Call Me Charlie

Issue 256

You guys,

Most memoirs are mediocre. Some are good. Then there's a few I can't stop talking about. It's usually one or two a year—The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp.

Today I'm adding one more to the list: Here After by Amy Lin.

A year and half after they were married, Amy’s husband, Kurtis, 32 years old and in perfect health, was running a half marathon when he collapsed and died. The book takes us through their relationship and what the few years after Kurtis’ death were like for Amy. The chapters were short, sometimes only a paragraph long, and I couldn't stop turning the pages. Just one more chapter, I kept telling myself.

Today’s Memoir Snob episode reviews the book with four specific takeaways:

• Treat your audience with respect by leaving out what the reader already knows is coming.

• Expressing negative feelings about a person’s appearance is funnier than directly expressing negative feelings about the person.

• When you use Anaphora—which is repetition at the start of a sentence or clause—the last line should punch with specificity.

• The most important place to leave out thoughts and feelings and only show dialogue and action (which we learned from The Glass Castle) is when you’re the most emotional. The angrier you feel, the less your feelings should be put on the page.

At the start of this year when I listed my priorities for 2025, writing and finishing my book was at the top of the list. Publishing my weekly newsletter was second. Doing deep dives for Memoir Snob was further down the list, more as an afterthought. I would still do them but they wouldn’t pull me from my book or my newsletter.

Since reading Here After my mindset has shifted. This was Amy Lin’s first book and it was a national bestseller. I wanted to learn from her writing but I also wanted to learn about her publishing journey.

I don’t know how or when but I’m certain these Memoir Snob deep dives will lead me to my publisher. So I still have to write a fantastic book, I still have to publish weekly so that I can connect with my true fans, and equally, I have to record more deep dives and share them with the authors, editors, and publishers.

On page 12 of Here After, in a flashback with Kurtis, Lin writes:

He wants me to write full-time and I have finally agreed to try when we reach Vancouver.

I'm worried, I tell him. What if I don't write anything at all?

You're going to write a bestseller, he says.

You can't know that, I say.

When we write our manifestations on the page, they’re more likely to come true.

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Until next week,

Charlie

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My calendar is open for 1-on-1 Zoom calls to discuss whatever you’d like…writing, parenting, publishing, hard conversations? Let’s talk about it! If my slim window of availability doesn’t work for your schedule, just reply and we can work something out.