Write to the End: Complete Your Book Manuscript
A Suggestion on How to Complete Your Book Manuscript
May I present a surprise blocking solution to complete your book manuscript: don’t write just now.
Learn how to continue writing to the end.
Here is an example of what I mean: one summer when I was serious about gardening, I went away on a late June trip. It was a fun vacation with my family, but the trip fell at a time when the garden seriously needed daily weeding, hoeing, and watering. As you can imagine, when I returned home, I found my garden overrun with weeds. The vegetables that I had so carefully planted were just about choked out, so I was, to say the least, challenged seeing the overgrown mess of weeds.
Rather than tackle the job immediately, however, which would certainly have been reasonable, I made a counter-intuitive decision: I spent time across several days just sitting on the edge of the garden, envisioning how I wanted the various parts to look once my work of cleaning up was done, imagining the lovely vegetables I would have.
Action will come.
After three days of on-again, off-again scrutinizing and visualizing, my time for action had come.
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5 Memory Recall Tips
Memory recall, or recalling the details of our life stories, can be a challenge. Devising a Memory List (pg. 41 of Turning Memories Into Memoirs) is the first best thing you can do, but if you want additional ideas, here are five memory recall tips for remembering more than you might have thought possible. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Journal Writing for the Memoir Writer
Journal Writing for the Memoir Writer
Journal writing is an effective practice for the memoir writer. It is a spontaneous and generally free-flowing activity and so can be very helpful to you in loosening up both your thinking and your writing type (the two usually go together). Your journal is an opportunity to bypass the familiar rules that govern much of the other forms of writing—especially the essay form. In the journal, whatever you write and however you write is ok. You don’t have to worry about form. For many writers—especially for new writers who are still caught in “the way it’s supposed to be written,” this is a great freedom! [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]