NO MORE WRITING EXERCISES. I mean it. If you are going to learn to write memoir, you need to learn to write with intent. To do so, the first step is to chuck out any writing prompts or exercises you are using, and write for real.

When you practiced with prompts, something always flowed, though all of it remains in some notebook. Much like playing tennis with a pro who hits every shot right to you, those exercises convinced you that you had this writing thing nailed. But then you found that when alone in a room trying to write, it’s mind-slammingly hard. Sound familiar?

Writing is good, honest work. And it cannot be reduced to generic writing exercises and pre-fabricated prompts. And ask yourself these questions: Have any of those ditties ever gotten you where you want to be as a writer? After reading one of those books of exercises, or subscribing to yet another web-based, prompt-list newsletter, have you actually finished that letter to your child that you long to give her, or sent that personal essay to your local public radio station? I doubt it. I suspect that those manners of nonsense have instead stolen what little time you had for writing.

Ditching the prompts to write with intent is number one of the ten point Memoir Manifesto I posted here on Monday.

What’s number two? Stake out your territory. Memoir is about territory. You have it. You just might not realize what it is. So let’s define it and walk its borders, because it’s smaller than you think.

Your territory is defined by the areas of your expertise, whether your expertise be as a sister, mother, wife, lawyer, accountant, someone who is living with a child you has an illness, someone who is in recovery, or your version of life as a gardener. These are your areas of expertise, and if you look at memoir this way, you will choose to tell smaller tales within your own territory and succeed, rather than trying to tell one big story that will not.

So, what would someone who writes, and who teaches writing, write about when writing with intent and within her territory? I asked the great Katrina Kenison, author of The Gift of an Ordinary Day, to chime in. Delighted to be asked to contribute to SheWrites, she obliged, sending this.  

The theme of my life this winter can be summed up in a word:  practice. Two-thirds of the way through a memoir, with another four chapters to go and a deadline less than two months away, I have made a commitment to writing practice. But I am a slow writer, never certain of the way forward, and so I have no choice but to practice patience.

Waiting for words to come, trusting that if I stay here long enough, the next sentence will find its way home to me, requires a certain kind of faith. Faith in mystery and faith in the process -- and so I practice faith, too.  Faith, it turns out, takes quite a lot of practice. 

Yoga practice makes my writing practice possible; in order to sit for hours, I must first get up and really move. 

Breathing practice fuels the yoga practice; without the union of breath and movement, yoga is just exercise, and I need a little more sustenance from my practice these days than a few leg lifts would provide. 

Meditation practice guides me back to my writing, for before I can write so much as a line, I must listen.  And in order to listen, I must practice stillness. 

Stillness is a challenge, possible only when I practice discipline, for stillness is so not my nature.  Discipline practice leads me back to my yoga mat day after day, and then it hustles me right back upstairs, to my spot against the bedpillows and my laptop balanced on my knees, and the words on the page, and the view out the window. 

I look at the dark curve of mountains against the winter sky, hear the whoosh of wind curling around the corner of the house, the ticking clock, the soft, steady breath of my dog asleep on the rug, and I practice gratitude, for really, what could be better than this – this life, this moment, this practice of pausing and noticing and saying “thank you”?

I used to think of my life in terms of the various  roles and responsibilities that made me me: there was motherhood, house work and editing work and writing work, marriage, exercise, spirituality, friendship.  Lots of expectations to juggle and jobs to tackle and experiences to either embrace or endure or reject.  And never, ever, enough time to fit it all in or get it all done.  Writing was always the first thing to go.  How could I sit alone in a room typing words on a screen when there were so many more “important” things I should be doing instead?  

But with only a slight shift in imagination, everything has changed.  I’ve come to see my life for what it is -- not some elaborate story I’ve told myself a thousand times, but simply this: an opportunity to practice. 

And suddenly, there is plenty of room and all the time in the world for me to do the only thing I need to do --   keep practicing. 

You can read more Katrina Kenison at http://www.katrinakenison.com

Tomorrow: The Memoir Manifesto, points 3 and 4.