Mine started with a bad short story written in my early thirties, ten years after I ended the “relationship” with my teacher / predator. Then I spent three or four years in my forties writing and wrestling with a fictionalized version of the story in the form of a novel. It never rang true and ended up in a red folder on a shelf. In 2016, when I was in my late fifties, I began writing it as memoir, dropping into the feelings that accompanied the memories, and learning how much I didn’t know about book structure, and “showing, not telling.” In 2021 I outed my abuser on the front page of a major newspaper when I was sixty-three, in a long piece written by the paper’s crime reporter, which had a big impact on my life, and that of my abuser. I immediately wrote what I thought was the end of the memoir. It wasn’t. I kept trying to market it to agents, some of whom encouraged me to pitch smaller publishers.
It wasn’t until March of 2025, when I attended my 50th high school reunion, and wrote about that experience, that I realized that the memoir was finished. So yes, more than ten years.
Soon after I found She Writes Press. And I exhaled. My pub date is May 2027.
Thanks for sharing this story, Claudia. It takes an extraordinary amount of courage to do what you've already done—and we are so happy to welcome you at SWP. I can't wait to get your book into the world.
With my memoir now 8 years post-pub, I see it as taking 10+ years because I wanted to get it right. It's digging deep and discovering what it was really all about. Getting it right could only come with time - and patience with myself.
I loved talking with you and Grant and I’m excited to listen to our conversation. As always, I deeply appreciate the work you do and what you share here, Brooke. ❤️
These are the words I didn’t know I needed this morning. “Punching yourself in the face” is so accurate. There’s a constant dissonance between the nonstop nagging to get my story written and thinking I’m not supposed to write since I’m not working on it and that must mean I don’t want it bad enough. Thank you.
Thank you for this post. I don’t think I would ever write a memoir, but I do understand how daunting it must be, in particular when it concerns people who were close to you while they were alive or maybe even more significantly are alive still. But I loved the picture you used in the beginning and the saddle metaphor. You will forgive me, but it immediately reminded me of The Walking Dead. There’s that iconic scene from the first season of Rick Grimes on horseback riding into the ruins of a city, sheriff and gunfighter!
I struggle and am stilled not only in memoir writing. But some of what I write about comes from what's going on in my life and that can offer as much resistance even if it's not specifically autobiographical. And sometimes I'm walloped by the unexpected. For my substack tomorrow, I'm writing women and MMA but I'm also writing about my response. I got interested in this after reading Brutalities - A Love Story by Margo Steines. It's wonderful writing - daring, raw, honest.
Cool. So if you are or were a woman in MMA, you actually understand what Mike Tyson meant when he said “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”, and that somebody can just be life in general.
And I probably didn’t do myself any favours with a sword and sorcery story a couple of weeks before that. I thought it was an OK story to put out, but I just left it untitled because I couldn’t think of a title for it!
I did martial arts when I was younger, and believe me I can tell you he was right. But yes, it absolutely applies to life in general because as other other people have posted, everything around you doesn’t really care what you want to accomplish. I really hope you get through your book. I would love to read it.
Well, let me know when your essay is done. I will read it. Probably share it too with my small circle of followers. Fortunately for me, they do include some people who have more followers than I do. And if you’re interested, on what I called Stephen‘s Substack, I’ve wrote a short SF story called In Re Voronenov, which hasn’t gotten a lot of Raiders, but did get some of the right ones, at least one of the guys from incense, punk magazine, who really liked it, and that was the audience that I was looking for with this story so that’s what really matters.
That’s so true, I write fiction and I could never imagine myself, writing memoir, other than the stuff I have put on my Substack already has kind of memoir in passing, which is one of the good things about Substack. But I’ve not yet run out of things that are pieces of me because they are based on either things that happened to me or stories. My grandma told me!
I was just told this morning that Thomas Edison was known to take a nap when he was having a creative block. I’m just finishing up the 6 month course with you Brooke, and I plan on taking a month off and hopefully download more inspiration. I loved the course and it was good for me to have the structure and make the commitment to writing. I’ve learned so much! Thank you!
