We have been ringing bells all week at NAMW celebrating the fabulous response to our Telesummit last week! People from all over the world signed up to join us or have access to the amazing conference that featured Dinty W. Moore, Jennifer Lauck, Robin Hemley, Elisabeth Eaves, Anna Mitchael, Nicole Johns, and Penny Sansevieri. I captured a few ideas and quotes about the day to share with you. Remember, you can still sign up for the Telesummit and receive the audio downloads.
Dinty: When you sit down, you have to commit to your project—fiction or nonfiction from the beginning, and then focus on that goal. You can’t commit to telling the truth 30% or 60%. You need to commit all the way to writing nonfiction, and in so doing you will discover many things about yourself.
There are many kinds of truth to be found in both fiction and nonfiction—you arrive at a different understanding in one genre or the other.
Jennifer: Through writing we reach others and connect more deeply with ourselves.
Magic happens when we commit 100% to our writing.
When we begin, we need permission to write badly, to report, to record. Then keep working with the material, our writing and use craft to see what fits and what needs to be changed.
Robin: When I wrote Nola, I reoccupied a world that was lost-it’s like being in a time machine.
Write your stories first, worry about genre later.
In the Young Memoirists panel, we talked about how writing a memoir opens up worlds that people wouldn’t otherwise know—such a rehab and stripping. About audience: Sometimes you’re surprised by who likes your book and who doesn’t.
Writing what you need to is important without worrying. You need to write the truth and share your authentic experience.
The purpose is to connect people.
Penny talked about the importance of learning about blogging. Connecting with others through micro-blogging—Twitter—allows us in brief, bite-sized ways to start conversations with people we don’t know and share with them our interests. We can create networks of genuine connection on the internet.
The audio downloads are a great way to learn while driving, jogging or gardening from some of the best authors and teachers available for memoir writers. Take advantage of these last few days to have the downloads for yourself!
If you are looking for some other great telesummit audios, check out Writing to Save Your Life–56 pages and three audio download from experts about writing as healing–Dr. James Pennebaker and others.
Get out your journals and your laptop and get ready to be inspired!
~LInda Joy, NAMW President
Dear Linda, I listened with great interest and was so very impressed with your thorough understanding of this genre and ability to conduct interviews. I’ve read dozens of memoir writing books and about a thousand memoirs. I marvel at the genre and how it has moved, touched and motivated me to grow from adversity and not to fear creative expression. I’ve taken about a dozen or more writing workshops and attended conferences on and off over the years and the one that you aired the other day is on a par with the best. Imagine just turning on the computer, clicking a few buttons and finding all laid out in several comprehensive hours what I guess I’ve spent a few decades gathering up and pulling together. I have had serious interruptions completing what seems to be my memoir trilogy since I turned around and suddenly discovered that becoming my elderly father’s caregiver had just eaten up several years of writing time and energy but it may have given me something more important such as a renewed sense of the meaning of time, energy and love. Now to capture this in my work. Good writing to everyone and thank you for being such a compassionate leader.
Thank you Geraldine for your enthusiastic response to our Telesummit! Yes, we are very lucky to have had the guests we did –and I could feel the inspired energy they were giving all you on the line throught the phone! It was wonderful indeed. I hope you can find more time to write–it does ask of us our dedication, but it is SO worth it. Please join us for more events! And let me know if I can help you with other resources.
–Linda Joy