6 Comments
Jan 9Liked by Brian Watson

I appreciate your links to bookshop.org, as opposed to your neighbor JB's river site

also, weaving omphaloskepsis into casual conversation is now my new year's resolution

finally, I have learned by observing another friend's substack about memoir writing, that if you want to boost that sweet sweet subscriber count, one tactic is to link to other writers' substacks

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Thanks for sharing your process, Brian! I'm not a memoirist and am 100% ignorant of the structure terms, but I saw Steve Majors speak on a panel last year. He said somewhere in a landfill sits a giant piece of poster board with dozens of crisscrossing strands of yarn that he used to sort the structure for High Yella: A Modern Family Memoir. When I went home, bought it (it sold out immediately at the conference. Lesson: be funny and approachable at conferences), and devoured it, my brain ached from how elegantly he lined up childhood events, marriage events, and adult sibling events.

Really good point about not making up emotional depth that wasn't there, but nonetheless showing how that looks in the character.

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Jan 9Liked by Brian Watson

Hi Brian! Happy 2024! First, I'm glad to see you here, as I have abandoned (almost) Twitter/X and have missed reading your tweets. When I saw your initial color-coded outline, I thought, Lord, that's impressive, but wow, it also freaked me out. I love the Scrivner redux 🙌🏻. Thanks for the book rec’s, and best of luck with your memoir!

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