Day: July 17, 2025

On Writing Memoir: Building the Personal into the Collective

One of the hardest things to learn in memoir is how to move from the personal to the universal. You don’t get there by abstracting. You get there by staying true to your body, your memory, your place in the world—and then trusting that readers will find themselves in the specific textures of your experience. […]

Teaching the Tell: A Writing Lesson from the Mud

When I teach memoir—whether in private coaching or through my Seeking: Letters to the Restless Substack—I encourage writers to begin not with ideas, but with sensation. What did the air smell like? Where was the tension in your body? What did you want, and what did it cost to get it? The best stories aren’t concept-driven. They’re felt. In […]