Writing Memoir is Like Baking a Cake
Considering Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones"
Better Late Than . . .
My dog ate my homework. I overslept my alarm. Oh, I thought it was due next week.
As a teacher, I’ve had offered to me many excuses for missing or late assignments. One semester, I had a student offer that her grandmother died 5 times. I guess that’s possible with blended families, but it did strain credulity.
This is the first time I’ve been late with my Friday substack. My apologies. You see . . . (now insert story here).
I’m taking a class on editing memoir. I was sucked into finishing the last memoir in the class. We’ve read Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, Red Notice by Bill Browder, Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford, and The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy. The more I study memoir, the more I know that my memoir is worth while and that my path to traditional publication, though a long-shot, is one I need to take.
But as I continue to read memoirs, I also find myself itching to get back in there and change my book. That’s a dangerous proposition. I arrived at its current form through 3 1/2 years of shaping and molding. Sure I can remold it. But is a manuscript a hunk of clay, willing to be molded and remolded endlessly. At some point as a writer, you need to put the damn thing in the kiln, fire it, and be done with it. There are other pots to make!
I think there may be one more major edit to do, however. What I hope is that I get a bite from my query and an agent/editor wishes to work with me to reformulate pieces to improve the whole and sell the book. As it stands now, it’s stronger than many other published works that I read, so I’m playing the querying game.
Let’s Bake a Cake with Natalie Goldberg
One of the key memoir craft texts I read early in writing my book is Natalie Goldberg’s classic, “Writing Down the Bones.”(1) Filled with inspiration, this is writing craft at its finest.
In the chapter, “Baking a Cake,” she describes gathering the ingredients and then she describes the process for making a cake. She compares writing to the act of baking a cake, throwing ingredients together and adding “heat or energy to transform it into cake, and the cake looks nothing like its original ingredients. It’s a lot like parents unable to claim their hippie kids [COUGH my brother COUGH] as their own in the sixties” (p. 50).
Goldberg says, “You have all these ingredients, the details of your life, but just to list them is not enough. . . . You must add the heat and energy of your heart” (p. 50).
The problem is, we get in the way of ourselves when we write. We think too much. We deny the truth. We look at events askance, with sidelong glances, minimizing or maximizing motivations. We play devil’s advocate and try to look at things from so many angles that we don’t know (or own) our own truth. We hem. We haw. We doodle on the edges of the page. We procrastinate. We go watch television or shop or read other people’s memoirs (see above).
None of this gets the job done. To get out of our own way, Goldberg says we must approach writing like meditation, deeply engaged so that you lose yourself. She explains: “Katagiri Roshi said: ‘When you do zazen [sitting meditatoin], you should be gone. So zazen does zazen. Not Steve or Barbara does zazen.’ This is also how you should be when you write: writing does writing. You disappear: you are simply rcording the thoughts that are streaming through you” (p. 51).
You are an instrument for your thoughts. You are the energy and heat cooking the cake that is the ingredients that are the events in your life.
Goldberg continues, “The cake is baking in the oven. All that heat goes into the making of that cake. The heat is not distracted, thinking ‘Oh, I wanted it to be a chocolate cake, not a pound cake.’ You don’t think as you write, ‘Oh, I don’t like my life, I should have been born in Illinois.’ You don’t think. You accept what is and put down its truth” (p. 51).
Goldberg’s metaphor continues: “Ovens can be very cantankerous sometimes, and you might have to learn ways to turn your heat on. Timing your writing adds pressure and helps to heat things up and blast through the internal censor [RE: STOPS WRITER’S BLOCK]. Also, keeping your hand moving and not stopping add to the heat [FREEWRITING METHOD - Rule #1 - Don’t stop. Rule #2 - Keep your hand moving. Rule #3 - See Rule #1.]” She says if you check the clock too much, set yourself a page limit, 3 or 4 or 5 pages, and only stop when you get there, however long it takes.
However long it takes.
There is no giving up.
As I say, Just keep writing.
Goldberg finishes the cake baking/writing session this way: “And you are never sure once the heat begins whether you will get a devil’s food or an angel food cake. There are no guarantees; don’t worry. They’re both good to eat” (p. 51).
This is a “No Writer’s Block” World.
I work with many writers who complain of writer’s block. Or they have painfully slow writing processes in which everything must be perfect before moving onto the next chapter, or the next paragraph, or even the next sentence. But all of those parts work in juxtaposition to and in relation to all the other parts. You can’t possible see and judge that they are perfect until you put it all together.
Don’t sweat the draft. Get it all down. Get it ALL down!
Sweat the edit.
You can find many essays about writing process at my Medium publication, The Writing Prof. I touch on many of the lessons that Goldberg alludes to in her book. These are not writing techniques reserved merely for memoirists. They’re techniques of writers, though, you know, the fiction writer, contrary to what Goldberg says above may well say, “to hell with being born here, my character will be born in Illinois!”
We who live in the land of real life don’t have the option of changing our birth towns.
I hope you enjoyed this late entry. I’m off to more querying. Have a safe and enjoyable July 4th holiday (better a July 4th holiday than a Jan. 6th holiday!).
Until next week, I will . . .
Just keep writing!
1 Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1986.