Write a memoir draft.

SINCE PUBLICATION OF THE MEMOIR PROJECT, my irreverent little book on how to write memoir, there has not been one day that I have not wanted to tweak it, adding a small thought or a phrase to what I published in its pages. And why not? Every day I learn another thing or two about this great art of writing what you know. Just today it was something new about how to write a first draft.

Here it is: Your life is a pantry, but to write about it you must choose one feast at a time for which to cook. This came to me while speaking to one of my memoir coaching clients who was wrestling, really struggling, with getting on with a book. Perhaps we’ve reviewed the same opening pages together five or six times now. I’ve got to get her to move on. She wants to move on. And so the pantry metaphor was invented.