| p>Vignettes, scenes, and dialogues are at the | | | | at this stage. Write more vignettes, scenes, or |
| core of any memoir. Here are some ideas for | | | | dialogue as they occur to you. |
| writing them more quickly and elegantly. | | | | 3. When it feels appropriate, go through your |
| 1. Don't stop to figure out how these snippets | | | | individual stories and create an order for them as |
| may eventually fit together into a story. These | | | | seems best. As you re-read them, note where |
| bits and pieces will accumulate as you recall more | | | | you need to fill in gaps in your emerging memoir |
| and more and continue to write them down. | | | | or make transitions ("...and because Uncle Boris |
| Giving yourself permission to write in small, | | | | came to America, my mother was able to..."). |
| separate segments (vignettes, scenes, dialogues, | | | | These transitions will connect the separate |
| etc.) is a great way to start writing. Because | | | | components to each other. What were disparate |
| there will always be your memory list of things to | | | | vignettes, scenes, and jottings at first (and |
| write about, you will never experience "writer's | | | | perhaps for a long time even as you continued to |
| block!" Fitting these pieces together to craft a | | | | write) will add up to readable, informative stories |
| polished story will come later, in the rewriting | | | | when you add fillers and transitions. (Eventually |
| stage. Right now, it's important to get text-any | | | | many of these stories will take their places in the |
| text-down on paper. | | | | chapters of your memoir.) |
| 2. If you start by writing on paper, here is a | | | | 4. After you have many pages of text, the time |
| suggestion to make this early stage easier: write | | | | will come for you to decide that this is better |
| on the backs of scrap paper cut into half | | | | than that, to expand on this piece that now |
| sheets--this will help free you from any obligation | | | | seems too short or to make more concise what |
| you may feel to fill whole blank pages! Feeling | | | | had once already seemed economical prose. This |
| obligated to write can quickly make a drudgery of | | | | is editorial work, and it has its proper place in |
| what ought to be pleasurable. | | | | lifewriting-but you are not yet at that stage of |
| Put these half pages of vignettes, scenes, and | | | | writing! Right now, you are priming the pump with |
| dialogue in any order that makes sense to you at | | | | first drafts. Let first drafts be first drafts. |
| the moment. Don't belabor making sense of things | | | | Good luck writing your memoirs. |