about them.
I picked up, and it’s one of my favorite memoirs simply because of how it was exactly what I needed at the time, I picked up Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, I believe.
Valerie: Very awesome. I love it.
Crys: Right when I needed it, but I was so surprised that it was not a narrative structure, that it was thematically linked essays, and that threw me off. But the writing was so powerful that I went all the way through it. And one of the risks you take with thematically linked essays is that each essay feels complete in a you’re done for the most part. So you can lose the reader more easily than you can enough full narrative. But her writing is just so powerful, her personality is so powerful, that it kept me reading.
JP: I’m going to keep talking about random client stuff, but this super-duper applies so I need to talk about it. Because I had a client who was working through like thematically themed essays, more or less. They still had a story that carried throughout, but each one resonating, in my opinion, quote-unquote hypothesis or call to action. But the overall story also had one and it had this like overarching theme that each thing was hitting along the way. And with a little bit of restructuring, it almost made the overarching theme this more resonating action.
And I really think that, especially when you’re working with thematic, but I even think to a degree with time, if there’s an ability to shift certain scenes to really hit how you are telling a story, you’re going to leave the reader with just a little bit of oomph or a little bit of like drive that’ll be keeping them throughout the narrative.
Now yes, time-related stories should always follow linearly, but I think that if events occur within months or years, I honestly think that they could be swapped for the story purposes and you’re not really going to ruin people’s lives. That’s my opinion.
Valerie: No, and it’s a good one, because that is one of the memoir rules that you can compress time, so you can move it around to create that literary. We’re borrowing from the literary form, we have to make it fit into that conflict, choice, consequence format.
JP: Yay. Good.
Valerie: In fact, my choice in the one I’m working on right now, my choice actually came more in the three-quarters of the way through the book, so I had to like restructure some things around and rewrite some things so that it made sense further towards the end of the book, so I didn’t have act three being all consequence, which is boring.
Crys: I think so much of the book, because so much of what she writes about is very much mindset and the fears that authors have and the kind of the nitty gritty of just sitting down and writing, but I think one of the things that she covered that is most applicable and deals with one of the biggest fears that I think that anyone writing memoir, anyone considering writing memoir is, one was like the truthfulness. But also just like how, and this is part of the truthfulness, like how often do you use real people’s names? She just gives such practical advice and in traditional Rachael bubbly fashion, like one, makes you not feel stupid at all for being worried about this, and two, reassures you completely.
JP: I really liked the chapter on self-care. I think that can expand outside of memoir, but regardless I think that it’s good for us however we are interpreting our traumas. Either through memoir, through fantasy, to really take a look at making sure that we’re taking care of ourselves and rejuvenating that well and not sitting in those emotions longer than we need.
Valerie: I think that is extra important during the revision process too, because it’s really hard as fiction writers to receive feedback, constructive or not. But when it’s memoir, it is even more difficult to separate the author from the story because the author is the story. so Yeah, self-care I think is paramount there as well.
And giving yourself maybe a little bit of extra time to process the feedback from the editor before jumping back in or deciding to rip it up or whatever it is that you’re going to do with the manuscript.
She even goes into what kinds of self-care. I like the bath part myself. I don’t know. What was your favorite, JP? What self-care do you do when you run into needing it?
JP: I’m bad at self-care. I would love to do baths, but I never do baths. I’m going to be honest, I don’t own a bath. So mine would be tea, yoga, or video games. She didn’t put video games, I put video games.
Crys: Yeah, baths would be my number one, too. And I have lived without a bath for most of the last eight years, and it is the like saddest not sad thing in my life.
Valerie: Get one of those portable hot tubs for 350 bucks.
Crys: I don’t have space for it.
But I have looked at it. I was like, I have a tiny yard that it would fit in, but it would kill all the grass. But I have absolutely looked at it a million times.
Valerie: It is my mental self-care sitting in my hot tub.
Crys: I actually asked Rachael in one of her essay when she was doing the year of renewal. And she had a month on water and so she bought one and I bought one off of her recommendation. I emailed her and I was like, Hey, I want to buy one so please send me your Amazon link because I would love for you to get the commission. And I was flying out of Las Vegas and it was going to be delivered hours after I flew out and I was so sad and had to call Amazon and say, please return this because it’s not going to arrive. And I cried.
Valerie: Oh.
Crys: I did. This five years ago.
JP: And now it’s a memory. You can write a memoir.
Valerie: Personal essay is memoir also. I don’t know if she covered that in the book. I can’t remember. I remember when I learned that I was like, oh, that’s right.
Janet: I love the dialogue exercises that she had in the book. Like all of the exercises are really good, but The dialogue and the post-it note method. I think we’ve all heard Rachael talk about that. So it’s covered in the book if you want to have a review of that. I love that, not getting attached to your ideas. They’re still on paper though, so you don’t have to feel like you’re tossing them. You’re just taking them out of the project that you’re working on.
Valerie: She does really talk you through things. Like you said, Crys, in a very simple, straightforward way, but not in a condescending way. Like her chapter on outlining, she walks you through absolutely every step of how to outline in a non-threatening way. And as someone who outlines it wasn’t something that I needed to hear, but it was still fun to listen to her walk her way through it. And I think that it would be very helpful for someone who is afraid to outline, or thought it wouldn’t work for their story, or whatever. So she did a good job with that, I thought.
Crys: Did anyone have any last notes or thoughts that they wanted to make sure we covered?
Janet: I was just going to say that too. That’s just what Valerie was talking about. I had that note too. All of it is okay. Rachael said so.
Crys: Should we tell Rachael that she needs to get bracelets and shirts that say “Rachael said so. Everything’s okay.”
JP: I also will note she narrated this and she has it synced up that you can follow along in the Kindle, which was really enjoyable. FYI.
Valerie: That’s cool. I forgotten that she did that.
JP: So anyone who wants to hear her read this, it’s fantastic.
Valerie: Nice. I totally recommend the book. I think everybody should read it.
JP: A hundred percent.
Crys: This is one of my favorite recommendations. And if I were to like, choose two books that I would say, Hey, these are great beginning writing books if you don’t want to be intimidated, they’re both by Rachaels. Rachael Aaron’s, 2K to 10K I think is useful. Not necessarily the increasing your speed part, but like the end part where she goes over how she writes genre fiction. Super useful for a lot of people.
And then this book with Rachael Herron. Regardless of whether you’re writing memoir, just about getting yourself in the process and dealing with those fears.
Crys: Thank you guys so much for joining us for this conversation. Valerie and Janet, can you tell folks where they can find you?
Valerie: My website is ValerieIhsan.com. I’m also on The Writer Craft Podcast.
JP: Excellent.
Janet: And you can find me at my website JanetKitto.com
Crys: Excellent. And we’ll have links for those in the show notes. Thank you everyone for joining us this week for our book club. We have not chosen next month’s book club, but we will announce it on Patreon soon. If you would like to support us on Patreon, you can do so at patreon.com/writeawaypodcast.
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