Three steps that will empower you to write your own damned memoir

1. Write as often as you can -- BECAUSE YOU WILL FORGET THE DETAILS -- and all you are doing right now is documenting.

Even when you don't feel like it. Even when you're in a terrible mood. Even when you are in pain. Even when you hate everyone and everything. Even when you have to beg a friend to be the recipient of your random, disassociated thoughts just so you can have the feeling that someone is reading what you are writing.

(I wrote a group of friends for years when I was a stream-of-consciousness rambling feral party monster. Is it painful to read back on some of this? Hell yeah. Would I have been totally unable to write large swaths of my memoir if I didn't have the hundreds of pages of material generated within that time? Absolutely.)

Some people have difficulty writing without constant or incremental feedback. I'm definitely one of those people. Hence, having a group of three or four friends who can hold you accountable and shoot you emails like, "Hey, any writing today?" or even little notes like, "This was wild! How did it make you feel?" will increase your productivity a million-fold.

If it's too difficult to write (sometimes life is so chaotic when you are wanting to document a certain period), test out speech-to-text software like Dragon so you can literally just speak what is happening to you. Don't want to see the words being translated as you speak them? Then try just leaving yourself voice memos. I combed through even cassette tapes and diaries from my the '80s that provided details I otherwise would have lost.

And here's a great exercise when you simply don't know what to write -- because again, YOU WILL FORGET IT ALL -- just document what surrounds you right now. Your work space. Your home. The coffeeshop where you are writing. Even if it's the most boring thing in the world, you are creating a historical record of a period you'll never be able to recreate again. I stumbled upon a two-page documentation of every single little detail in my work office when I was in Chicago in 2002 and reading all of the notes I had on the wall, the books on my desk brought me back like a time travel machine. It was an intense sensory memory experience. Doing free writing or "morning pages" is great for this, and if you prefer electronic versus tactile methods of scrawling on paper, check out a website like 750words.com which acts as a completely secure electronic portal to hold your diary/morning-pages.

And the most important note about this kind of writing: It doesn't have to be well-written. So many people expect that when they write, the first draft is going to be somehow close to the final book. It's not. Don't put that kind of pressure on yourself. Think of it the way that a reporter does when he or she is covering a story. They are making notes, getting information, talking to friends, recording interviews and not expecting that data to be the final story. That comes later. Right now you are just gathering a bunch of raw and dirty data. Don't worry though because there is a way to sift through all that raw data before you write. It's a software program that is my second step and recommendation. It helps you organize and chunk so that you don't feel like you have to tackle your life story in one dumb Word document.

2. Buy yourself a copy of Scrivener. It's $45 and worth it.

If you're at all like me, the process of doing a long-term project is a daunting, paralyzing, fairly overwhelming prospect. I randomly heard some feature in the New York Times years ago (via listening to Audible because I almost never read the newspaper otherwise, and it's a great way to keep up) all about how some writers were starting to dig Scrivener. I'm someone who loves to throw money at stuff versus doing stuff (need to get healthy? how bought buying some overpriced vitamins I can't afford because it feels like I'm doing something), and so that was partially my impetus here.

When I got my book deal, though, I decided to actually try it out. At first, it reminded me a little bit of when I first got on Twitter, and everything seemed so foreign. That's where watching a couple of free YouTube tutorials comes in. The more I used it, the more I loved it. The reason why it's perfect for writing a memoir is that you don't need to just have one document that is your final perfect book that you are working on. Nope. You can use the tab for "research" that doesn't count toward your word count and there you can put all of your research documents (that you've hopefully gathered via doing the fairly regular writing that you've done in Step 1) in separate folders and underneath that separate chapters. I had folders in my research folders like "Childhood Diaries" and later on "2005," "2006" and so forth. Sometimes I would just read some of the portions of old reporter's notebooks aloud using Dragon's speech-to-text software (because I get burned out on typing all of the time) so that I could then revisit them when I was writing that portion of the book. I have another folder called "Psychology" that included various psychological techniques that therapists have recommended to me over the years so that when I referenced them I could do so accurately.

