WRITER TRAINING: PACK HEAVY FOR #writertraining

 

Writer training is more than a classroom, more than paper and pencil, fingers and keyboard, more than listening.

 

It is sweating and struggling and wishing you’d made a different choice. Not about being a writer, but about those damn books.

 

The importance of jamming writing books into a heavy duty backpack, heavy duty but not a backpacker’s heavy duty backpack, can’t be emphasized enough. Especially on a hot day.

 

Just make sure the books address the writing project you’re doing.

 

For example:

I’m writing a memoir, a medical memoir about the people I met and places I’ve been for hpv16 neck cancer treatment. Unlike other cancer memoirs, the memoir I’m writing won’t address the gritty details of suffering and pain, the size of a tumor, or the composition of chemo therapy.

 

Instead, I address the human connections between patients, between patients and staff, and the work place. You know, the fun stuff. Writer training first hand.

 

 

The books I packed in my Samsonite backpack, well named because it would take the strength of a full-maned Sampson to heft it, or a middle aged man with a starter mullet:

 

NAKED, DRUNK, AND WRITING, Shed Your Inhibitions and Craft a Compelling Memoir or Personal Essay

 

Even if you lighten up on the inhibitions, which are heavier than imagined, Adair Lara’s book is a load, just the sort of load you’ll need for #writertraining.

 

The SITUATION and the STORY, the Art of Personal Narrative

 

Vivian Gornick might as well of added the entire library. Her book is enlightening, but not light weight for writer training. No one reads a mess.

 

THE DEATH of SANTINI, THE STORY OF A FATHER AND HIS SON

 

One of my favorite writers, Pat Conroy included the death of his brother, his mother, and his dad. It’s a memoir. His mom died of a cancer. The Conroy family all come undone and unglued and breakdown as only Pat can portray them. Except his brother Mike.

 

Sad and heartfelt, this writer did it his way, which in turn offended his family, his college, his brothers and sisters, and his own kids. Then, for the most part they all came around. Score for #writertraining. Don’t be afraid.

 

Why We Write About Ourselves, Twenty Memoirists on Why They Expose Themselves (and Others) in the Name of Literature

 

This compilation goes a long ways in explaining why writers write anything. Why bother, they seem to ask, until they look in the mirror and remember why: No one else will write that story, and if they don’t get it right, no one will read that story.

 

Meredith Maran asks the right questions and lets it roll. All of her subjects know more about writer training than they let on.

 

THE ELEMENTS OF STORYTELLLING, HOW TO WRITE COMPELLING FICTION

 

Peter Rubie’s book is well blurbed and noted, but it’s fiction. Why is this weighing down a backpack? Because he gives the rules of storytelling. Or how to lie more effectively.

 

Memoirs can’t lie, or they drift into the fiction foam. Remember the guy with the Oprah book who called it a novel one year, a memoir the next, and Oprah brought him on to tear him a new one for deceptive marketing ploy?

 

The writer took it all knowing he’d already sold a ton of books before his spanky.

 

Writer training has rules and boundaries and if the reader see things head of the tracks it’s over. Don’t abuse the reader’s intelligence, or pay the price. See, they already paid the price of the book so don’t rip them off.

 

The pack is packed, and so is the rest of your stuff. The shoes, the coat, magazines, everything that makes it too fat to fit under the airplane seat in front of you without crushing it a little.

 

The laptop is in there? Don’t crush too hard. And don’t worry about reading the books you take on a trip. If you haven’t read them yet, you will. Maybe not this time, but sometime.

 

 

The important part is carrying the pack everywhere to remind you of writer training. Hint: If you trained harder it would be much lighter.