Memoir – Idaho Writer's Update

Tangled by Blood

Rebecca Evans (whom we’ve interviewed) has recently released Tangled by Blood: A Memoir in Verse.

Unlike other memoirs, Tangled by Blood is not a tale of redemption, but one of hard-earned love and high stakes. Through a shifting POV, Tangled by Blood offers social commentary on abuse, sexual trauma, addiction, and suicide. The poems and prose in Tangled by Blood reflect, among many things, fractured intimacy. This fracturing influences every subsequent relationship—carrying scars and wounds throughout one’s life.

Tangled by Blood is available at Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and MoonTidePress.

About the author (from her Amazon Author Page):

Evans is a memoirist, poet, and essayist. In addition to writing, she teaches Creative Nonfiction at Boise State University and mentors high school girls in the juvenile system. In her spare time, she co-hosts a radio program, Writer to Writer, offering a space for writers to offer tips on craft and life. She served eight years in the United States Air Force and is a decorated Gulf War veteran. She’s hosted and co-produced Our Voice and Idaho Living television shows, advocating personal stories.

She’s also disabled, a Veteran, a Jew, a gardener, a mother, a worrier, and more. She has a passion for sharing difficult stories about vulnerability woven with mysticism and hopes to inform, in a new way, what it means to navigate this world through a broken body and spirit.

Nancy Weston

With books running from mysteries to memoir, Nancy notes: “As I have matured, met people, had encounters, failures and triumphs and learned about life, I have filed away hundreds of interesting characters, events, encounters and sights. Now my mind fills with stories to share and my challenge is to select the one that is right to tell right now.”

Her works include:

Digger’s Izzy
Valley of Shadows
Ice in the Guise of Fire (published August 2022)
The Cruelty of Swallows (to be published later in 2022)

Do you have a writing routine? Where and when do you write?

Not really. I have a list of stories in my mind that I want to tell. Once I find the one that inspires me at the moment, I pretty much devote myself to getting the outline, then a rough draft of the story. Then I may set it aside and work on something else or do something entirely different than writing. Once I come back to it, my mind is fresh and I read it again. This helps a lot! Once I get a complete story arc that I like, I get an edited copy for my beta readers. While they read the manuscript, I take another break. Once I get their feedback, I may mull over their commentary or not, but I don’t rush into the next draft. Time is my best friend in the process. Once I start work again, it is to complete a final draft of the work, although that may be many revisions later. When I have a complete final draft, I send it to be edited again.

Glida Bothwell

Most recently capturing 19th century America’s struggles in the time-travel historical fiction story Abbey’s Journey: A Long Trail Home, Glida has written screenplays, short stories, flash fiction (including participating in Fiction 101), and memoirs.

Do you have a writing routine? Where and when do you write?

No routine, but I like to write in the morning. I write whenever I have an idea that needs to be put on the page, or when I can motivate myself to start. I write in my “office” — a space in our sunroom. But with my laptop, I can write anywhere. Sometimes I like to write in longhand as it helps me with the flow.

Michael Corrigan

Michael Corrigan was born and raised in San Francisco, California. He holds an MA in English from San Francisco State and attended the American Film Institute to study screenwriting. He was nominated for a Pushcart prize for the short story, “Free Fall.” He often draws upon his Irish heritage in his works, which include:

Mulligan: A Celtic Romance
In the River Bottoms
Brewer’s Odyssey
A Year and a Day
Confessions of a Shanty Irishman
Down the Highway
These Precious Hours

Do you have a writing routine? Where and when do you write?

I usually write in the morning at a quiet computer lab at the university. I like having that silent space to write, which includes articles for the local paper.

Outline Your Memoir

This free online workshop promises to help with a daunting task by starting with sorting through and organizing all the details you’ll need to structure your memoir.

Author Jenelle Hardy will talk you through how to look at the vast and varied material in your life and get started with writing it down.

This free workshop, sponsored by ProWritingAid (software), will cover guidance on:

Your timelines
Rites of passage
Moments of decision
Pivotal experiences
Themes and patterns …. including some you may not recognize

You must register for the workshop to be conducted for two hours on Thursday, 18 March 2021.

Online class for Memoirists 24 February

“Finding Yourself as an Engaging Character in Memoir” aims to help you write about you. Making the reader want to spend time with the writer as narrator is crucial. This class will tackle our own habitual shyness and uncertainty about how much to reveal and we’ll find out how to distinguish our own self-knowledge from what’s actually on the page.

This class requires pre-registration and will be conducted starting at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, February 24, 2021. (A recording will be provided afterwards.) It’s one of a series of excellent courses organized by Jane Friedman. Read more about it. Cost: $25.

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash