How I transformed from a news writer to non-fiction

How difficult could it be to write a memoir? I needed to shed my skin.

I decided to write a book about my childhood growing up in a Wisconsin tavern. Previously, I wrote feature stories for the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel and hundreds of news releases during a 35-year career in public relations. I could condense information from an hour-long interview into three paragraphs on deadline. I could spin words and influence people.

How difficult could it be to write a memoir? I was about to learn I needed to shed my skin.

“Learn to write words that make the reader turn the page,” an ad read for a writing conference.

I registered for three days of classes on structure because I had no idea what I was doing. The instructor shared a spreadsheet with 23 columns that included Scene, Chapter, Story Event, Value Shift, Polarity Shift, Turning Point, Duration, Location and On and Off Stage Characters for all 54 scenes of a Harry Potter book. Riddikculus, as Harry would say. Was this witchcraft or writing? Wasn’t structure simply beginning, middle and end? Couldn’t I simply write the words that flowed through my fingertips?

Lesson: Writing questions is lazy. Revise.

At my next writing conference, attendees wore tweed blazers with patches on the elbows, long black skirts and carried book bags.

“What do you write?” they asked me, my pink and grey backpack over my shoulder.

“I wrote a story about my son hurting his knee playing football that my husband liked.”

These writers wrote memoirs about plane crashes and clergy abuse; they wrote young adult novels about vampires and babysitters; they wrote essays published in The New York Times, Huffington Post and The Atlantic. Writing for a newspaper, we weren’t expected to leave much of ourselves on the page. I wanted to be them, but I hadn’t varied verbs, sentence length and dialogue or manipulated metaphors or written anything that bled out of my soul (thank you, Hemingway). I felt like a porcupine cast away on a blow-up mattress in the ocean.

Lesson: Don’t use I felt, thought, I think, I believe. And use an analogy related to the topic. I felt like a book in a movie theater. Not quite, but better.

New rules of creative nonfiction replaced the Five W’s required for the news release lede of who, what, when, where and why. I would keep trying.

Lesson: Don’t use “I would, I should, I could.” I kept trying.

“Show, not tell,” said my writing coach. Use reflection to bring the reader into the scene. How could I break a lifetime habit of reporting the news and write what I felt? It took me a year to grasp the concept of prose that saves and savors.

“She sat next to the window to write” became “The cool night air broke through the screen to offer respite from the day. The full moon cast long shadows extended from trees like soldiers commanded by a chorus of crickets and coyotes. The clicks on her keyboard a competing cacophony. “Type faster,” she whispered, her warm breath flickered the candle burning away the night.”

I had written a news story or press release within the hour of an event. Writing 55 words to replace eight words made me ponder if I could be a writer. I needed more help.

I devoured 20 books on the craft of writing. I studied the structure, transitions and character arc of 60 memoirs. I participated in writing circles and attended workshops that taught me creative writing was more like making art than spitting out the facts.

Seven years into my journey, I found the courage to attend a weeklong writing workshop for memoir writers. A bold move for someone who had yet to vocalize, “I am a writer.” Our instructor live edited our openings, scenes and endings. Before submitting my chapter, I agonized over perfect verbs, analogies, pacing, tense and grammar. My document was returned with more red words than black, but her edits transformed my writing into a more powerful story. If I failed, at least I failed forward.

The more classes I took and the more I wrote, the more I noticed which scenes needed more detail, which characters needed motivation and how tension kept the reader turning the page. Editors taught me to find my bigger story, delete the first 50 pages of backstory, and add setting, dialogue and character details to every scene. It pained me to delete scenes that didn’t move the hero forward, especially if it entailed 20-pages about being tucked into bed by my grandmother.

Now, I see what is missing from the page as much as I see what is on the page. I pause when reading an author’s beautiful sentence knowing how much work it took to perfect. I marvel at sister stories, strong dialogue and inciting incidents.

I’m still learning to be a better writer.

Lesson: Edit “ing” words. Make them active. Do you need “still?” Probably not.

I am a writer. With more to learn.