I guess I will be learning about the act of balance of the craft too….when to push forward and when to take a nap.
I agree with all the comments here. Probably some of the most useful remarks on writing memoir that I have come across. And I read endlessly on this topic. And I definitely agree about the comments on writers block. This is a very un-useful residual label that tells us nothing.
Oh Brooke! This was wonderful and reassuring. I’ve written my memoir “The Reluctant Psychoanalyst” and now I need to work on promoting it, which feels even more daunting. Impostor syndrome never goes away. Still, as you say, I am changed from having done the hard work over more years than I care to count. Being part of the SWP community is incredibly supportive.
So true, so true! All of it is grueling. I agree with Anne Patchett, that writing in your mind can cut down your time when you're finally ready to put it on paper. Memoir writing is tough but man does it help in healing. Thanks for sharing your struggles and thoughts.
This landed with me. I'm a novelist, not a memoirist, but I recognized that feeling of sitting in front of the work and wondering why something that matters so much can feel so heavy. What I've learned is that resistance rarely shows up announcing itself. It disguises itself as logic, busyness, timing, fatigue, research, or a hundred other reasonable explanations. Looking back, I can usually see that the work wasn't blocked—it was asking something from me that I wasn't quite ready to give.
I especially appreciated your point about forgiveness. Writers are often far more patient with their characters than they are with themselves. Sometimes getting back to the page begins with letting go of the guilt for having left it.
And yes, stories seem to have very little respect for the timelines we create for them. I've learned that lesson more than once.
Wow. This is such an amazing piece! I feel so SEEN. Yes, years and years. Yes, traumatizing. Yes, resistance and shaking and deep pain. But oh the healing power. Not sure I’d be here apart from my book, which had I known how long and hard it would be to write (and how many versions!) I’d have never started. Thanks, Brooke.
When I first started writing what I decided would be a memoir about my quest to discover the truth about my biological father's life and untimely death, I was living the quest in real time. 6 years into the process, I thought I had finished. I started querying and had beta readers who gave me valuable feedback showing I needed to do more work. The reality was I still needed to process what had transpired during that time. I left the manuscript for 5 years, picked it back up 5 years ago, and now it is finally done. It will be published by a small indie press in March 2027. People kept asking me, "When is it coming out?" I've found that most folks don't have any idea what it takes to write a memoir, and I definitely didn't when I started.
Funny you should mention resistence. I've been on a spiritual path for a very long time. It's why spiritual memoirs are my favorite and Alicia Jo Rabins' memoir is probably my all-time best. I so personally felt her experience, even though I am the Jew who went to the yoga ashram rather than Jerusalem. I've recently come to understand that the word "resistence" is the most spiritual word out there, as it points to nonresistance, the essence of the spiritual path. Why? When we resist, we are resisting what has already happened, we are resisting reality. But reality always wins; we can't chage what has already happened, and that's why when we resist, we suffer. Resistence is the cause of all suffering. I've really been working with this intently, of late. I'm choosing to feel the pain of life and let it take from that part that would resist. When we don't resist, we are doing the hard thing, facing ourselves, facing the tough stuff, we are accepting our process, we are accepting reality, which is the most spritiual thing of all. This doesn't mean we should't hold off on writing our memoir when the time isn't right. For everything there is a season. But it means that writing our memoir, when the time is right, is a profoundly spiritual experience, as we are accepting ourselves.
Mine started with a bad short story written in my early thirties, ten years after I ended the “relationship” with my teacher / predator. Then I spent three or four years in my forties writing and wrestling with a fictionalized version of the story in the form of a novel. It never rang true and ended up in a red folder on a shelf. In 2016, when I was in my late fifties, I began writing it as memoir, dropping into the feelings that accompanied the memories, and learning how much I didn’t know about book structure, and “showing, not telling.” In 2021 I outed my abuser on the front page of a major newspaper when I was sixty-three, in a long piece written by the paper’s crime reporter, which had a big impact on my life, and that of my abuser. I immediately wrote what I thought was the end of the memoir. It wasn’t. I kept trying to market it to agents, some of whom encouraged me to pitch smaller publishers.
