Tag: memoir
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the best writing tool
One of the best writing tools I have is this: Not writing. Let me explain: When I decided to write my first novel, I sublet my room in a crowded Brooklyn loft and moved to a barrier island in North Carolina for three months. Amazingly, my boss at the time gave me that time off,…
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how to start writing
“I want to write a book, but I don’t know where to start.” People tell me a lot, and I often feel excited when I hear it, because answering it is fun. As John Cage, the experimental composer, said, “Begin anywhere.” Literally. Just start writing. It can be the first page of Chapter 1, or…
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on “being a writer”
“I’ve always wanted to write a book, but I’m not a writer.” I hear this a lot. Maybe you’ve said it before. Hearing that always makes me smile because it reminds me of an inside joke my best friend and I have. Whenever we’re grocery shopping together, and one of us is pushing a cart,…
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on writing awe
When I was growing up, we had some relatives I’d see about once a year. Without fail, every year, they’d be shocked about how much I’d grown. “You’re in eighth grade already?!” they’d say, looking around for another adult to share this revelation with. “How is that possible? Just yesterday you were in diapers!” I’d…
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on finding “om”
Yesterday I went to a yoga class where we began and ended by chanting “Om.” The first one, after only five minutes of meditating, was dissonant. It sounded like everyone had picked their own pitch, totally ignoring everyone else. The final “om,” though, after 55 minutes of hatha yoga, was completely in tune. Every single…
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80s rock & an andean reverie
In 2022, three friends and I went to the Sacred Valley. We stayed in Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire, and spent the week exploring the Andes, Andean towns, Macchu Picchu. I was in awe: these staggeringly sophisticated people had invented agricultural methods that produced more than half the food products the world eats…
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up, but not north
There’s a moment in the novel Flatland after the Square comes back from his foray into the 3D world — the land of Cubes — and he’s trying to remember what it was like. The memory fades, so he clings to the only phrase he can think of to describe it: “Up, but not north.”…
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it’s not possible to make a mistake
There’s a scene in Kurt Vonnegut’s book Breakfast of Champions where John meets Mona, a woman from the fictional religious group the Bokononists. John acts shy at first, so Mona says, “It is not possible to make a mistake.” That’s the customary greeting given by all Bokononists when meeting a shy person, she tells him.…
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to reveal, or not to reveal?
“I don’t know whether I should write about my affair,” one of my memoir clients said recently. “Without it, the choices I made after don’t make sense. But I can’t imagine my ex-sister-in-law reading it…She might not forgive me.” This kind of dilemma comes up a lot with my memoir clients. They want to write…
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a beast in my soup
One afternoon I was having lunch with my friend Misha. We were gabbing about who-knows-what when she stopped and said, “There’s a beast in my soup.” I looked over and sure enough, swimming around her soup was a jade-green beetle. We erupted into giggles. “What is the other word?” she said, wiping a tear. She’s…
Kimberly Bunker, MFA 