Memoir Showers: Let It Rain, Let It Pour
Memoir Showers: Let It Rain, Let It Pour
by Grant Faulkner
Read on Substack if you’d like to leave comments.
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If there’s one word that Memoir Nation is about, it might be “momentum.”
We want to provide events, classes, community, inspiration, and more to help you feel the momentum of your story, to help you wake up every day and want to put your pen to the page.
When I talk with writers, I tell them momentum is the most important word in their writing because it is the thing you need to be attuned to, as in:
How can I create momentum so I return to my writing each day with energy?
What types of friction in my life are reducing my momentum?
What is it that nourishes my momentum?
That’s one reason why we’re hosting Memoir Showers in April. It’s a month of prompts—which will rain down on you—to help energize you to keep writing.
Sign up for Memoir Showers, tell a friend (it’s free)—and get ready to write, write, write!
How to create momentum
When I first started writing, I followed the script Ernest Hemingway laid out in A Moveable Feast. He said he never wrote to the point of exhaustion. He always ended a writing session with more to write because that “more” would then pull him to the page the next day.
Too often we get ensnared in frictions when we should be focused on creating momentum (on the page and in life).
The word “momentum” has a fascinating dual life—both as a physics term and as a metaphor.
In physics, momentum is mass times velocity. In a closed system, total momentum stays constant. But in an open system—such as the world we live in—any number of frictions or obstacles reduce momentum.
This is when physics crosses over into the creative life. Metaphorically, the concept of momentum suggests that getting something moving from its inert state requires tremendous initial effort. But once in motion, it tends to continue and can even accelerate.
In the real world, however, friction (self-doubt, distractions) is always working against you. When you slide an object across a surface, it slows and stops not on its own but because friction opposes its motion.
This also applies to our creative work: our resistance to showing up for our work isn't an aberration—it’s actually a frequent condition.
So here’s the thing Hemingway realized: Daily effort isn’t maintaining momentum so much as recreating it against persistent drag. You want to develop the psychological architecture that makes your work summon you rather than having to summon the work.
With creative projects, you’re generally not like a puck sliding across ice because of the frictions of life. Miss a few days and you don’t just pause, you often slide backward. The momentum isn’t in the project—it’s in you, in your habits, your confidence.
Turning frictions into momentum
When you write daily, your ideas become richer—you’re adding mass to the system even as you’re adding velocity. Showing up for your work helps to compound momentum.
A project with momentum isn't just one you work on frequently—it's one that has a trajectory you can feel, an energy you're following rather than creating from scratch each day.
Your project then becomes an invitation—it feels like it has its own gravitational pull, and it starts exerting force on you. You’ve built enough velocity that stopping feels like a disruption rather than feeling like relief.
A story with momentum wants to keep going. Your job is to not disturb it, but to show up and continue to follow the questions.
How to participate in Memoir Showers
Get yourself mentally prepared to join us in April for 30 days of prompts.
Make an accountability plan: Invite your friends and family to write with you. Post on social media that you’re committed to writing for 30 days in April!’
And then write!
Under the Memoir Showers menu tab in our Community space, you will see EVENTS and DAILY ACTIONS.
Participate in the DAILY ACTIONS and please record your progress. There will be a space for you to check that you've completed each day's action
This won't be visible till April 1, but once it is, this is where the fun happens. You'll be rewarded with writing streaks, animations, and cheers from your fellow writers in the Community.
Celebrate on April 30 with our “Keep It Going” party!
Coming Up!
Generative writing with Grant Faulkner! Get ready to flex all of your writing muscles on Tuesday, March 24. We’re going to the Memoir Writing Gym for a vigorous workout. Here’s how it will work. Grant will serve as your “personal trainer.” He’ll provide 3 prompts, and you’ll have 15 minutes to write a scene, a poem, a short essay, anything you want. There will also be a final Q&A with Grant. Lace up your writing sneakers, and let’s write!
Get ready for Book Club! Our next Book Club is Friday, March 27. If you’ve already read The Flower Bearers, by Rachel Eliza Griffiths, or if you’re looking for your next memoir read—this is it. RSVP in the Community.
Weekly Question
Answer this in the Community.
What is a writing prompt you’d like to share with your fellow writers? A good one you’ve experienced, or one you’ve conceived yourself?
Description: We have a gorgeous interview this week on Memoir Nation with poet, novelist, and now memoirist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Rachel’s new memoir, The Flower Bearers, is about two incidents that happened in short succession—the death of her best friend, poet Kamilah Aisha Moon, and the stabbing of her husband, author Salman Rushdie. Her book and this interview are an exploration of the layers of grief, how we show our layers of experience on the page, and so much more. This memoir is also our book club pick on Memoir Nation this month (happening March 27), so if you love the interview, join us for Book Club.
Bio: Rachel Eliza Griffiths is many things: a poet, a visual artist, and a novelist—and now a memoirist. She is a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for a NAACP Image Award. Rachel is the author of several collections of poetry. Her third collection of poetry, Mule & Pear was selected for the 2012 Inaugural Poetry Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her fourth collection of poetry, Lighting the Shadow was selected as a finalist for the 2015 Balcones Poetry Prize and the 2016 Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Poetry. Her debut novel, Promise, was a Kirkus Reviews and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year, and she just published her memoir, The Flower Bearers, earlier this year.
Novel Beginnings is here.
Our sponsor, ProWritingAid, is sponsoring a novel contest! Submit the first 5,000 words of your unpublished novel for a chance to win a $50,000 grand prize, plus several $5,000 runner-up prizes.
Eligibility: Un-agented writers not published by an established publisher (self-published is okay)
Free to register. Opens Feb 2. Closes Mar 31.