I recently completed two copyediting tests for traditional publishing houses to earn a spot in their freelance pools: one for a Big Five publisher and one for an independent press. I only “passed” one of them. Here’s what happened.

How I Wrote a Memoir: Part IX

The missing workshop feedback, what I found in my parents’ garage, and my first true writing advisor.

Remember at the beginning of this series when I said I saved everything related to my writing for the last fifteen years? I lied. The only drawback of an in-person workshop is when the feedback is handwritten on hardcopy pages, the stack gets large, and when you move as often as I have, and you eventually publish the essay you revised in that 2013 UCLA Extension personal essay class—the “dead ex-student essay” from blog #8—you feed the pages into the shredder because you don’t think you need them anymore.

How I Wrote a Memoir: Part VIII

What’s the effect on a writer when an instructor’s critique goes beyond the page?

It’s 2011, and I’ve signed up for another online writing workshop with one of the same instructors I worked with at Gotham Writers Workshop. Only this time the platform is her own setup. For the past three years since I ended my last “real” relationship, I’ve racked up dubious experiences with men who aren’t right for me, and my self-esteem is plummeting, but these romantic blunders make for excellent storytelling—if told properly. As I make poor decision after poor decision in a loop of desperation, I stockpile material for personal essays, my future manuscript, and sessions with a therapist.

How I Wrote a Memoir: Part VII

Write it now. Organize it later.

Whenever anyone asks me, “When did you start writing your book?” I always cite January 2014. But that’s only when I started writing my manuscript in earnest—an essay collection at the time. If the short pieces I wrote for a Gotham Writers Workshop Memoir II class in late 2008 are any indication, I really started writing my book then; I just didn’t realize I was writing a book. Portions of two assignments in particular provided the basis for one of the chapters that would end up in my memoir manuscript—organized differently, written differently, and in nowhere near their current form. Yet, writing them was an integral precursor to writing a lengthier, better connected, more sophisticated work.

How I Wrote a Memoir: Part V

What Does a Writer Do When Two Talented Authors Provide Contrasting Feedback?

In spring 2008, I ended an engagement a month before my second wedding and flew home to California from Georgia with the tags still on my bridal dress. I was single, despondent, relieved, and ready to write again. At thirty-five, I was about to make a slew of dubious decisions that would become material for my future memoir manuscript, but I had plenty to write about already when I signed up for a Gotham Writers Workshop Memoir I class.

How I Wrote a Memoir: Part IV

An Anecdote, Not an Essay

Before we say goodbye to my creative writing workshop in 2007, let’s discuss one more piece from the ten I wrote during the quarter. In Part III, we looked at a story involving my relationship with my college boyfriend. For the final lesson, I wrote about the man I would date immediately after him while I was still grieving lost love—a rebound that would last longer than the relationship from which I was rebounding. Lesson 10 is called “Drive-Through Debacle.” With my third boyfriend, I had many debacles from which to choose between 1997 and 1999. This one involves an undignified late-night, post-dance-club Del Taco run.

How I Wrote a Memoir: Part II

A Critique of My First Workshop Essay

Imagine a thirty-four-year-old transplant sitting at her soon-to-be fiancé’s oak desk in a suburban home north of Atlanta, Georgia, across the street from the cul-de-sac moms who lounge in lawn chairs in the driveway chatting, while their husbands work and their toddlers tumble in the grass. In 2007, I imagine I was invisible to the neighborhood Southern ladies because I was a childless, unmarried Californian with a job. It didn’t take much to determine we had nothing in common.

How I Wrote a Memoir: Part I

In this blog series, I will explore my writing process from my first workshop to completed manuscript.

In 2007, seven years after completing seven years of college, I decided to take writing seriously. At thirty-four, I was a Southern California woman living in a small Georgia suburb north of Atlanta, in love with a man who’d soon give me a giant ring I would return before my thirty-fifth birthday to move home. When I believed I was in Georgia forever, feeling homesick, not writing, and longing for a creative community, I signed up for an online UCI Extension Creative Writing course.

Allison Klein, “Inspired Life” blog, The Washington Post
Estelle Erasmus, Adjunct Professor, New York University’s School of Professional Studies

Tips from A Washington Post Editor to Get You Published
NYU Center for Publishing and Applied Liberal Arts
Continuing Education Programs

When I was a child, I read every Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary novel I could get my hands on. I rejoiced on days when the Scholastic Book Fair came to my elementary school. I read at the dinner table. I reorganized my bookshelves often, opting to submerge myself in words while other children played outside and perfected Atari games.

Conversations from the Archive
June 2014
Webinar

Brooke Warner
Linda Joy Myers, PhD, MFT
writeyourmemoirinsixmonths.com

Conversations from the Archive
April 2014
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

Dan Smetanka – Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press
Bart Schneider – Kelly’s Cove Press
Deena Drewis – Nouvella
Peter Ginna – Bloomsbury Press
Ethan Nosowsky – Graywolf Press

Conversations from the Archive
August 2013
UCLA Writers Faire
Los Angeles, California

Michelle Meyering
Maxine Lapiduss
Colette Sartor
Norman Kolpas
Tom Fields-Meyer