Learning to Expand Before Learning to Cut

How I Wrote a Memoir: Part VI

I doubled the length of an early workshop piece before chiseling it for my manuscript.

For the first assignment in my Gotham Writers Workshop Memoir I class in 2008, I wrote about colliding with a new romantic prospect in Las Vegas—a destination I neither chose nor particularly like. Our chance meeting was significant and instantaneous at the worst possible time in the worst possible place under the worst possible circumstances. My first—but nowhere near my last—attempt at writing this story filled just over one page single-spaced and skipped key information that would have provided the reader with the full picture. I chose to revise the assignment to turn in for week ten. The revision was more than twice as long and filled in major gaps, but it didn’t provide pertinent elements that now appear in my memoir manuscript across multiple chapters. What happened in Vegas only makes up 762 carefully whittled words in my memoir. I couldn’t have written the final version without these first two pieces.