Thanks for asking! I wrote my first two memoirs with a writing group, so I was presenting six pages a week. Before our meetings, I'd polish those six pages, so the writing itself was very clean. Then I hired a developmental editor for my first book, and he gently suggested a complete re-structuring. I had written in a journalistic style, with each of ten years its own section. Not only did this come across as tedious to a reader, but the dramatic arcs were buried in the middle of chapters. So, I restructured, using what I was learning about fiction - hero's journey and all that. Those same beats are in our real lives - it's all in how we present them. I worked in some suspense between chapters and some foreshadowing. I didn't have to do a lot of re-writing, but a fair amount of rearranging. Mine was about owning a restaurant, and I realized the reader didn't care - for example - whether a particular customer came in in April or October, so I was able to group things together for a more cohesive narrative while still telling the truth. The result was so much better.
Now I'm working on the second one. In the first draft I just wrote the whole story from 1969-1980. Now I have to cut it down and keep it more or less on theme. It's like the artist who told a student that sculpting an elephant out of marble is easy - you just remove everything that isn't an elephant.
Finally (for now), I worry about over-editing. This is particularly true of poetry, where too much wordsmithing can suck the life out of the original.
Thank you so much for sharing this Susan—there’s so much wisdom in your process. I really appreciate how you allowed structure and storytelling principles to shape the raw material of your life without compromising the truth. The shift from a journalistic style to a more narrative-driven format makes so much sense, especially with how our real lives do follow those classic arcs when we step back and frame them. I also love that you found ways to build suspense and foreshadowing—it’s such a delicate balance to stay honest while also honoring the reader’s experience.
That image of sculpting the elephant is perfect. It really captures the emotional challenge of editing: figuring out what belongs and what, while true, maybe doesn’t serve the story you’re trying to tell. And your point about over-editing is such a good reminder—there’s a certain vitality in early drafts that can be hard to preserve through too much refinement, especially in poetry. It’s inspiring to hear how you’re approaching your second memoir with such thoughtfulness. I’m excited to hear how it evolves!
I can empathize with this! I really admire memoir writers because your stories are so personal that it only makes sense that you want to tell them properly. With fiction, I try not to be so precious about editing. Readers are going to love or hate the fundamentals of your writing (voice, style, premise), and no amount of sentence tweaking is going to change their minds on that.
I'm currently editing my third novel and following this process: re-read the entire thing and make notes to myself on what I want to fix, organize that into a story spreadsheet with the timeline and beats laid out so I can see any gaps, and then create a revision plan in a kanban board. I tag every chapter as either an easy, medium, or hard revision (color-coded by green, yellow, or red) and now I'm chipping away at the revision plan one chapter at a time.
By now I can tell when I've gotten lazy in my drafting because I tend to summarize what I need to describe in scene. I'm an underwriter, so editing for me is about adding word count. I'm *so* glad that I chose to draft 4 novels before I started to publish them because it's much easier to edit in between releases than starting from scratch. I feel like everybody's first book is always the hardest and most time-consuming, but once you get a repeatable process down, it does get easier!
Thanks for your input. Wow your process is very organized and, as always, I'm super impressed. I'm guessing your background in content/marketing has helped with this level of skill and planning?
In terms of structure, I've tried to do the big picture, zoom out, what does each chapter entail type of planning, and then I see so many holes that I get overwhelmed and unmotivated. For memoir, when there are holes to fill (i.e., Will this part satisfy the reader?) it's not like you can just make up bits... so I found myself going into the "let me reflect on this" narration. My writing teacher said not to do that so much and to be in the moment, which makes sense. Anyway, it's a process that has proved to be much harder than I thought. I still wonder if my story is interesting enough, and although my gut says yes, I still can't figure out HOW to write and structure it.
But thank you for sharing your process. It sounds like you've got a system that works for you. :)
Great article, Claire! I've tried to find hacks around "time as editing" but it truly is the best way to think through a personal essay or article. On a scene level, I generally try to abide by whether what I've written has a goal, conflict, and decision before moving onto the next, doing my best not to move into the restructuring a sentence or swapping out words. Easier said than done?!
Thanks Sophia! I think hacks around "time as editing" is a great rule to follow. It's definitely challenging though... as writers, we always want things to sound better, be more compelling, etc etc. and many times, I find myself editing something else, even though I just wanted to do a final pass at it, for example. I guess this is just one of the things that makes writing hard...
