February 2021 – Page 2 – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Productivity Hangovers

I don’t know about you, but I tend to have really productive Mondays.

I don’t check social media. I’m clearing tasks. From dawn to dusk I’m feeling good. I get my lifts in. I get my 15,000 steps. Check check check.

But then Tuesdays and Wednesdays tend to be a drag and I never feel good. In fact, I feel sluggish and don’t get much of anything done compared to Monday. Then the shame cycle kicks in and I can’t believe how little I’ve gotten done.

What’s the answer?

My guess is two things.

One, social media isn’t much worth the time. When I abstain, I feel better emotionally and I’m more productive and more energized.

Two, doing too much on one day leaves you “sore” for the next day or two. Probably better to spread the tasks over a few days and get more “workouts” in.

Similar to my riff on load management, maybe spreading the workload over more days instead going so hard on one will lead to greater gains over the course of a year.

Something to chew on. What do YOU think?

Take the ‘Me’ Out of Memoir

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By Brendan O’Meara

But what do you mean? A memoir is defined by it being MY story. How can you possibly expect to take myself out of the memoir?

That’s a different question, but here’s what many of the best memoirs have in common: The “me” is a narrator, but the narrator is looking outward while telling her story.

For example, though it is a novel, The Great Gatsby is a perfect example of a memoir that focuses on a scene and a central figure beyond the narrator. A Christmas Story, though grounded in Ralphie’s boyhood takes moments to shine light on his father, his mother, his brother, his peers.

Sarah Einstein’s Mot looks more outward than inward.

Certain navel-gazing memoirs, or memoirs that are so grounded in the interiority of the writer, have become famous and this sets up many writers to think that in order to write memoir, it must be about them at all costs. Me. Me. Me.

In the end, a reader doesn’t care about you. She cares about you as the conduit onto which she can overlay her own experience. If you’ve done your job, you dissolve away and the truth of your story sweeps the reader into her own.

That’s taking the me out of memoir.

Nothing to Say

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By Brendan O’Meara

David Duchovny, the author, actor, musician, recently said about himself when he was young, “I had a way with words with nothing to say.”

There are any number of people who can write a nice sentence, maybe even in the MFA programs where they think beauty or lyricism can carry the day.

Fact is, if you don’t live a life on which to make art, you won’t have anything to say.

And you don’t need trauma in your life to have something to say. Someone recently told me that they were writing an essay and they said it wasn’t going to be personal since there wasn’t any trauma in the piece.

I resisted saying that a piece does not have to be traumatic to be a personal story. In fact, I appreciate the skill it takes to make something seemingly innocuous into a compelling story.

That isn’t to devalue the trauma, but you don’t need to trauma to make things interesting.

The technique will come. All you need is to live a life worth writing about.

Brendan’s Monthly Newsletter: First of the month! No spam! Can’t beat it!

Brendan’s Monthly Newsletter: First of the month! No spam! Can’t beat it!