You can do different cork board views (the way a TV writer does in moving around different notecards) and it easily lets you move around chapters so that you can play around with what works best in terms of the flow of the book. I also love the "word count" red-to-green color ratio so it can show you as you are making progress on writing. Lastly, it's just beautiful and mimics the way a writer's brain thinks. No, it is not instantly intuitive but just playing around with it can suddenly let you see how you can "chunk" a giant project versus feeling like you need to dash the entire thing off perfectly the first time. You can also attach images related to what you're writing about, split screen easily between the manuscript and your research and if you need to quote from a webpage, you just put the link in, and Scrivener will import the text right there for you so you don't need to do the whole cut, paste, put in a TXT file to delete the formatting dance that can be such a drag.

3. Be more like Jon Ronson. Unpack the process as you are writing and discovering.

Check out the wonderful book So You've Been Publicly Shamed and see the neat trick that he does in his writing. He takes the reader through his own journey of reporting, observation, discovery, reflection and inquiry. Not only does this make for a more natural, conversational read, but it also allows the book to essentially write itself and bring the journey together naturally. You may go back and rewrite (I'm sure you will), but using this model when you are initially writing can fully get you out of your head. If you're stressed about whether or not you even want to explore something, do like Ronson: Write about that. In other words (and lots of terrific writers do this, but this book is a great example I like to use), don't "writerly" it up by writing in some super-stitled academic way as if you have all the answers already. Let the reader experience the discovery with you. Instead: Be in the now, and write it as you are uncovering all those juicy truths.

Worried about writing too much? Don't be. It's all part of the process.

There's a funny thing that happens when you are writing. Sometimes you have to write thousands and thousands of words that you then don't even use, but it is only through writing those initial thousands of words that you can even get to the words that you do use. For example, the first 30,000 words of writing that I sent to my wonderful editor at Simon & Schuster Natasha Simons were all about my childhood. She's an incredible editor, very sensitive to the needs of the writer, and she didn't write me back and say, "Um WTF is this shit. Books are around 80K and you haven't even gotten into college yet! Can I have your advance back please?" Nope. She knew how a writer's brain works, and knew that I'd be able to use portions of it, and this was a way for us to get the book to where it needed to be.

It was only through seeing that writing (along with the book proposal) that she came up with the starting point for the book. She said, "Let's start with you in 2005 when you've first gotten your job at the New York Post, and we can use some of these great childhood stories in flashbacks and where it seems to work." It's still the Ronson model though, because once I had the "container" for the book (start in 2005!), I then was able to be "in the moment" from there on in. I didn't do a ton of letting readers in on what I was experiencing, but in some of the more cringe-worthy portions of my book, I did do so.

It's kind of like that wonderful comedic technique of not sucking. One great way to really suck at doing comedy is if you are doing some stand-up routine, and then a waitress crashes a tray of dishes, and you just keep doing your act and don't comment on what just happened. You know: The thing in the moment! Writing is like that. Ronson does that brilliantly, taking the reader on the journey as he experiences it. Not only is it a wonderful way to get the most honesty out of your writing (if you are having to take readers into the process itself, you can't really lie to yourself or the reader about what's happening or slick it over with some smug turn of phrase), it is also--and this is where it gets very exciting--easier to write that way. Because it's natural. It kills the critic. Because you are simply writing what happened, as it is happening, and chronicling it along the way. Likely, you'll organize it differently later on, but in the process of the first draft, it's an invaluable tool.

Now...go write! If it sucks, even better! The only way to get to the really, really good stuff is to write a lot of words that will be brutally tossed aside later on. So do it. Write anything. Write about this. Write about what I got wrong. Write about the outfit you are wearing that you likely won't even own 10 years from now. Who knows? It may just lead you to exploring all those other things your clever, clever ego has been nastily telling you not to write about in your own life -- because you don't have it "perfect" yet.

Fuck perfection. Just write.