Whenever life becomes too hard, I beat a cinematic escape. A few weeks ago: The Dark Knight. Knowing what helps you refocus and recharge can renew your commitment to life’s extraordinary demands.

What does the latest Batman movie have to do with writing memoir? As a child, I immersed myself in the worlds of certain characters and took on their traits. Now such escape offers a different level of perspective.

Toward the film’s end, the questions arise: Should Batman be the hero Gotham City deserves? Or should he be the hero the city needs?

Why not both? Back to my memoir, I need to be both the hero it deserves (doing it well), and the hero it needs (getting it done). I now write for three publications regularly, and delivering publication-worthy content has finally got my writing to the level my memoir needs. I’ve found my uber-standout voice. Now the heroic task is to express that voice on every edited page of my memoir.

Confess I’m a Wonder Woman fan, even at a comics shop, and I feel the need to justify. “I’m a capital-F fan, but you need to understand she’s really, really cool.” But why bother? Why not simply embrace what works for me and gives me pleasure along the way?

George Perez draws Wonder Woman

In 1987, I was 11 and Wonder Woman was relaunched under George Perez’s artistic magic. The relaunch meant I could collect the series from issue one, something I’d never done before. Perez drew heavily from Greek mythology and created characters I still remember better than many childhood friends.

Diana (Wonder Woman) was on a mission: to stop a god gone mad (and later to represent Amazon ideals in man’s world). Then, I was on a mission: escape the abuse of the Northern Territory and return to my faithfully loving Melbourne family. Now, I’m on another mission: tell the story of that escape and the return in my memoir.

A ridiculously simple tool I’ve created to aid my progress forward is the Mission Log. From my sluggish waking moments to my hyped retiring moments, I record the time, and my purpose right now. When completed, I record what I did well and learned lessons.

My first awaress of being on a mission came from Wonder Woman, but now I’m mission-focussed each day. The Log keeps my mind on goals and makes me question how I use my time.

AKA ‘Big boys don’t cry’ or ‘Real men pull themselves up by their bootstraps’. Real men don’t make excuses for why they fail to keep their commitments, to themselves and others, but they are honest about dealing with the reasons that keep them from being Supermen.

I’ve never had a tooth pulled. Never, that is, until last Wednesday, when I surrendered my bottom-right Wisdom tooth, and the molar in front of it, to the dental student who relished in his God-like role above me.

Stumbled into the wall on the way out and figured that after a few hours, when the numbness wore off, I’d be able to knuckle down to work. I’d handled getting my teeth removed like a real man.

But the numbness masked pain – as much pain as had made me want to get the teeth removed. The following week became a blur of eating choc-hazelnut sandwiches at odd hours so the the painkillers weren’t digested on an empty stomach, and a semi-conscious fog as I slept in the four pain-free hours before the painkillers wore off. Work got pushed to one side and I couldn’t concentrate on what people were saying.

Today, I awaken from the painkiller blur into a different world. My brother broke his back in three places. Another family member verges on psychosis. Someone else in the family is trying to get me to give up on him – like everyone else.

The week I’ve had dealing with my pain has taught me how to handle its highs and lows. Now, still in pain, I’m called to reach out to help others in their pain.

What is the difference between excuses and reasons? Excuses are lies you tell yourself to get yourself off the hook. Reasons are the admission that after trying all the options you could in the time you had, you still didn’t succeed.

Right now, I may not meet all my work commitments. I may make mistakes in my personal relationships. But I’m not Superman. And I’m a better man for it.

Sometimes I wonder whether what I write here really, really sucks. Other times I think it’s OK, and maybe, just maybe, I can do this writing thing. Often I forget that although I tap the keys alone, writing is never a solitary act (unless you’re blogging, but that’s another story, which Kevin Alexander covered in his column in the June Writer’s Digest). It’s a team effort; the most important person after the writer, the editor.

Today I had a personal essay (freshen up on your life writing defintions here) published on why I choose to be a fundamentalist Christian – despite my sexuality. You can read the article here. I hope it gets picked up by some print publications because it affects so many  people and my editor and I worked hard to polish the piece.