It wasn’t until March of 2025, when I attended my 50th high school reunion, and wrote about that experience, that I realized that the memoir was finished. So yes, more than ten years.
Soon after I found She Writes Press. And I exhaled. My pub date is May 2027.
Thanks for sharing this story, Claudia. It takes an extraordinary amount of courage to do what you've already done—and we are so happy to welcome you at SWP. I can't wait to get your book into the world.
With my memoir now 8 years post-pub, I see it as taking 10+ years because I wanted to get it right. It's digging deep and discovering what it was really all about. Getting it right could only come with time - and patience with myself.
So well said.
I loved talking with you and Grant and I’m excited to listen to our conversation. As always, I deeply appreciate the work you do and what you share here, Brooke. ❤️
This podcast episode is so good, Ronit. I can't wait for you to hear it! ❤️ ❤️ Thank you!
These are the words I didn’t know I needed this morning. “Punching yourself in the face” is so accurate. There’s a constant dissonance between the nonstop nagging to get my story written and thinking I’m not supposed to write since I’m not working on it and that must mean I don’t want it bad enough. Thank you.
Thank you for this post. I don’t think I would ever write a memoir, but I do understand how daunting it must be, in particular when it concerns people who were close to you while they were alive or maybe even more significantly are alive still. But I loved the picture you used in the beginning and the saddle metaphor. You will forgive me, but it immediately reminded me of The Walking Dead. There’s that iconic scene from the first season of Rick Grimes on horseback riding into the ruins of a city, sheriff and gunfighter!
I love the association, Stephen!
I found this so reassuring. Thank you. I’m probably 12-13 years in. Normalizing that made me feel less self critical.
I struggle and am stilled not only in memoir writing. But some of what I write about comes from what's going on in my life and that can offer as much resistance even if it's not specifically autobiographical. And sometimes I'm walloped by the unexpected. For my substack tomorrow, I'm writing women and MMA but I'm also writing about my response. I got interested in this after reading Brutalities - A Love Story by Margo Steines. It's wonderful writing - daring, raw, honest.
Walloped by the unexpected sounds about right, Nancy. Substack is a great outlet for stuff like this!
Cool. So if you are or were a woman in MMA, you actually understand what Mike Tyson meant when he said “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”, and that somebody can just be life in general.
I’m not. But I’m working to understand the draw. And yes, life in general.
And I probably didn’t do myself any favours with a sword and sorcery story a couple of weeks before that. I thought it was an OK story to put out, but I just left it untitled because I couldn’t think of a title for it!
So I won't read that one. LOL
I did martial arts when I was younger, and believe me I can tell you he was right. But yes, it absolutely applies to life in general because as other other people have posted, everything around you doesn’t really care what you want to accomplish. I really hope you get through your book. I would love to read it.
And thank you for your interest.
I'm first trying to get through an essay. LOL.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Well, let me know when your essay is done. I will read it. Probably share it too with my small circle of followers. Fortunately for me, they do include some people who have more followers than I do. And if you’re interested, on what I called Stephen‘s Substack, I’ve wrote a short SF story called In Re Voronenov, which hasn’t gotten a lot of Raiders, but did get some of the right ones, at least one of the guys from incense, punk magazine, who really liked it, and that was the audience that I was looking for with this story so that’s what really matters.
I meant readers not Raiders, and the magazine is called Incensepunk. Dictation strikes again.
I'll check it out.
I'm here to say it works a lot like this for fiction too. Just because it isn't "true" doesn't mean it's easy. Those are my guts on the pages.
Absolutely! I believe it. I just can't speak from personal experience, but I appreciate the fiction writers weighing in to claim it all!!!
That’s so true, I write fiction and I could never imagine myself, writing memoir, other than the stuff I have put on my Substack already has kind of memoir in passing, which is one of the good things about Substack. But I’ve not yet run out of things that are pieces of me because they are based on either things that happened to me or stories. My grandma told me!
I was just told this morning that Thomas Edison was known to take a nap when he was having a creative block. I’m just finishing up the 6 month course with you Brooke, and I plan on taking a month off and hopefully download more inspiration. I loved the course and it was good for me to have the structure and make the commitment to writing. I’ve learned so much! Thank you!
