Techniques to get creatively unstuck when you know you want to write but are struggling with motivation and follow-through.
Category: memoir
I suck at plot. I suck at pacing. I have trouble knowing where things fit with each other, if I’m rushing or going too slow within different moments in a story. I’m not great at dialogue either. I’m probably good at half-baked ideas, strange characters, a sense of place, and mood. I’ve read quite a […]
I’m finally able to call myself a psychotherapist. I earned my License in Clinical Social Work, and I am starting a private practice. It’s an exciting, nerve-wracking time, full of potential and joy. But one of the pieces I’m still wrangling with in my mind is how to make a life as both a therapist […]
I met someone unbearably cool on Thursday night. She had dyed silver hair with purple streaks framing her lovely face. She was middle aged, perfect smile wrinkles around her eyes. She had a bass guitar strapped to her back. She oversaw a software development team and she knew my friend because she also plays ice […]
Now that my time is parsed, sectioned, subdivided, and carefully annotated to account for every one of my multiple (and seemingly endless) obligations–I have to confront the obvious, which I love to pretend doesn’t apply to me: I’m human. If I can reconcile myself with what might seem like an obvious proposition, then, what does […]
I’ve been quite the bee tonight. I sent off my query letter and memoir excerpt to several agents. I also finished a short, 12-page, book proposal to accompany my query, should an agent require this. I’m expecting a flurry of thanks but no thanks, which is as it should be. But I have to start […]
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Archeological Time
Today I started tackling my Countess of Paris story, which is about my father’s family lore, and how people perceive me, and what it’s like hanging out in 5 star hotels for one week a year. I’m in archeological dig mode, where I see what I’ve written and I try to perceive the story beneath […]
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75% Freaking Done
As of tonight, I’ve got 21 chapters in my memoir, and I’ve got 5 stories to revisit and improve upon. This means I’m 75% done with this revision. That’s either incredibly close or impossibly far. Tonight I rewrote my query letter to give some background on what motivated me to write the book. I was […]
Life is very exciting in these parts. I just tackled my second memoir chapter rewrite, and it felt downright successful. That’s two pleasurable chapter rewrites in a row. Inconceivable. (“Are you sure that word means what you think it means?”). Miraculous. The experience is good because I can read feedback on particular chapters that tell […]
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The Gazillionth Rewrite
“I feel stupid and contagious” allows me to a) honor Nirvana belatedly (jumping on media bandwagon), and b) succinctly express how I feel when my writing group critiques my work. I have been working on my Frenchness and Identity piece for a while. I must be in my fifth major re-write/re-org at the very least. […]
Tonight, I’ve been reading about (big words coming, so don’t freak out and abandon me here) Applied Symbolic Interactionism. It’s a social work theory formulated from 1890 to 1910 (stay with me…) and it freaking answers every question that drove the writing of my memoir. Okay, I’m exaggerating. It only answers or speaks to half […]
So I finally got around to doing what I probably should have been doing all along–tonight I sent in three chapters from my memoir as submissions to literary mags. I can expect resounding rejections, but at least I’m doing what I think I’m supposed to do–which is opening myself to criticism and rejection by letting […]
You know how families send around those Christmas letters detailing the year’s accomplishments and memories for the family as a whole and for its members? I got jealous. Single girls don’t send these letters. So I tried to write one (but maybe that’s already been done and it’s called Bridget Jones’ Diary) and it’s harder […]