First draft scored a 10 out of 10 on the lameness meter. I thought it was OK, but my editor shuttled it back with the advice it failed to answer the big questions I’d posed. The straight journalism style – interviews and third person – had the impact of being whipped by a feather.

When redrafted, I had one of those this-may-be-moving-in-the-right-direction-but-maybe-not moments, and sent it unpolished to the editor so he could point the way.

He obliged, and I rewrote it almost from scratch for a third time. That’s the piece which you’ve read if you clicked earlier, or can read if you click here.

A good editor is a blessing to find. In a world where many see themselves as time-poor, the past few months with an editor committed to the craft rather than time management have helped me reawaken my old writing skills.

Due to changes within the company (acquisition of a local print publication), I won’t be working with him once I finish the series of articles he’s already commissioned. I only hope the editor I get to work with on my memoir is as skilled as this editor has been.

As a writing coach, one of the top concerns people bring to me is the lack of time to write. Although I’ve always been able to help people, it wasn’t until I started revising my memoir that I’ve come to appreciate how tough it can be to find the time for my most important work.

So these are my top tips to write the most in whatever time you can carve out for yourself:

• Banish the belief that you need big chunks of time to get anything worthwhile done. A few minutes here and there throughout the day will add up to the big chunks you’re after.
• Do something every day – bar one. Take at least one day off from your customary work each week. You’ll gain freshness and many of your writing dramas will solve themselves.
• Think through your day to foresee pockets of time you can use, and make sure you have your notepad, laptop, and any files you need. You can get a lot done in your commute. On public transport you can work in a notepad. In a car, dictate into a digital voice recorder.
• For speed’s sake, invest in dictation software. It takes a while to train it, but when it’s up to speed, your speed is up.

Another aspect needed is motivation, which comes from setting mini-milestones on a big project and achieving them. This, however, is another blog for another time.

Over the past couple months, I’ve read dozens of memoirs. Those that stand out do so for their own unique reasons. Those that fail, do so for similar reasons: they have the structural soundness of a house built on a sand. Filled with memories retold because they’re remembered, not because they have any dramatic function, the book ends up scattered and unfocused. But how can a writer decide what fits – and what needs to be cut?

Since July 1, I’ve been using Dramatica Pro to help answer that question with my memoir. While it’s software aimed at fiction writers, memoirists can find it helpful because creative nonfiction uses many of the techniques of fiction. Notably, it gets the writer to develop a narrative structure, and emphasize the aspects of characters in relation to their dramatic function.

This means that those fondly remembered but out of place anecdotes and characters get cut. Other areas that needed to be fleshed out are developed. Whole characters disappear because they serve no purpose. In short, it helps life make sense.

And what you’re left with is a clear guide to the story you plan to tell. When it comes to the revision – adding and deleting scenes and characters – this clarity allows a writer to move forward with speed and boldness. Readers may not notice the underlying structure, but they’ll enjoy reading a stronger story. One that’s foundations are built on rock.

P.S. So I can put more time into the memoir, and less time blogging about it, I plan to update my blog weekly until further notice.

It’s 1.11am on Tuesday, July 1: Today I promised myself I’d stop reading creative non-fiction and sit down and start to work. I’ve also promised myself that I will deliver one chapter a week to people who have agreed to read this latest draft of my memoir.

Picked up some manilla folders I wanted for the editing, but now I’m set to go.

I think this is possibly the lamest entry I’ve rewritten, but I couldn’t get to sleep, it’s late, and I’m itching to get to work. Next time I promise to be more intelligent.

Whether we want to sell a million copies, or write the best book on our topic the world has seen, our desire to get it just right can bring us to a halt.

In the April issue of The Writer, Allen Marple says: “Posterity has a way of making up its own mind, and besides, it is hard enough to write anything without having to write a masterpiece.”

A goal to write our best should be the aim of every writer, but at some point you need to press print, write a cover letter, stick the piece in an envelope and mail it out. A time comes when your baby must be shared with those you hope will care for it: agents, editors, and readers.

Any writer knows you can tinker with a piece of writing – no matter how big or small – ad infinitum. How do we avoid this trap? Set a due date, as I spoke about here, or on a big project a series of them.

