Writing Memoir Is Hard

On Resistance, the Unnatural Work of Personal Writing, and the Reward

I’m back in the book-writing saddle. I’m relieved to be riding again, but it’s also got me thinking about resistance. In my experience working with memoirists, I would name resistance as the biggest culprit for why it takes so damn long, and why it’s so challenging to push through.

Here I am again, in a new moment of embracing my writing, but I’ve been here before, so I’m staying curious about where and how I get derailed. I’m noticing things—like how the very existence of all these words and pages feels so daunting, or the physical weight I felt bearing down on me during my last writing session, so heavy I only lasted an hour.

It’s not uncommon for memorisits to take ten years or longer to complete their books. I’ve walked alongside memoirists who’ve articulated every imaginable reason for their stuckness: fear of outcome, concerns about the impact on loved ones, overexposure and vulnerability risks, inner critics, imposter syndrome, bad timing, procrastination, perfectionism, inability to make the writing a priority. . .

I used to believe in writer’s block because I worked with writers who struggled to write. So, naturally, I assumed writer’s block was to blame. But then, in 2012, I read Ann Patchett’s incredible essay, “The Getaway Car” (which you can find in the collection, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage) and it changed my thinking.

In it, Ann writes:

As far as I’m concerned, writer’s block is a myth. . . It can take a very long time to figure something out, and sometimes, no matter how much time you put in, the problem cannot be solved. To put it another way, if it were a complicated math proof you were wrestling with instead of, say, the unknowable ending of Chapter 7, would you consider yourself “blocked” if you couldn’t figure it out right away, or would you think that the proof was difficult and required more consideration? The many months (and sometimes years) I put into thinking about a novel before I start to write it saves me considerable time while I’m writing, but it’s all a trick of accounting. There may be no tangible evidence of the work I do in my head, but I’ve done it nevertheless. Even if I don’t believe in writer’s block, I certainly believe in procrastination. Writing can be frustrating and demoralizing, and so it’s only natural that we try to put it off. But don’t give “putting it off” a magic label.

It’s unceremonious but helpful. And, of course, we put things off for valid reasons. It’s valid to tend to your mental health when you hit challenging memories. It’s valid to wait till the kids are grown, or a parent is dead. It’s valid to prioritize work that earns you a living over a meaningful project that doesn’t.

That these reasons become excuses not to do the thing we profess to want to do—well, herein lies the problem. And so, if we want to write, we have to be in relationship with our resistance.

Recently, I had a coaching session with a student who’s wrapping up my six-month memoir class. She was so upset with herself for committing to the class but not doing the writing. She showed up to half the classes. She turned in a fourth of the assignments. She used words like ashamed, angry, disappointed.

All I could do was hold her in her disappointment by letting her know that the memoir is going to take the time it takes. She’s writing about an abusive relationship that happened when she was a teen. An older man who groomed her, who took advantage. This is not easy material. It’s provocative. It’s triggering. I told her to be gentle with herself. The story will come, in time.

Forgiveness is key. Because in order to get back in the saddle, you have to forgive yourself for dismounting in the first place. Dismounting, by the way, can feel like being thrown off. It’s not always a choice. After my dad died in 2023, I just didn’t want to write, or keep up my writing practice. Loss made my writing feel trivial. Or maybe I was just depressed. I tried, but then I capitulated—and ultimately I knew I wasn’t ready. I threw myself into my job, and 2023-2025 were some of the most grueling years of my working life. But then, 2026 dawned and something shifted. More ease. Flow. Plus, I found a vehicle to write again through Memoir Nation’s JanYourStory.

The progress I made in January led me to say yes to an April writing retreat, where I wrote for a full weekend. I asked for something I needed—an accountability buddy who I’m writing with on Thursdays and texting on the weekend when I write. (Thank you, Julie Barton!) I’m only a few weeks in, but it’s working.

For any memoirist who’s struggling to write, you’re not alone, and there’s nothing wrong with you or your process if it’s taking longer than you want. In the Memoir Nation podcast this week (airs Monday, June 15), we interview Ronit Plank, who speculates that the average length of time it takes to write a memoir is even longer than ten years. Ronit hosts a quarterly writing support group for Memoir Nation (the next one is this coming Thursday!) called Mining the Depths, which exists to hold space to process the hard stuff. In the interview, she shares about how she would sometimes get the shivers when she wrote something difficult or poignant, and how unprepared she’d been for that physical experience. She reminds writers to offload, to shake it off, to find ways to support their nervous system.

She also says:

“There’s no race. . . Give yourself time to ruminate and take care of yourself, and allow those passive thoughts to enter your mind. There is no right way to do this. And therapy is very helpful. Writing is not therapy, but when you’re writing memoir, being engaged in a therapeutic relationship can be incredibly helpful.”

This notion that there is no race takes me back to my saddle metaphor because when I first started to think about writing my memoir, I thought I could do it in a year. I set that goal for myself, but it was a ridiculous false construct of an idea that was all about pushing and achieving and short-cutting. There was no way this process was ever going to take a year. It’s too fraught. It’s necessarily challenging. It’s gratifying for the challenge, and I will be forever changed for doing the work. But still, it’s hard! I’ve forgiven myself for the hubris of thinking I could knock it out. It’s humbling.

Resistance is inevitable. You will face it. In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield writes:

Every sun casts a shadow, and genius’s shadow is Resistance. As powerful as is our soul’s call to realization, so potent are the forces of Resistance arrayed against it. Resistance is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, harder to kick than crack cocaine. We’re not alone if we’ve been mowed down by Resistance; millions of good men and women have bitten the dust before us. And here’s the biggest bitch: We don’t even know what hit us.

Part of the work of being a memoirist is to try to understand what’s hit you. If you know, you can name it, and be gentle with yourself for being human and succumbing to it. You can renegotiate your goals. You can ask for what you need. You can manifest support in the form of an accountability partner, a writing group, a coach, a therapist.

Also, you are, in fact, doing something unnatural when you write memoir. You are exposing yourself, digging deep, unearthing traumas, doing hard emotional and physical work—and the body and mind are right to react in opposition. Mary Karr has said that memoir is like punching yourself in the face. Unnatural! We put ourselves through the ringer to do this work. Part of why I oppose using AI to write is because no one can or should do this work for you. The hard work is the reward.

In a New Yorker piece this week, Katy Waldman, writing AI useage by one or more(!) of winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, poses the question of whether “writing devoid of an inner purpose can rival the stuff ripped out of an author’s chest with a claw grapple.” If you write, you are inviting that claw grapple into your life (unnatural 😅!), and also, you know the answer to this question.