To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.

Motivation clears the head faster than a nasal spray.

Be grateful for every word you can cut.

I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of.

Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain.

Writing is a craft not an art.

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty. The sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and graceful boughs and frisky kittens and sleepy lagoons.