Fourteen years of magazine due dates means I’ve learned to make a piece of writing as good as I can get it – in the time available – and then let it go. Until now, this logic hasn’t applied to my memoir. The case I’ve made to myself: “I’ll only send it out when it’s as good as it can be”. The reality: I’m afraid of the the fallout.

But that’s another article, for another time.

Most of the creative nonfiction I’ve been reading lately has been borrowed from the library. Another plus, besides being a cheap way of reading a heap of books, is the recommendations the librarians – and the other people in the checkout queue – give.

Over the past couple of months I’ve been on a quest through lists of creative nonfiction, especially memoirs, lists that have come from the back of writing instruction books I’ve enjoyed. My first reason for borrowing books from the library was the cost, but as I’ve gone along, I’ve discovered that two of the books I’ve most enjoyed got a plug from people at the library.

The first of these was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, which inspired a series of articles, starting here. Another book that people were thrilled to see I’d borrowed was Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure.

Some of the books I’ve read have been dreadful. Many have been okay. But both the books that received rave reviews from the library have been excellent. So when in doubt about what to read, ask a librarian – or other punters.

How long does it take to finish a writing project?

Whether you’re a writer or the last time you wrote was for school, you may be familiar with the following scenario:

You’re given three weeks to complete a writing assignment. When do you start it? The night before it’s due. Do you win a passing grade? Quite probably.

So how long did it take? All up, less than 12 hours. Would it have affected the quality of your work if the teacher had only given you two days to do it? Not at all.

Someone said, “Work expands to fill the time available.”

Now to connect this to memoir writing, work on a memoir with only a vague sense of the finish line – when it’s perfect – means that the work expands to fill the indefinite time. No matter how many improvements are made, you can always see more that could be done. New techniques to try, which end up with revisions to the book from start to finish.

An insight I gained recently was to treat book chapters as articles, rather than daunting 100,000 word behemoths. I’ve set a deadline to quit reading other people’s memoirs and creative nonfiction (30 June), and start the physical task of editing my manuscript. Once I begin that task, I give myself a deadline of completing one chapter a week.

And if I cram, I just may get it done.

A few weeks ago, I shared how to learn from bad writing. Sara Wheeler managed to fill a book on Chile that left me, as a reader, with less knowledge about the country than I had before I started. In contrast to her primary level education, Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, gives a tertiary education.

Wheeler’s main fault was a lack of curiosity – in a journalist, deadly. Chatwin makes up for her lack as he tracks down detailed answers to every question he comes across. His book is an adventure, a quest, questions spiral out from a piece of skin his grandmother had in her dining-room – skin of a brontosaurus.

Chapter 33 opens with “Who were Wilson and Evans?”, and then Chatwin searches out answers until he, and the reader, are satisfied. Curiosity kills the cat, but it vivifies memoirs.

Uncertain of where to begin, many would-be memoirists don’t start at all.

Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia gives an example of the perfect point:

In my grandmother’s dining-room there was a glass-fronted cabinet and in the cabinet a piece of skin. It was a small piece only, but thick and leathery, with strands of coarse, reddish hair…
“What’s that?’
“A piece of brontosaurus.”

It’s this piece of skin, seen as a child, that sparks his interest in Patagonia and sends him there years later to find answers to questions that spiral outward from the riddle of the brontosaurus.

Chatwin’s chronological start is only one technique in a writer’s repertoire. Given Patti Miller’s definition of memoir, we can come up with other places to start: theme (such as Nigel Slater’s Toast, burning toast as a symbol of a mother’s love), place (such as Sarah Turnbull’s Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris, landing in Paris, the result of an impulsive decision), or topic (such as Kieran Kelly does in the forthcoming Aspiring, as he starts an ascent of New Zealand’s Mt Aspiring).

For my memoir, working title Coming Home, the opening scene will provide a litany of the reasons the six-year-old me hates my stepmother after only a few months of knowing her (actually it only took hours, but you’ll have to read it to see what I mean).

We all have to start somewhere and where we start usually needs to connect to where we finish, but that’s a subject for another article, another time.

My post the other day that mentioned JT LeRoy has been popular, so I’m posting something juicier for the all the LeRoy fans in the house.

It’s an article I wrote for a Sydney, Australia paper on my interactions with LeRoy. Here it is, enjoy: Knowing JT LeRoy.

