Top Myths About Writing

MY FATHER WAS A sportswriter who agonized over every line he typed. He met my mother, who was also a journalist, because he was the slowest writer in the press box and was alone there when she wandered into that designated space at a New York racetrack. Their friends were writers, as is my sister, my husband and my best friend. I chose to go into the business, then wrote and published four books. And now, as a memoir teacher, memoir coach and memoir editor, I work with writers worldwide. What have I got to show for all this time with writers? This and that, as well as a tidy list of the top myths about writing. Here they are.

1. It writes itself.

Ellen Abrams, one of my favorite playwrights, recently sent me a t-shirt. On it is the face of Shakespeare and the words, “This shit writes itself.” I love this. She and I and her husband, the marvelous historian and fiction writer Kevin Baker, will tell you that we have never, not once, met anything that writes itself. Sure, this declaration may have weakened with the incursion of ChatGPT, but I will stick to this statement until some AI program proves me wrong.

2. You need a fancy office, preferably in Paris, to write.

Uh, no. Here is your new mantra: Writers write everywhere, anywhere and every time they can. As I type this, I have just slipped out of bed before 6 AM on the day this piece will appear, in order to get one single slug of time to myself while I provide caregiving to a relative, tend to the household, hold off a dog who demands to go out at the crack of dawn, fight the urge to eat breakfast and more. Do not mistake that for a complaint. Not a bit. I would fight dragons to get here. That is a writer’s life. That is every writer’s life: While you set out to put your writing first, you get the other stuff done, as well.

3. You deserve to quit your day job and do this full time.

Nope. Sorry. Instead, you must earn the right to write. See above. Do not take your family hostage, imperil their stability, cause financial harm to yourself and others or any other madcap thing. Instead, recreate your world to be one in which you feed your head all the time.

Are you sitting at the school bus stop waiting for a child? What are you doing there? Oh, look: You are on Instagram, or Pinterest, or maybe you’re decorating that office in Paris (again, see above). Stop.

Every moment you have available is now to be redirected toward getting your mind and your heart to a writing place.

How? Listen to fine books on tape. Get a notebook and take notes, everywhere and always. Or merely think quietly to yourself about how you will bust up that structure problem you have in Act Two. When you read, what are you reading? Oh, look: It’s other memoirs that are making you crazy at the thought that your ideas are not original, or not good enough. Stop. Instead, read the critics and study how they identify what a play or a book or a movie is about. Not the plot: what it is about.

Read over your head. Read everything on this list of books that taught me to write — and then help me update the list by sending me suggestions with what you learned from a book you’ve read.

When you binge-watch something on TV, pick shows that will teach you something. Like what?

FX’s “The Bear,” for example, streaming on Hulu. The writing of Season Two of this fine show amazes me. Note the sparse, direct dialogue that delivers backstory in a phrase, or just a word. Study it. Watch and rewatch the scene in Season Two where Richie apologizes to his daughter about Taylor Swift. Witness how little he says and how much he conveys. That is how you write dialogue. (Honor surely belongs to the show’s creator and main writer, Christopher Storer.)

By the way, do you know you can get scripts online? Here, for instance, is the pilot screenplay for The Bear.

“Daisy Jones & the Six,” released this spring on Amazon Prime. I’m not uncritical of this show: its stodgy portrayal of characters makes too many of them one-dimensional. But we can learn a lot from imperfect vehicles. Here, the writers clearly got a lot right about the music industry in a time and a place. Someone did plenty of research on 1970s music clubs, the recording industry and how things worked, and that’s the lesson here: Research your time and get things right.

“Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.” This movie, released this spring, is a charming adaptation of a fine book (a 1970 novel by Judy Blume), and I love the actors. But I was distracted by what they got wrong. Like what? Details: There is more comfort in diversity in the movie than many of us would recall at that time; there were no “supermodels” in 1970 (the term hadn’t been invented yet), and menstrual pads were not yet adhesive at that time. Am I being a stickler? I am. Am I being an ass? Kind of. But you need to do your homework — which, with a phone in hand, can be done at that bus stop, or anywhere else. Readers will call you out when you misstep. Don’t risk it.

“Tiny Beautiful Things.” This eight-episode show, Hulu’s adaptation of a book by Cheryl Strayed,  wonderfully explores grief via flashbacks and backstory. Study the tempo of those flashbacks. How do you show internal conflict? Like this. Watch and learn.

4. Anyone else is interested in your story. 

Your family may be polite. Good. Enjoy it. But never forget that if they become enthusiastic about your work, it might be love that drives the encouragement. Lucky you. But those kind people don’t matter as much as those in the business. Your family may love you, and think you are the next Stephen King, but you’d do better to consider the warning of the great Pete Dexter, who once said this to me when we were onstage together: “Never believe your downstate returns.” It’s an old political axiom from Illinois, home of the legendary Chicago machine, meaning that the early votes from rural areas mean nothing until the urban votes are counted. In your case, take the lesson as this: Enjoy the support you have at home, but use it to propel you forward instead of bathing in it constantly.

Here’s a tip to help you draw the interest of others: Stop pitching your story based on the plot. Have you noticed the slurry-eyed response you get from people when you start telling them your tale? Do you want that to stop today? Then use The Memoir Project Algorithm to pitch your story. It will change everything.

5. You can break all the rules.

Do you really think this, or are you simply not learning those rules? Be honest. Do you know the rules of structure? Are you fully aware of the obligations of Acts One, Two and Three in memoir form, what a personal essay must do, how an op-ed delivers its message and, as well, what differentiates a short-form essay from a long-form essay — and how to discern which topics have the grit to go long?

