so you want to write a memoir?

This is an excerpt from Hallelujah Anyway, a Substack by the writer Anne Lamott.  You can read the full version on her site here.  

When I first met my husband, Neal, nine years ago, he was helping elderly clients write their memoirs, while I was giving workshops on how to get any kind of writing done at all. His clients had typically procrastinated for years, sometimes decades, getting down on paper the stories of their lives if, for no other reason, so that their grandchildren might someday know from whence they had sprung.

Meanwhile, I was working with writers who were suffering from low self-esteem, performance anxiety and writer’s block, often without yet having put a single word to paper. I’d written a book on everything I knew about writing called Bird by Bird more than 20 years earlier. Basically, it came down to two suggestions: First, write really short passages or memories and string them together. Second, let yourself write a bad first draft, because this is how 95% of the writers we all love get their work done. …

Find a time when you can sit down for an hour most days, undisturbed. Commit to this. As I tell my writing students, no one cares if you write or not, so you’d better. Stop not writing: It’s going to break your heart if you’ve always wanted to write a memoir or novel but never got around to it.

Establish the habit of writing by creating a long list of every early memory you have, starting with your first holidays, extended family, kindergarten, elementary school and then move onward.

Now, write up these memories for us or speak them into a recording device. Later, you can go through and take out extraneous words and the boring stuff. You can seize upon each verb and decide whether there might be a stronger one. Strike out the excess adverbs and adjectives as if they are tsetse flies. But trust me: Simply start writing down your history and the rest will flow.

It’s about time. Quit putting it off. Make that list of all your brightest, strangest, sweetest, silliest, heartfelt and altogether most memorable times of your life. Then write or tell us one. Then write or tell another. Think of each memory as a pearl on a necklace. Your pearls. Your necklace.