For the others who have been reading this blog, it’s a memoir in action. And if anyone wants to find out about republishing the article, my email is wryterman@gmail.com.

Some of these memoirs I’m reading to master my craft make me retch and vomit as their covers tell me how to respond.

Clive James’s Unreliable Memoirs blurb states “Do not read this book in public. You will risk severe internal injuries from trying to suppress your laughter.”

Well, I read it, and mostly in public, on the tram. I neither guffawed or even chortled. The humor was banal and predictable.

I may have been predisposed against James. At the Adelaide Writers’ Week this year, one of the emcee’s shared how James had launched a book he hadn’t even read; all he did was give it a casual flick through before he went on the stage. He then proceeded to give great insight into… himself.

Now I have a big as ego as the next writer, but this was unprofessionalism displayed in public exhibition and would have robbed the poor writer whose book was being launched from the pleasure of such a big name.

There was one moment which lifted this book out of its mundane lot; a theme that has been mentioned a few times in this blog and will be mentioned many more times before 30 June: the Proustian Phenomenon.

When he mentions Proust, for a moment James channels the great writer, and for the first and only time in his book creates some evocative prose.

Of course, I may not be so hardlined against this book if only the cover hadn’t told me how snot-ejecting funny it would be.

STOP THE PRESS: As I finished this post, I had the displeasure to discover there’s a sequel: Falling Towards England – Unreliable Memoirs II. One can only hope somewhere between the first and the second, James found his promised sense of humor.

If, before you sit down to write a memoir, you read as many as you can get your hands on, you’ll find they fall into three categories: those so excellent, you uncover new techniques; those so bad, you have a clear picture of what to avoid; and, those just above the level you’re at now, that give you a taste of your finished product.

For me, that book is Jill Ker Conway’s The Road from Coorain. The similarities between her book and the draft I already have, and my planned revisions, startled and encouraged me.

In some ways our books are very different. Hers is about leaving an Australian farm and finding her place in the world as a woman intellectual. Mine is about escaping the clutches of the abusive people in my life in various towns through the Northern Territory, and finding my place in the world as someone in control of my own destiny.

Conway’s prose uses strong verbs, and her writing style is similar to mine. Her book was an international success. She starts with an evocation of the setting, and finishes at an airport, flying off into the unknown; the start and finish points of my memoir.

Find such a book for your own writing. It will encourage you in a stronger way than words from other people, even other writers. No one walks paths that haven’t been trodden before.

A writer makes some kind of promise to each reader at the start of a book. Trust abused is the fastest way for a writer to find obscurity (or notoriety – think James Frey, Helen Demidenko, JT LeRoy, Stephen Glass). Trust lost is almost impossible for a writer to restore. (UPDATE 30 May 2008: People seemed interested in LeRoy, so I’ve written more about him here.)

When I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (discussed earlier here), I worried Pirsig lacked the skill to bring me back from the place he was taking me. I mean that I have bipolar disorder, and the depth of thinking he applied, and the expansiveness of his ideas, brought out in me deep thought and expanded thinking. Thinking thoughts no one else does and expanding thinking are early signals of a manic episode. The only reason I continued with the book was because I’d heard over and over it was a classic.

Because of these recommendations, I trusted Pirsig to return me to normal; thinking stretched, but not snapped. And he did.

For writers, we need to consider what promise we make to readers at the start of our memoir. Can we deliver on that promise? To fail is to decimate trust.

Philosophy underlies writing, as it does any thought-based activity. Last weekend, I secluded myself in a friend’s house and immersed myself in creative non-fiction and evocative writing, and delighted myself in a book that expanded my thinking: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values.

What starts off as a memoir of a trip through US backroads, changes tack and delivers a challenge to the basis of rationality. Along the way, it provides a framework, whether in a scientific or artistic endeavour, for creating quality. In another entry, I will go into other reasons this book had such an impact on me, but for now I want to focus on this framework.

Curled up in front of a fire on an autumn night, Zen lays out a way of viewing the underlying form of things. Given yesterday’s discourse on my procrastination on my memoir, Pirsig combined with Proust will help me succeed: Think like Proust while I write; think like Pirsig while I edit.

