I cheated. Well, I didn’t actually sign up, so maybe I can’t really be accused of cheating. But still…
I reached the 50,000-word goal earlier this week. But they weren’t all “new” words. And I’m not working on a novel.
I began a pandemic diary early last year – a desktop file where I wrote to
untangle the insanity of 2020: from Trump to COVID, social justice to global warming, unemployment to homelessness. And on a
personal level, my unplanned retirement and the birth of my grandson.
In late October
2020 when my daughter’s family leave ended, I began
caring for my grandson a few days each week, and an odd thing happened. I began
addressing my daily journal entries to my grandson. I began calling the file Pandemic
Baby. I began thinking of it as a new memoir project.
A year of letters
to Jack accumulated by the time NaNoWriMo 2021 rolled around. It
seemed the perfect challenge: Could I shape these ramblings into a draft
memoir? To answer that question, I cheated. I began cutting and pasting,
rewriting and, yes, writing some “new” words as well. The manuscript is far from
a finished first draft, but it’s a start. The challenge got me this far.
What about you? Do you have a memoir you’ve been wanting to get on the page? Perhaps for publication or perhaps for family? Do you need a challenge to get you started or instruction to keep you going?
I’m excited to be teaching a one-day memoir class on March 14, 2022 at Hugo House in Seattle. Perhaps that’s the challenge you need to breathe life into your project. If so, I look forward to seeing you in class.
Registration opens soon. CLICK HERE for course description and registration information.