I guess I will be learning about the act of balance of the craft too….when to push forward and when to take a nap.
It was a pleasure to have you in class, Paula. Good luck with everything, and I'm glad we'll be in touch here and elsewhere!
I agree with all the comments here. Probably some of the most useful remarks on writing memoir that I have come across. And I read endlessly on this topic. And I definitely agree about the comments on writers block. This is a very un-useful residual label that tells us nothing.
Oh Brooke! This was wonderful and reassuring. I’ve written my memoir “The Reluctant Psychoanalyst” and now I need to work on promoting it, which feels even more daunting. Impostor syndrome never goes away. Still, as you say, I am changed from having done the hard work over more years than I care to count. Being part of the SWP community is incredibly supportive.
With your bio you could get interest right now in a self help category. Have you thought of memoir as a second or even third book?
So happy to hear this, Sylvia. It's way better not to do it alone!
So true, so true! All of it is grueling. I agree with Anne Patchett, that writing in your mind can cut down your time when you're finally ready to put it on paper. Memoir writing is tough but man does it help in healing. Thanks for sharing your struggles and thoughts.
This landed with me. I'm a novelist, not a memoirist, but I recognized that feeling of sitting in front of the work and wondering why something that matters so much can feel so heavy. What I've learned is that resistance rarely shows up announcing itself. It disguises itself as logic, busyness, timing, fatigue, research, or a hundred other reasonable explanations. Looking back, I can usually see that the work wasn't blocked—it was asking something from me that I wasn't quite ready to give.
I especially appreciated your point about forgiveness. Writers are often far more patient with their characters than they are with themselves. Sometimes getting back to the page begins with letting go of the guilt for having left it.
And yes, stories seem to have very little respect for the timelines we create for them. I've learned that lesson more than once.
Such great insights, Adriano. Agreed about resistance showing up in disguise. This mirrors some of what's in The War of Art, too. Helpful!
Wow. This is such an amazing piece! I feel so SEEN. Yes, years and years. Yes, traumatizing. Yes, resistance and shaking and deep pain. But oh the healing power. Not sure I’d be here apart from my book, which had I known how long and hard it would be to write (and how many versions!) I’d have never started. Thanks, Brooke.
I can see that. I suppose it's good we don't know what we don't know!! :) So glad you're moving forward with SWP, Heather.
When I first started writing what I decided would be a memoir about my quest to discover the truth about my biological father's life and untimely death, I was living the quest in real time. 6 years into the process, I thought I had finished. I started querying and had beta readers who gave me valuable feedback showing I needed to do more work. The reality was I still needed to process what had transpired during that time. I left the manuscript for 5 years, picked it back up 5 years ago, and now it is finally done. It will be published by a small indie press in March 2027. People kept asking me, "When is it coming out?" I've found that most folks don't have any idea what it takes to write a memoir, and I definitely didn't when I started.
Congratulations, Doreen. This is a great story and a great outcome. ❤️
Thank you Brooke!
Funny you should mention resistence. I've been on a spiritual path for a very long time. It's why spiritual memoirs are my favorite and Alicia Jo Rabins' memoir is probably my all-time best. I so personally felt her experience, even though I am the Jew who went to the yoga ashram rather than Jerusalem. I've recently come to understand that the word "resistence" is the most spiritual word out there, as it points to nonresistance, the essence of the spiritual path. Why? When we resist, we are resisting what has already happened, we are resisting reality. But reality always wins; we can't chage what has already happened, and that's why when we resist, we suffer. Resistence is the cause of all suffering. I've really been working with this intently, of late. I'm choosing to feel the pain of life and let it take from that part that would resist. When we don't resist, we are doing the hard thing, facing ourselves, facing the tough stuff, we are accepting our process, we are accepting reality, which is the most spritiual thing of all. This doesn't mean we should't hold off on writing our memoir when the time isn't right. For everything there is a season. But it means that writing our memoir, when the time is right, is a profoundly spiritual experience, as we are accepting ourselves.