I am a big fan of books about writing books. Authors who have made it to the other side of publication are my heroes, and I never tire of hearing how they got from scrawling their first words on a blank page to producing a New York Times bestseller. Books like Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones have saved me many times when I was stuck at the starting line, unable to motivate myself to get writing. It really helps to know that even successful writers have the same doubts and difficulties as me.
I would add to that canon of motivational writing books Rachael Herron’s Fast-Draft Your Memoir: Write Your Life Story in 45 Hours (HGA Publishing; 2018). First of all, who can resist that title?! It sounds too good to be true, right? How could you convey the biggest, most gut-wrenching turning point of your life into a memoir in 45 hours? Well, Herron—in her self-deprecating, hilarious, and somewhat pushy manner—will persuade you it is possible.
Book review: “Fast-Draft Your Memoir” by Rachael Herron
Using simple exercises and clear writing prompts, Herron guides the aspiring memoirist towards writing a first draft of her life story. Let me emphasize the words FIRST and DRAFT. This is not a book about how to get published, or how to produce a Nobel prize-winning work of literature. It’s mainly a book about finishing the first leg in your author journey, which is what Lamott famously dubbed your “shitty first draft.”
Herron revels in this part of the journey, and with good reason. You can’t write a brilliant book without cracking a few eggs. It’s messy, perhaps illegible, and definitely unreadable. However, it’s got a beginning, a middle, and an end, and now you’ve got all the ingredients you need to bake that incredible multi-layered Vanilla Citrus Mousse Cake you’ve always wanted to try. (Okay, stop ogling cakes online and get back to the business of writing!)
As a personal biographer, I appreciate how Herron points out the unique qualities of memoir writing and helps you first determine if you even should write a memoir (not all stories are ready, or possible to be told). Then she helps you select the turning point in your life that you want to write about (memoir isn’t your entire life story; she goes into that as well). From there she helps you figure out what kind of memoir you want to write (there are many!), followed by planning and plotting out your story in short bite-sized exercises. Before you know it, you’ve figured out your elevator pitch, your character arc, your outline, and you're ready to churn out the chapters!
Throughout the book, Herron throws in humorous personal anecdotes about her writing experiences and those of her students. She puts you at ease that your issues writing that damn book are not uncommon and can be overcome. I particularly loved hearing about how she wrote her first novel during National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo)—which I did too—and the lessons she learned from that experience about writing fast and writing badly.
She also reveals how to gauge your writing speed. From there you can calculate the time it will take you to write your memoir (it’s pretty basic math, don’t worry). Somehow, seeing it broken down into short time chunks makes your end goal seem more attainable. And spoiler: You don’t need to do it all at once. A half an hour a day is totally acceptable. It’s the frequency and consistency of the time that is most important.
At the end of the book, Herron spends a chapter on revision and a chapter on publication. She puts these topics off because she doesn’t want you to get hung up on perfection when you haven’t even gotten started yet. There are other excellent books about those parts of the writing journey, but at the beginning, thinking about them will only distract you and could paralyze you at worst.
So, if you are thinking about writing a memoir, or even working with a personal biographer, I highly recommend that you read Rachael Herron’s Fast-Draft Your Memoir. It is entertaining—and it just might give you the kick in the pants you need to embark on your journey. Bon voyage!
Anna Brady Marcus is a writer and media maker who helps others tell their personal and professional stories via her Beacon, NY–based company, Anchor Your Legacy LLC.