FAST-DRAFT YOUR WAY
TO A COMPLETE
MEMOIR
Rachael Herron
Rachael Herron
23 books (mainstream lit, feminist romance, memoir,
and nonficiton), hybrid.
Bestselling! Still kinda broke. This isn’t a get rich quick
scheme!
Instructor at Stanford and Berkeley in the creative
writing depts.
Remember!
I am completely right about all of this!
Unless I am wrong, and what I say doesn’t work for
you.
Don’t trust anyone who says the first sentence without
adding the second.
What is memoir, anyway?
Your memoir will only cover a few
select years or a few select issues.
Today, we think about those “few.”
Types of Memoirs
• Celebrity, athletic, political or public figure
• Travel
• Spiritual
• Food
• Grief
• Animal
• Farmsteading
• Mommy Dearest/Growing up dysfunctional
• Escape from religious extremism
• I’ll take you there (zeitgeist)
• I will survive memoirs/disaster
• Love and romance
• Family, friendship, and business relationships
• Workplace or career/business
• Exploration or adventure
• Illness
• Addiction/recovery memoirs
• Humor
• Call to action
Six pivotal moments
What events have made you YOU?
1. Learned to read, and from that, that there was
someone behind the words
2. Decided to go to grad school for writing, not knowing
if it was a good idea or not
3. Decided to go into a profession that was uncreative in
order to keep writing
4. Finished my first book.
5. Got married (learned about love)
6. Grieved (learned about loss)
6 Word Memoir
• For sale, baby shoes, never worn.
• Fall down, get up.
And repeat.
• Words strung
together make a life.
Choose a theme/time frame!
You, as a character, have to have a character
arc.
We see that character change through
narrative arc. This is crucial.
You have to choose.
Character Arc
• Who has one?
• All heroes (and antiheroes)
• You’re the hero.
Why Tell Stories?
We want to cause an EMOTIONAL REACTION.
The 3-act structure has been around since the Greeks,
almost unchanged in its form.
Plays and oration were the only form of storytelling for
thousands of years until the 15th century. Why?
The Structure of Stories
(narrative arc)
They’re built this way for a reason.
Your Brain on Words
Our brains believe the tale.
Classical language areas of the brain involved in language
processing: Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s area.
But in 2012, a study found that words with strong odor
associations (lavender, coffee) lit up olfactory cortex.
(NeuroImage Journal)
Words like velvet and leathery light up the sensory cortex.
Words like kick or grab light up the motor cortex.
Keith Oatley (emeritus professor of cognitive
psychology, U of Toronto) has proposed that reading
produces a vivid simulation of reality, one that “runs
on minds of readers just as computer simulations run
on computers.”
Why we scream in movies
Story Structure (Plot)
There are as many ways to structure books as there are writers
writing about writing (A LOT!)
Common structures you may be familiar with:
Hero’s Journey (Joseph Campbell
3-act Structure (Aristotle)
Save the Cat (Blake Snyder)
4-act Structure (Larry Brooks) ß MY FAVE
Story Grid
2 sentences!
The most important parts of
my life are measured in tiny
things: words and stitches. My
life’s trajectory can be tracked
by writing about the sweaters
I’ve made.
Six-Word Memoir
Six Pivotal Moments
Memoir
Two sentences Outline
LIFE OUTLINE (in chronological order)
8-10 Chapters
2-3 scenes per chapter
A LONELY LIFE
In chronological order (you can
1. I was born lonely play with time later
a. My mother liked to tell me she didn’t see me for the first ten days of
my life
b. I was an only child raised in an old-age home
c. I wasn’t good at sharing anything
2. I was lonely in grade school
a. Kids never remembered what my name was
b. Teachers didn’t notice when I wasn’t there
3. I chose a profession in which I could excel at being lonely
a. Park ranger in national forest, wildfire lookout, why I wanted it
b. First day on the job, fell out of basket
c. Boss known to roar – the stories I heard.
4. KEEP THIS GOING to 8, 9, 10+
Why Not To Write a Memoir
The Anger Memoir
The I’m So Awesome Memoir
The I’m So Sad Memoir
The I Have a Terrible Memory Memoir
TRICK! This one is okay!
Shame
The most universal emotion
The strongest emotion
Shame vs. Guilt
BRENE BROWN:
I believe that guilt is adaptive and helpful – it’s holding
something we’ve done or failed to do up against our
values and feeling psychological discomfort.
I define shame as the intensely painful feeling or
experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore
unworthy of love and belonging – something we’ve
experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy
of connection.
Shame
The less we talk about it, the stronger it grows
The more we talk about it, the weaker it becomes (and
everyone leans in to really, really listen).
Getting it Done
In 45 hours? Yes. This is doable.
What kind of draft will this be?
What if I have to edit as I go?
Tools I Use
Freedom
45/15s
Write or Die / Written Kitten
Community: RWA, MWA, SFFWA, NaNoWriMo,
Twitter
Dictation
What Comes Next?
How to publish your memoir.
Trad or Self?
Hire your own editor?
NYBookEditors.com
Reedsy.com
Available on all digital sales
platforms (Amazon, Barnes
& Noble, iBooks, etc.)
Also available in paperback
and audiobook!
E-book - $5.99
Paperback - $11.99
Stay in Touch!
RachaelHerron.com
Writer’s weekly email: RachaelHerron.com/write
Coaching: RachaelHerron.com/coach
Twitter/Facebook
Retreats (West Coast in Sept, Venice in April)
Podcasts:
How Do You Write?
The Writer’s Well