I see now that attempting to explain this in one blog entry, or even the several I intend won’t do Zen justice. If you’re like me, it may have been one of those books on your I-must-get-around-to-reading list. If this is the case, make it the next book you read.

And if you didn’t know of it before now, consider yourself fortunate to be aware of it.

One way you can know your work is ready for print, writing instructors advise, is when you can read another writer’s work and see ways to improve. I experienced this the other day (which I wrote about here). But this writing advice is insufficient.

Over the years, publishers and authors have told me my book is ready to publish; composers and authors have thrust their agents upon me. My memoir, however, has always fallen short of my target. The reason I’ve lagged my feet all these years (which I wrote about here) is because I lacked clarity about the end result.

My best friend, Paul, gave me the picture of the completed work I needed when he introduced me to Proust’s ideas, that my work, rather than being analytical, needed to be evocative.

Life writing instructor Patti Miller expands on this in The Memoir Book:

I believe it is important to write not from topics, but from individual memory. Memories are aroused and connect to one another not by orderly logical progression but, as we have seen, by a complex linking of senses and emotions across the brain…

What it means is that you only need one sensory aspect of the memory to be activated for all the rest to come flooding back. Some researchers call this the “Proustian phenomenon”. It is the key to the memory-based approach to writing memoir rather than the topic-based approach.

And just to make sure I got the message, as if my best friend and my writing instructor weren’t clear enough, God delivered me a copy of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past via my ex’s hands.

I’m excited because this Proustian phenomenom may enable me to write my memoir on my terms.

Clarity is the foundation of success in any project. If you don’t know what you’re setting out to do, how do you judge whether you achieved your aim.

Life writing instructor, Patti Miller in The Memoir Book gives the following definitions of the different forms of life writing (which she defines as “non-fiction writing on subjects of personal experience and observation; it includes autobiography, biography, memoir, memoirs, personal essay, and travel and sojourn writing”:

• Autobiography: “an account of a whole life – from one’s origins to the present.”
• Biography: “seems clearly enough an account of someone else’s life, although it too can spread out at its edges to include elements of memoir.”
• Memoir: “an aspect of a life shaped by any number of parameters, including time, place, topic, or theme.”
• Memoirs: “about an aspect of a life… but memoirs have come to mean the reminiscences of the famous in relation to their public achievements.”
• Personal essay: “closely related to memoir in that it often includes the writer’s personal memories, but it is quite distinct in that memories are not included for their own sake, but at the service of an idea.”

Miller goes on to say that the skills used to write memoirs can be applied to any of these forms of creative nonfiction.

Sentences can be long. My entire professional writing life has been built on the belief short sentences are best. But as I immerse myself in all manner of creative non-fiction and evocative writing, I discover long can be more effective.

In another post I will explore how to know when to write long sentences, but now consider this beauty from Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail:

We spent a wretched night in our bunks, faintly lit by the dancing glow of the stove, which the timid man (unable or reluctant to sleep with the restless mass of Katz bowing the slats just above his head) diligently kept stoked, and wrapped in a breathy, communal symphony of night-time noises – sighs, weary exhalations, dredging snores, a steady dying moan from the man who had eaten the Philly cheese steak sandwich, the monotone hiss of the stove, like the soundtrack of an old movie – and woke, stiff and unrested, to a gloomy dawn of falling snow and the dispiriting prospect of a long, long day with nothing to do but hang out at the camp store or lie on a bunkbed reading old Reader’s Digests which filled a small shelf by the door.

One-hundred and forty magnificent words (my paragraphs average 50), and not one word wasted. No longer will I slice my sentences just because I feel a sentence is too long.

When I started Sara Wheeler’s Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile, I thought, “This is encouraging. The draft I have is on par with this.” I soon stood corrected; if anyone asked me to given them a definition of “bland,” I’d hand them a copy of this book.

A quote from the book says, “[Chilean poet] Neruda was committed to the idea that a writer should be interested in truth, and that it was more important than style.” Wheeler fails in a search for truth and her writing has as much style as discarded garden cuttings.

