Tips from remarks by three speakers at the Writers Life 2009 program, co-sponsored by the National Writers Union and the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

(near-verbatim notes by Barbara Beckwith)

Joan Wickersham, author of The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order, a National Book Award finalist:

"It took ten years, including 'eight years of writing it wrong' to write The Suicide Index. I wish I'd known that a book that got started so badly would turn out ok. I did learn that bumbling is an investment. In 1991 my father killed himself. It was a shock - it was never obvious that he was depressed or couldn't cope. I thought both that it's impossible, it can't be true, and also: Oh my God, of course, it was inevitable. Since I was a novelist, I wrote it first as a 3rd person novel, but the manuscript was numb. I somehow had to write about the numbness without being numb. I wrote it in the first person, in the 3rd person, in flashbacks, shifting past and present. In 2003, my agent took it to 5-6 editors who said that although they liked the material and the voice, "it's not working." But no one would say what problem was. I put it away, heart-broken. But then, after I hadn't looked at it for a year, I went McDowell to revise it. I threw out chap 1, then 2, then 3 - threw out 330 pages of 430 mss. Reading and rethinking, I started again without looking at what I had done, and caught fire. Suddenly realized I had to write it in fragments. I tacked them on wall and moved things around, put the numbness in 2nd person, wanted reflection, growing understanding of something, has a circling back construction, emotions; funny, sad, funny, abstract, angry - I stumbled on the index format - found it ironic. I didn't pick it - it picked me. After that, was how this particular story had to be told. I had to throw stuff out. Gave it a trajectory of emotion - death - impact. I am now so glad that I couldn't sell that first manuscript, because I went back to dig deeper. As for asking permission of the real people in the book: if I had asked permission, I wouldn't have written it, so I just wrote and didn't worry. Later, I cut out parts that were gratuitously mean, but I didn't pretty it up. You need a thick skin to be a writer and a thick skin to find a publisher. My book is shelved in psychology and in self help, not memoir. Barnes & Noble says "there's nothing we can do" (about where it's shelved)."

Judith Nies, The Girl I Left Behind: A Narrative History of the Sixties (HarperCollins, 2008)

"My book is about how 'girls' got to be 'women' and how things change. I taught a Cambridge Center for Adult Education class called 'I & Eye Witness' and the book began as essay pub in small literary journal that's since disappeared. Back in 1972, I was a speechwriter for anti-war legislators - one of few women doing that job. I discovered I had FBI file (Hoover defined women activists as communist - sent 10s of 100s of informants into women's groups). Ten years later, I started writing (you have to write out a lot of the chatter in you mind). Memoir is a very plastic form: you use fictional techniques: narrative, character, telling detail, dialogue. My story is a portrait in a landscape: you write about your experience but it can have a large context. One issue in my book was my ex husband: I changed his name and was told "this is a very clean book - I don't think your husband will sue." Don't let yourself be inhibited about other family members - do it as you feel it. As for shelving: the editor insisted my book be listed as memoir (not history of 60s or women's studies)."

Kathleen Morton, The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed (Wisdom Publications):