Thanks for asking! I wrote my first two memoirs with a writing group, so I was presenting six pages a week. Before our meetings, I'd polish those six pages, so the writing itself was very clean. Then I hired a developmental editor for my first book, and he gently suggested a complete re-structuring. I had written in a journalistic style, with each of ten years its own section. Not only did this come across as tedious to a reader, but the dramatic arcs were buried in the middle of chapters. So, I restructured, using what I was learning about fiction - hero's journey and all that. Those same beats are in our real lives - it's all in how we present them. I worked in some suspense between chapters and some foreshadowing. I didn't have to do a lot of re-writing, but a fair amount of rearranging. Mine was about owning a restaurant, and I realized the reader didn't care - for example - whether a particular customer came in in April or October, so I was able to group things together for a more cohesive narrative while still telling the truth. The result was so much better.
Now I'm working on the second one. In the first draft I just wrote the whole story from 1969-1980. Now I have to cut it down and keep it more or less on theme. It's like the artist who told a student that sculpting an elephant out of marble is easy - you just remove everything that isn't an elephant.
Finally (for now), I worry about over-editing. This is particularly true of poetry, where too much wordsmithing can suck the life out of the original.
Thank you so much for sharing this Susan—there’s so much wisdom in your process. I really appreciate how you allowed structure and storytelling principles to shape the raw material of your life without compromising the truth. The shift from a journalistic style to a more narrative-driven format makes so much sense, especially with how our real lives do follow those classic arcs when we step back and frame them. I also love that you found ways to build suspense and foreshadowing—it’s such a delicate balance to stay honest while also honoring the reader’s experience.
That image of sculpting the elephant is perfect. It really captures the emotional challenge of editing: figuring out what belongs and what, while true, maybe doesn’t serve the story you’re trying to tell. And your point about over-editing is such a good reminder—there’s a certain vitality in early drafts that can be hard to preserve through too much refinement, especially in poetry. It’s inspiring to hear how you’re approaching your second memoir with such thoughtfulness. I’m excited to hear how it evolves!
Thanks, Claire! I’m using stories I had to cut as Substack posts. Very satisfying!
Oh I bet! I love when that happens! 🤩
I can empathize with this! I really admire memoir writers because your stories are so personal that it only makes sense that you want to tell them properly. With fiction, I try not to be so precious about editing. Readers are going to love or hate the fundamentals of your writing (voice, style, premise), and no amount of sentence tweaking is going to change their minds on that.
I'm currently editing my third novel and following this process: re-read the entire thing and make notes to myself on what I want to fix, organize that into a story spreadsheet with the timeline and beats laid out so I can see any gaps, and then create a revision plan in a kanban board. I tag every chapter as either an easy, medium, or hard revision (color-coded by green, yellow, or red) and now I'm chipping away at the revision plan one chapter at a time.
By now I can tell when I've gotten lazy in my drafting because I tend to summarize what I need to describe in scene. I'm an underwriter, so editing for me is about adding word count. I'm *so* glad that I chose to draft 4 novels before I started to publish them because it's much easier to edit in between releases than starting from scratch. I feel like everybody's first book is always the hardest and most time-consuming, but once you get a repeatable process down, it does get easier!
Thanks for your input. Wow your process is very organized and, as always, I'm super impressed. I'm guessing your background in content/marketing has helped with this level of skill and planning?
In terms of structure, I've tried to do the big picture, zoom out, what does each chapter entail type of planning, and then I see so many holes that I get overwhelmed and unmotivated. For memoir, when there are holes to fill (i.e., Will this part satisfy the reader?) it's not like you can just make up bits... so I found myself going into the "let me reflect on this" narration. My writing teacher said not to do that so much and to be in the moment, which makes sense. Anyway, it's a process that has proved to be much harder than I thought. I still wonder if my story is interesting enough, and although my gut says yes, I still can't figure out HOW to write and structure it.
But thank you for sharing your process. It sounds like you've got a system that works for you. :)
Great article, Claire! I've tried to find hacks around "time as editing" but it truly is the best way to think through a personal essay or article. On a scene level, I generally try to abide by whether what I've written has a goal, conflict, and decision before moving onto the next, doing my best not to move into the restructuring a sentence or swapping out words. Easier said than done?!
Thanks Sophia! I think hacks around "time as editing" is a great rule to follow. It's definitely challenging though... as writers, we always want things to sound better, be more compelling, etc etc. and many times, I find myself editing something else, even though I just wanted to do a final pass at it, for example. I guess this is just one of the things that makes writing hard...