Stanza to Paragraph
A Poet’s Notes on Memoir Craft and Process
Lesson Learned Through Failure: Each Draft Requires Its Own Intentions
I am at a point in my practice of poetry where I am no longer super conscious about how approach successive drafts of a poem.
The First Draft Was Fun. Successive Drafts—SO MUCH Less Fun.
It took me about eight months to make progress on the second draft.
How do you tell the truth, narratively speaking?
An obligation to truth-telling is a defining feature of memoir, but knowing how to depict the truth can be more complicated than it sounds.
Stanza to Paragraph: Craft Notes for Poets Who Are Memoir-Curious
Expanding my practice to memoir-writing has meant years of learning the conventions of the genre.
About the Notes
As a longtime teacher of creative writing and a writer working in other genres, I had some general ideas about the craft involved in writing creative nonfiction. But writing a memoir has upended my ideas about what I thought I knew. I’ve begun to write notes and micro-essays as a way to process what I am learning and how it is shaping my writing and teaching. Are there questions or comments you have about memoir craft–especially questions about where the practices of poetry and memoir writing might intersect and diverge? Get in touch. I’m interested in deepening the conversation by bringing in other voices.
