Episode 6 Memoirs – Creative Nonfiction, Flashbacks, The Literary Short and more *podcast transcript

Podcast Link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6JiGbRarPmBlTsGOfT9oP4?si=wkZQhlJUR-edsQFb7ngRAQ

Hello! I’m Jenna Michal! Welcome to Breaking Writer’s Block! Here you’ll get your weekly dose of writerly inspiration in under ten minutes. Why? Because sometimes all you need is one spark to get you writing.

Each episode I will start off with a writing tip based on knowledge from professional writers. I will give 3 writing prompts to use as you wish. Lastly, I’ll end each episode with a book rec!

I hope you enjoy!

- Writing Tip -

My tip for you this week comes from the MasterClass article called How to Start Writing a Memoir: 10 Tips for Starting Your Memoir. If you’d like to read the whole article, the link will be in the podcast’s description.

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-start-writing-a-memoir

For the tip, I’m focusing on Tip number 7: Keep it Relevant. When writing about ourselves, it’s difficult to know what is necessary to have in your story to understand it. Something that might have been meaningful to you, won’t be meaningful to someone else unless it fits within the narrative that you’ve already created. So, only describe moments of your life that connect to one main event, which your whole book should be centered around.

Also, while writing about pain, many people, including myself, tend to go into in-depth analogies to describe the pain you felt. While metaphors are great, sometimes, what’s best for your story is to just say what happened. That way, the gravity of your situation can hit your reader as sharply as it hit you.

- Topic -

The topic for this week is the memoir. The ingenious combination of autobiography and creative writing, which bring us some of the most impactful stories of our time.

For some of you, writing nonfiction is your specialty, but for others, to write not only real events but real events centered around yourself can be daunting. So, I have as usual 3 prompts to get you out of the stage of anxiously staring at a blank page.

- Prompt #1 -

The first prompt is to rehash a playground memory from your childhood. Just write what happened first, then you can go back and discover why you remembered that memory among all your other playground memories. Why was this specific memory special? You can then add to your story to bring out meaning from your experience.

- Prompt #2 -

The second prompt is to write about an event in your life that shaped you. Most memoirs focus on the series of events in their life, which melded them into the person they became. What in your life has happened to change you. Was it a move? A death? A moment of silent realization? Anything works as long as it was monumental to you.

- Prompt #3 -

The last prompt I have for you today is to write about what is going on in your life currently. Don’t try to make it look perfect, describe all the goods and bads of your current life. You then can add a few flashbacks from your past to help readers connect with who you are as a person as well as understand how you got to where you are. And of course, talk about what you hope for your future.

- Challenge -

We can learn a lot from real-life stories of people’s lives. So, my challenge for you this week is to read a few shorts. A short–normally below 700 words–is a piece of creative nonfiction writing that shows a glimpse of someone’s life experience.

You can find shorts to read online if you look up “creative nonfiction short.” If you want to find a book that contains a collection of shorts I recommend getting “The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction.” These are some of the best of the best shorts that are out there. I have read quite a few of them and have been amazed and gutted by every one I’ve read.

- Book Rec -

That segways into this week’s book rec. Once again, I recommend “The Best of Brevity” if you want to read some high quality shorts.

Another book recommendation I have for you this week is one of my favorite memoirs of all time. It’s called Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals. She was one of the Little Rock Nine who fought to desegregate a high school in Arkansas.

- Outro -

Thanks so much for listening! It’s a pleasure to talk about storytelling with you guys. Please share your writing in the comments section of this podcasts transcript on my blog. The link is in the description. I also have a Bookstagram page dedicated to what I’m reading if you’d like more recs: @acollectionofpages_.

Join us next week as we talk writing that is out of this world! WhoOoOO. That was supposed to be an alien sound.

Adios escritores! See ya next week.