After you know all that, it might be time to do the wild and wonderful things you have on you, like using lists, or creating a graphic memoir (can’t wait to see what comes next in that field, pioneered by people like Alison Bechdel and her great book, Fun Home). Maybe you can come up with something original, like deploying an index-driven book on a topic that is hard to sell — but note that this fine book, which sold wildly, was written by an author who had published previously and, well, learned the rules before she broke them.

6. That the big four are the only way to go.

The “Big Four” refers to the mainstream publishing houses in New York that you’ve heard of.  But until you have also heard of these other fine publishers, you have not got the full picture. For instance, what if your book has a spiritual aspect? Then take advice from Michele Cushatt, one of the most successful writers I know, and have a look at her publisher, Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins, and start learning about the myriad subdivisions within publishing.

7. That one day you’ll get around to it.

If you’ve read my little book on how to write memoir, you have read this passage. But read it again. And if you have never read it, here it is to enjoy.

There once was a time when I was terribly polite about this work and what it requires. At cocktail parties, when someone asked me what I do, just above my string of pearls I’d smile, and reply, “I’m a writer,” and nearly to a person, he’d say he was going to write when he retired. Nodding, I’d wish him the best with it and slink off to find the canapés, wondering what was wrong with me that I was going to devote my whole life to writing, when clearly people who were smarter than I could put it off until they got around to it.

Now, I’m not so polite. Now, when someone tells me that he is going to become a writer when he gets around to it, I reply, “And what do you do?” And sometimes he says, “Oh, I’m a brain surgeon,” and that’s my favorite reply. Then I can say, “When I retire, I’m going to become a brain surgeon,” with just a hint of a sneer above those pearls.

This is serious work. And it cannot be reduced to generic writing exercises and pre-fabricated prompts. And ask yourself these questions: Have any of those ditties ever gotten you published? Has scribbling from the right side of your brain, or getting in touch with your angel’s feather, or keeping morning pages put you where you want to be as a writer? After reading one of those books of exercises, or subscribing to yet another web-based, prompt-list newsletter, have you actually finished that letter to your child that you long to give her? I doubt it. I suspect that those manners of nonsense have instead stolen what little time you had for writing.

How do I know? Because my classes are filled with people recovering from those very exercises, people whose sole relationship to writing was practicing. Also in my classes: aspiring authors who detoured into inertia after listening to parents, spouses, nuns, or teachers tell them that memoir writing has no value.

Its value is inestimable. Which is why you must be taught to do it.

8. In there, amid the discussion of myth number seven, is also myth number eight, in which I hope I dispel any belief in writing prompts and exercises.

     9. You do not have time.

See myth number three and consider using your time more efficiently. Perhaps you are not managing what little time you have. Please consider this.

10. That you won’t need to rewrite.

Rewrite is the soul of writing. Rewriting is where it all happens. In my Master Class, I devote an entire month to the topic of the rewrite, where you learn to take the vomit draft, as it is known here, and turn it into a lean, sharp illustration of your transcendent change based on your well-honed argument.

11. That you won’t be edited.

You want to be edited. You need to be edited. You should crave being under the watchful eye of an editor whose solid work makes yours sing like a mantra.

Editors teach you how to communicate your message clearly, how to slenderize your language, how to be logical, unique, discreet and clear. They manage your copy in wondrous ways. Yes, there are lousy editors out there, so take care when hiring one. Here at The Memoir Project, we can refer you to marvelous editors we know who have helped produce works that get published. See the list of Memoir Project editors.

12. The doubt will cease.

It should never cease. Neither should the fear.

When I was in my 20s and at The New York Times, I got sent out to cover the shooting of a Midtown police officer. It was a dreadful scene, right outside Grand Central Station during a summer lunch hour, and I got there amid the standoff with the shooter, in time to hear the dead officer’s partner repeatedly screaming, “You shot my partner!” as the shooter was apprehended. There was blood and broken glass, and I was in a dress and heels, holding nothing but a notebook and a pen, scribbling, and when I got back to the great metropolitan desk of that great newspaper, I burst into tears in front of my editor, a legendary and tough journalist. He said, “Good. I hope you always cry.”

Listen to the great Anna Quindlen on this. Anna, whose more than 20 published works have earned her bestselling spots in every category, and who has produced a No. 1 NYT bestseller, who won a Pulitzer for her essays, and who is an enduring talent in the world of writing, told me in that interview that she begins every day with doubt. Every single day.

13. It never gets any easier.

It does. Mind you, it doesn’t get easy, because art isn’t easy, or so the great Stephen Sondheim wrote in a song in “Sunday in the Park With George.” But it does get easier.

How? With a daily writing practice. Try this: three pages a day, five days a week. Or 500 words a day, five days a week. Do the math. If you write three pages a day, five days a week, that is 15 pages a week, 60 pages a month, or a 300-page first draft in five months. Five hundred words a day, five days a week is 2500 words a week, which is 10,000 words a month. You might have a first draft in seven months.  Use whichever calculation you like, but know this: It begins with dispelling the myths, sitting in the chair and doing the thing you were born to do: Writing.

Oh, look: I left it at 13, which some consider unlucky. Let’s fix that: Send me your hard-earned myths in the comments, and let’s add to this list, and help one another along the way in this writing life that we were born to live.

Want more? Join me in my live online classes.

Memoirama: Live, 90 minutes. Everything you need to write what you know.

Memoirama 2. Live, two hours. Limited to seven writers. What you need to know to structure a book.

How to Write Opinion Pieces: Op-eds, Radio Essays and Digital Commentary: Live, 90 minutes. Get your voice out into the world.

Keep in mind that we are always keeping a list of those who want to get in the next Master Class, the prerequisites for which are Memoirama and Memoirama 2. Live, once a month. Limited to seven writers who are determined to get a first draft of their memoir finished in six months.

And, if you want fast, easy how to write memoir tips, come see me on Instagram and TikTok @mroachsmith.