Alfredo Corchado, author of Midnight in Mexico

Descent into Darkness panel

When he had second thoughts, didn’t think he could write this sweeping nonfiction book about the drug wars in Mexico, he went to see his agent.

Agent: What do you think about when I say Mexico?

Alfredo: (Thinks of different things, begins to explain)

Agent: No, one word

Alfredo: I think about the rain

Agent: What about the rain?

Alfredo: So I start writing all this stuff down on napkins (they meet over tequila)

First line of his book: “When summer rains fall on Mexico, all is forgiven.”

Agent’s advice to a journalist: Learn to get your ass off the sidelines

Tell us what it feels like as a person not a journalist

Alfredo: “When my mother used to sing, even the roosters stop to listen.”

Recommends Time by Hans Zimmer

Why name the book “Midnight” ?

Alfredo: “It’s really in your darkest moment that you still believe in God.”

 

Workshop: Writing Your Life (Memoir)

Victoria Zackheim, author of Bone Weaver, Faith … – @vzackheim

 

Go into Google, type in date of your birth and “timelines.”   Could be your outline.

 

Recommends Book of Kehls, by Christine Kehls

 

Who’s going to care about what happened in my life?

That’s not the question to ask yourself. Ask yourself, how important is it to me.

 

Paragraph one? Has only one purpose — to get you to read paragraph two.

 

What makes a good memoir? Interesting characters. And conflict.

Not being able to choose between vanilla and chocolate can be conflict.

 

It took me a long time to admit: the emotional isolation of Mimi in Bone Weaver is me.

 

Recommends Abigail Thomas and a Three Dog Life.

 

How to end your story? What does your reader expect? Go back to see how you began it. You need to be v clear, or they will be unsatisfied. Abigail Thomas ends it with her adjustment: sense her pain and also our relief that she’s managed to move on.

 

You don’t have to be specific about everything that happens. Overkill.

It’s fascinating to you but might not be to your reader.

 

Continuity important. Flashbacks hard to carry off.

Can be a ribbon of memory — doesn’t have to be the whole backstory.

 

What happens next doesn’t have to be an edge of the seat. It can be “Once she walked away I knew we would never be friends.”

 

Can you verify that every single one of these is true?

How close is this to what I remember?

You can’t use a lot of dialogue.

Twenty years ago you can’t remember.

Take out the quote marks: I can still hear my father lecturing me.

I triggered something in my mother, and boom – the ambulance came.

 

Or italics can signal the reader what is fantasy, what is not.

 

Amy Ferris’ Anthology on Shame

 

Print out your first page.

Circle every adjective and adverb. Delete most of them.