What It Takes to Finish Your Memoir

By Grant Faulkner

I just finished teaching at a wonderful writing conference, Understory, and I had a number of interesting conversations with writers about finishing their book (perhaps because I taught a workshop titled “What It Takes to Finish a Book”).

I mentioned that I sometimes wonder how many great memoirs are sitting in dusty drawers, half-finished, abandoned, but not forgotten.

Memoirs that burst forth at the beginning, carrying their writer with them, but then hitting a wall, as all books do, or hitting two or three walls, before the writer gave up, exhausted, dispirited—perhaps not knowing that flagging energy is a part of writing a memoir.

And I mentioned how not finishing your book must carry an anguish, a weight that can last a whole lifetime.

I know there are sadly too many memoirs that have ended up with this fate. It takes a lot of stamina to write a book, after all. Writing a book has been compared to going through nine months of pregnancy, running a marathon, climbing a mountain, or even going to war. And it can feel like all of those things in one.

So one of your main tasks as a memoirist is to train for endurance, to be a finisher, to trust that the very act of finishing is the magic itself.

Here are a few things to toss into your storytelling mixology to help you reach the end.

Play the long game

One thing that prevents many writers from finishing their books is that the duration it takes to finish a memoir abrades their creative zestfulness and exhausts their attention span. It’s critical to remember that training for a marathon isn’t just about training your body; it’s preparing your mind to run for such a long period of time.

One way to lessen the daunting nature of writing such a big thing is to wave a wand over it and make it into a lot of small things. If you write a “mere” 200 words a day, that translates into 6,000 words a month, which is 72,000 words per year—which is a decent size memoir.

If you focus on a small manageable chunk of work, it has a way of creating its own momentum and carrying you further along.

Grit as elixir

Every memoir requires a simple four-letter word that is as important as creativity itself: grit.

Grit is a superheroic elixir. It’s more than just persistence. It’s a persistence that’s fortified with passion, optimism, and hope—a combination that coalesces into a steely and unwavering purpose that keeps us moving with consistent effort toward our goal even when we struggle or falter or outright fail.

Grit equips us with a shield that deflects nettlesome naysayers and our own damning doubts. It’s an energy drink, a pep talk, a sprinkle of fairy dust, and a compass all in one.

Grit also breeds another magical elixir, resilience, which helps us be adaptable enough to overcomes whatever obstacles come our way.

The magic of uncovering new layers

It’s important to remember that there is something beyond the constant persistence and determination necessary to finish a memoir: there is the magic of excavating layer after layer of its depth and finding new riches where you don’t expect to find them. This is the reward that draws us on through those dark and confusing labyrinths. It’s the scent we follow through the wilderness when we think we’re lost.

The magic of discovery in a first draft is only deepened with subsequent drafts and revision. Many people view revision like they do a teacher’s red marks of correction, but editing your story is actually about probing its depths and giving it more color.

It means experiencing the numinous nuances and the mysterious musings that are your story’s gift. It means paying attention to the language of your story—the rhythm of your sentences, the music of your words, the timbre of your voice. It means looking at your story world with a telescope to view its horizons and a microscope to understand its cellular interactions.

The muddy, muddy middle

I like to say that every story has a beginning, a muddle, and an end. Or muddles, really, because once you get out of one muddle, you’re not in the clear.

The muddle is where many a memoir has sunk into the quick sand of self-doubt. This is when you tend to question yourself as a writer. It’s when you question your story. Sometimes, at its worst, you question your entire life.

But here’s the thing: what is the one thing you need to find the path forward in this darkness—the path toward writing boldly and with vulnerability?

Belief in yourself.

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt,” said Sylvia Plath.

And the best fuel for creativity is believing that your story matters.

George Saunders offers a good way to reframe the “stuckness” nearly every writer encounters.

“I’ve found that accepting that the pain is part of my method actually reduces the pain—if I know, for example, that I always get stuck about 3/5 of the way through a story (which happens for me), well—the flavor of my reaction to that changes from ‘You idiot, you call yourself a professional, why are you stuck again, you moron?’ to ‘Ah, this is happening again. That means we’re 3/5ths of the way through and the story is trying to ascend to higher ground. Hooray!”

Recasting your mindset

When I talk about grit, resilience, and persistence, I sometimes feel like I’m casting writers as coal miners who are digging their way through the darkness to the center of the earth.

What if we view ourselves not as coal-mining authors with a pick and chisel, but as alchemists? What if our rewriting is a matter of sprinkling charms upon a story, casting spells, looking under rocks (aka words) for enchanted kingdoms?

We are diviners as writers, following the mystical pull of our stick in search of the nourishment of water. Yes, we sometimes have to walk far to find an underground stream, but when we find it, has the water ever tasted as clear and cool?

Remain curious

A good diviner is led by the primary power of all creation: curiosity. Think about what made you curious about your story to begin with. We write in anticipation, in pursuit, following the scent of our story like an explorer in a new world, in awe of the hills and dales that appear around the next bend.

If you write with curiosity, you’ll fill your reader with curiosity, so try to keep the curiosity you started your story with until the very end. You are Alice in Alice in Wonderland: you want out, but the way out is to go further and further in.

We want our stories to hold surprise, after all. As Robert Frost said, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”

Remembering the meaning of it all

For a writer, life hasn’t really been lived until one’s stories find their way onto the page, so don’t doubt yourself. The signature of yourself is formed by the work you put into your story. Making art tells you who you are. Making art in turn makes you.

So it’s your duty as a writer, as a person, to build a world through your words and believe in your story as a beautiful work of incarnation, to see it as a gift to yourself and others, as something that elevates life with new meaning— your meaning.

Therein the magic lies.