Freaking Out about National Memoir Writing Month: NaMemWriMo 2018 —
You may have heard of #NaNoWriMo — the National Novel Writing Month that many fiction writers sign on to, vowing to write 50,000 words in November.
November is also #NaMemWriMo, National Memoir Writing Month, with a smiliar challenge. If you split that 50,000 words up evenly into 30 days, that’s 1667 words a day.
The blank page is always scary, so I’ll be posting some prompts this month.
In May, 2018, as I was completing a memoir writing challenge, I wrote a blog post everyday here on Medium about the craft, the concerns, and the craziness of writing short or long form memoir. Some of the most popular topics were Writing Memoir: Essay by Essay and Writing Memoir: Flashbacks and Braiding.
In September, 2018, I sent my memoir manuscript to 30 agents. Five of those replied, asking for a full manuscript. One has rejected the manuscript, and four agents are still considering it. What a nail biter.
I have a shitty draft of another memoir that’s about representing a woman who was shot in the head with a handgun belonging to a Boston Police Detective. She was out drinking with him, survived the shooting, but didn’t remember what happened.
It’s a shitty draft for a lot of reasons, one being that it doesn’t have enough sensory detail.
If you’re writing a first draft, IMHO, that should be done extravagantly, without worrying at all about what your mom will think, about grammar, or even about making sense. For some people, writing as fast as possible is the way to do that. For most people, worrying about anything while you’re writing will only slow you down, or even make you freeze up.
So here’s a sensory detail prompt:
Most memoirs cover a particular time period, like childhood, or military service, or marriage. Think back to a time during your memoir’s time period when you were eating something. Write extravagantly about that.
Do the same thing for the other four senses: hearing, touching, smelling, seeing. For example, you could write about hearing a song or being at a concert.
This prompt is meant to generate delicious frostings to slather onto the cupcakes of your life story. If you’re not a sweets person, then the prompt is meant to generate the gravy for your mashed potatos. It’s the extra bit that will make your reader want to enter into your world.