She lacks curiosity. Throughout the book she throws out these fascinating single sentences – “The vehicle smelt of turpentine (this turned out to be a woman behind us eating mangoes)” – and then fails to investigate them at all. Is it the woman that smells of turpentine, or the mangoes, or the act of the woman eating the mangoes? She’s aroused our interest; it’s not enough to simply say, as she does repeatedly, “I never did find out what happened.”

The best thing that came from the book was I learned that if I was to die today, my best friend, Paul, could tidy up my manuscript and the executor of my estate could see it published. It’s not at the standard I seek yet – but if I was no longer around to raise it to that level, it would be published and find whatever audience it can.

A bad book can be just as instructive, and as encouraging, as a great work. Having a picture of the things you don’t want to do allows you to focus on their opposite and work on the things you do want to do.

My best friend, Paul, challenged me to drop the distractions and finish my memoir. He’s seen me throw up excuse year after year – business ideas, community projects, and an assortment of incomplete writing projects – that demand time, energy, and money that deserves to be focused on one thing: finishing what I started 14 years ago.

Life writing instructor, Patti Miller, in The Memoir Book, looks at several reasons why budding memoirists struggle to finish their projects:

• Would anyone want to read what I’m writing about? Is it worth putting all this time and effort into it?
• What right do I have to present the less favourable side of others?
• Where do I start?
• How do I end the “one day I’ll do it” quandry?
• How do I restart when the project stalls?

Miller’s answers are to sidestep the problems or stare them down.

For me, I believe I’ve been called to tell my story and it’s my duty to carry this through to completion. Every opportunity or invitation that comes my way now gets evaluated against this question: Does it lead me closer to completing my memoir or further away?

On August 19, 1990, I believed Jesus was Lord, repented of my sins, and was baptised. But what drove my life in those teenage years was not a heart for Jesus.

Not to say I wasn’t a self-righteous Christian. I talked the talk and I suffered for it. Going to a mostly Muslim public high school I received daily heckling and taunts.

Everyone knew me as the Christian.

But for me, being a Christian was about following a book of rules. The more successful you become in life is a result of the number of laws you master. This robbed me of an emotional connection to God.

When I prayed, it was like I was talking to myself.

It’s only on reflection now, nearly 18 years later, I see that what drove me to belong to the church, to turn to God was not to do the right thing by Him, but because I wanted to be accepted. Social acceptance.

At. Any. Cost.

In The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren promises to:

show you how to live a purpose-driven life – a life guided, controlled, and directed by God’s purposes. Nothing matters more than knowing God’s purposes for your life, and nothing can compensate for not knowing them – not success, wealth, fame, or pleasure. (p.30)

Since beginning to align myself with God’s purpose through this study, I’ve seen how easy it is to go from a self-centred life to a God-centred one.

And that’s worth more than anything else.

One thing I need to be wary of in my memoir is assuming that the idiosyncrasies of the world I grew up in were the same as other people’s.

At seven, I was forced to move to the Northern Territory, Australia – a world far removed from the southern state I’d come from, not only in distance, but also in environment. Not only was the soil a different colour, the flora strange, and the fauna downright dangerous, people did things in an altogether different way.

While it’s easy for me to describe the different way things were done by others, it’s harder to apply a critical eye to myself and my ways. How arrogant would it be to assume my ways are familiar to readers?

Sandy Blackburn-Wright in Holding Up the Sky describes how women in South Africa don’t ride horses, and contrasts it with the nugget that in Australia, men ride less than women.

This contrast allows us to see the strangeness of another culture regardless of where we’re from.

Ever felt like you didn’t matter? Like no one cares and life’s not worth living?

Even if you’ve never reached that low, feeling like you don’t matter can lead to a string of poor decisions.

Unprotected sex leading to STDs or abortion. Settling in an abusive relationship. Frittering away your time and money because you feel powerless to make a difference, anyway.

One of the women in my family feels like she doesn’t matter. Her parents’ relationship was already on the rocks when she was conceived. She feels like she was the result of primal urges rather than love.

But God cares. More:

I am your Creator. You were in my care even before you were born. (Isaiah 44:2 [CEV])

I think I’ll be photocopying today’s devotional from The Purpose Driven Life and sending it to her. I hope she becomes to believe at her deepest level: She was not an accident.

We all matter to God.