You Can’t Write Without a First Draft.

Writing Your First Draft

Give yourself permission to write a rough first draft. Write pages and pages in which you describe the who, the what, the where and the whenof the story. Later, as you rework the piece, the whywill be written in.

If you are one of those memoir writers who is not otherwise a writer and who will perhaps never write anything else, know that you need to be kind to yourself. In the Turning Memories Into Memoirs workshops, I am often surprised—and dismayed—at how demanding...