ESCHEW WRITING PROMPTS. Be hospitable. Ask Amy. Use the algorithm. Those are four of my five countdown-to-the-new-year memoir writing resolutions. And number five? Here’s a hint: We start a new one tomorrow, and I advise you use it.
That’s right: Use the calendar. Like everything else about the do-it-yourself world of memoir writing, this is something you’ve already got. No batteries required. No expensive purchases. Just utilize the passing of time to write what you know.
Here’s an example of an essay you might write now and submit for a publication date six months from now. If the piece you are writing is for a magazine submission, you’ll need at least that much lead time between submission and publication. If the essay is for the radio (as this one was; it was read — minus the intro about writing — by me on NPR’s All Things Considered,) you might need a few weeks to write it, a few weeks to think about it, a few more to edit it, and suddenly it will be time to submit.
I’ve provided you with an interactive deadline calendar on this website. Have you used it yet? It not only gives you quirky little suggestions of events that happened on certain dates of the year, but links you to posts that will either instruct you on how to write something for such a date, or to a post that reprints a piece that I either published or read on that date on the radio.
Creative inspiration + calendar = memoir writing success for you in 2012. Add that to the four previous new year memoir writing resolutions. Can you name them in order? They are:
So happy new year. And write on.
