Naming and Claiming Your Earned Wisdom in Your Memoir’s Takeaways

By Jennifer Leigh Selig

Beginning memoir writers typically start by writing specific memories. After months and months, sometimes years, of gathering those memories, they sharpen their storytelling by crafting memories into scenes. They eventually shape those scenes into chapters, and those chapters illustrate a transformational arc, at least in traditional memoirs. And doing all that? Well, it takes time.

In my experience as a memoir teacher over the last decade, I’ve learned it takes...