I'm a semi-failed writer, but I'm a capital-F Failed musician.

Memoirs need confusion. It's the thing every human has in common. We are magnificently confused.

Self-respect doesn't come naturally to me. I need to constantly remind myself and do the work to err on the side of self-respect, rather than self-punishment.

I always feel that as the author, once I know what a character is ashamed of, then I can go about making her truthful on the page.

I never wanted/expected to write a memoir, but this life thing, it has a way of sideswiping our worlds, scaring us so thoroughly that our past lenses of contextualizing events don't work - they cease to matter.

I'm a very tactile learner, so I need analog index cards, moving them all about, trying out various sequences for the book's architecture.

Memoir is a unique opportunity to revisit yourself. I don't mean by memory. I mean in the revision process. You don't just write a chapter and that's it. You must constantly return to it. You must dote on it. And even if it's saying something ugly about who you are, you have to find the poetry in it. You have to find the poetry in yourself.