A book review for the Winter Haven Public Library on October 21, 2015

3. Naked, drunk, and writing?

4. “Shed Your Inhibitions and Craft a
Compelling Memoir or Personal Essay”

5. “It’s about shedding your
inhibitions…so that you can stand
naked before the truth that lies
dormant within you. It’s about the
intoxication that comes with the
terror and beauty of being exposed
and vulnerable…

6. Let’s go back to the 1960s…

7. …and my endless struggles with writing.

8. I went on to become an English
teacher…

9. …and witnessed the same struggles in
my students.

10. Graduate school and professional
publishing (10 books) taught me a lot
about writing.

11. And I wondered – why didn’t anyone tell
me this stuff back when I was in high
school and college?

12. It’s easy – buy low, sell high!

13. Yes, there’s nothing to it! Just master a
few basic concepts….

14. Yes, there’s nothing to it! Just master a
few basic concepts….

15. …or you could read this book.

16. Let’s get started.

17. “You have to expose a lot of film to get
what you want.”

18. “We need a lot less backstory than you
think.”
A little girl grew up in an impoverished neighborhood in
London. Her mother disappeared when she was little, so she
lived with her father and a procession of common-law wives.
When she became a teenager, her parents threw her out and
told her to earn her own living. She was determined to
maintain her respectability and started her own business.
She earned enough money to move into a slightly better
neighborhood. One night she came unexpectedly into some
money and decided to hire a teacher so that she could qualify
for a higher-paying job.

19. Why not
begin at the
point
where the
story starts
to get
interesting?

20. “Add three sentences after every
sentence you’ve already written, to see
what else is there.”

21. Find your voice.

22. “It’s you sounding so much like you, and
so unlike anybody else, that we don’t
need to see the byline to know you
wrote the piece.”

23. “Successful memoirists may not know
any more than the rest of us, but they
know who they are at the moment of
writing.”

24. “It was as if I decided to build a house and
just started nailing boards together
without even thinking about a blueprint.”

25. It’s important to write a “discovery
draft,” but don’t stop there.

26. Your ideas need structure.

27. 1. Decide how you changed, and make
that your central point.

28. 2. Begin with the status quo.

29. Use a series of “beats” to tell us how you
arrived at the change…

30. Each “beat” is a step forward or
backward.

31. I started with high school…

32. …when I was so frustrated with my
writing.

33. I experienced more frustrations as a
teacher.
I was spending more
time correcting student
papers than they were
putting in when they
wrote them.
The same problems
kept coming back again
and again.

34. Graduate school taught me a lot about
writing.
“Jean, you’re relying too
much on coordinating
conjunctions.”
“Your paragraph
transitions are weak.”
“Your paper needs a
stronger opening to set
up your argument.”

35. I learned even more when I started
publishing…
“You need to rethink
your plan for the book.”
“Jean, some of your
examples are outdated.”
“Your first chapter
needs to get students
excited about writing.”

36. …and editing.
“On page 3 of your
manuscript about Shaw,
you didn’t mention Shaw
once.”
“The central problem in
your novel is resolved on
the second page of
Chapter 2.”

37. I became interested in sentences…

38. …as conveyors of meaning.

39. It’s not enough to get the grammar
right.
She seemed upset about what she’d heard on the phone.
WEAK
She put down the phone and walked into the kitchen
without looking at me. STRONGER
“The airport’s over there,” he said, pointing out the
window. WEAK
He pointed out the window. “The airport’s over there.”
STRONGER

40. Make sure you have the tools you need:
 epiphany
 angle
 tieback
 scene
 dialogue
 image
 detail
 voice

41. You can learn more about them here.