A newsletter I follow, 33 Charts, a blog on Medicine and Technology by Bryan Vartabedian, MD, came back online with an apology for “going dark” after nothing was posted for several weeks. Metaphors matter. I prefer Jocelyn Glei’s language for gaps in creativity, lying fallow.
When I say I’ve been lying fallow, I like the implication that what seems to be inactivity on the surface still has a lot going on underneath. The truth is, though I’ve not been posting, there’s been no gap in my creativity. Quite the contrary.
For the past three weeks, I’ve been writing and sharing my writing.
- I signed up for a 16-week online mastermind in nonfiction with seven other writers.
- We meet once a month via Zoom.
- My goal is to have a “shitty first draft” sometimes also known as a “vomit draft” of my memoir by the first week in May. As these gross images suggest, I want to get everything down on the page so I can go back later to revise and edit.
- I have assignments to turn in pages every week to my peers and to the leader.
- The emphasis is on clarity. One of the assignments is to complete a 1-2 page “Cheat Sheet” on
- Why I am writing the memoir
- Who the intended audience is
- What problem or desire it addresses for the reader
- What the point of the book is
- Why I’m the best person to write this book
- What the blurb on the back of the book would say
- This is helpful, not only to get a context for the pages written by the other writers but also to keep focus for myself.
- Right after the mastermind kicked off, I attended the annual Winter Getaway for writers held annually at the Seaview on MLK weekend. It’s run by Murphy Writing of Stockton University.
- Eight other writers and I worked with Lisa Romeo, a teacher, editor, and writing coach from Essex County.
- She showed us strategies for “Widening the I” in memoir, strategies for creating interest by taking the focus off the narrator.
- Over the long weekend, I was able to add 20+ pages to my draft.
- In the last two weeks of January, I’m scheduled for writing meetups for both my poetry and prose groups.
- The feedback I’ve been getting is helpful and consistent.
- One of my challenges is putting my thoughts and feelings on the page. I tend to describe events, to summarize them, rather than showing how they affected me.
- A writer I have known for a long time listened to an excerpt from my memoir.
- “Your problem,” she said, “is that you think you’re normal.”
- I knew exactly what she meant. I hold back out of fear my reader will be bored. She was saying, what you’ve said and done and felt and thought is interesting. We want to hear more.
This is the life of a writer. Being told you’re not normal is motivation and encouragement.
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.