As I approach another birthday after the publication of Word for Word, friends are asking me what my next book will be, and I really don't know what to say.

I now have an inkling about how long writers write thanks to a Lit Hub editor, who examined publishing histories of eighty authors. Unsurprisingly, poets published earliest and memoirists latest. Lengths of careers averaged thirty-four years; women usually first published around age 31 and stopped around age 64. 

I was surprised to learn that I have been writing longer than many. I started publishing a little later than others but I have laster longer, coming out with the memoir at the age of 78.

Do I want to spend my precious days writing more books or reading wonderful books of others? Yes, I have more ideas for books to write, but I'm not ready to say if I will write them or not.

With Warm Regards,
Laurie 
 

News About Word for Word
Librarians in Connecticut, Illinois, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Oregon, and California have recently acquired it.

Publisher's Weekly's BookLife named it an Editor's Pick for "outstanding quality" and praised it for its memorable first line: "This is a memoir about living a writing life--wanting to be a writer, becoming a writer, and being a writer--as acts of self-expression, self-assertion, and womanly survival."

Latest Reviews
"Unexpected, essential surprises touched me deeply...Freedom flitted off these pages," says Kidron Tirey, a Texas journalist.

"An inherently fascinating memoir, deftly crafted, impressively informative, thoughtful, thought-provoking, truly memorable," says the Midwest Book Review

A Note to Readers
Now that Word for Word has left my hands and is on its own, your stars and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads help keep it aloft. Thanks!

Writing Word for Word, was "an extraordinary experience of remembering, finding the right words for what happened, making me a little wiser, then allowing the past to recede again," I wrote. Now what?

The pause after a book is published is a perilous time for writers. It's when we have worked ourselves out of an all-consuming job. Days suddenly may seem empty and purposeless. Uncertainty about what's next can be unsettling.

It took a while for me to remember that post-publication is a time for recovery, rest, and waiting. For nurturing a sense of expectancy. For tending my neglected garden, which is a wonderful way to replenish myself. And, this year, it's a time for finally seeing friends and family members without masks.  

With Warm Regards,
Laurie 

News About Word for Word
Publisher's Weekly's BookLife named it an Editor's Pick for "outstanding quality" and praised it for its memorable first line: "This is a memoir about living a writing life--wanting to be a writer, becoming a writer, and being a writer--as acts of self-expression, self-assertion, and womanly survival."

More Reviews
"Unexpected, essential surprises touched me deeply...Freedom flitted off these pages," says Kidron Tirey, Texas journalist

"An inherently fascinating memoir, deftly crafted, impressively informative, thoughtful, thought-provoking, truly memorable," says the Midwest Book Review

A Note to Readers:
Now that Word for Word has left my hands and is on its own, your stars and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads help keep it aloft. Thanks!
 

It was a thrill to hear from a Texas journalist that Word for Word "is an adventure that I never knew I needed as a writer." And then to read that the memoir is "especially recommended reading for any and all aspiring writers," in the Midwest Book Review.

I wrote the memoir for myself but also with other writers in mind, mostly younger women writers grappling with the same difficult conflicts as mine, like the one between writing and mothering.

Women agents, women editors, and women friends advised, encouraged, and mentored me as a writer, so it's gratifying to know that the ups and downs of my writing life have meaning for younger women like Kidron Tirey, the journalist in Texas.

The first sentence of Word for Word has been chosen for the "First Lines" column in the June 2021 issue of Publishers Weekly. It goes: "This is a memoir about living a writing life--wanting to be a writer, becoming a writer, and being a writer--as acts of self-expression, self-assertion, and womanly survival."

If you've read Word for Word and liked it, please review it on Amazon or Goodreads or somewhere else. You don't have to be a writer to do it! 

It was important to me to write a memoir as a way to look back and make sense of the past. When it was time to publish Word for Word, it was a moment of truth. Did I dare go public with what I remembered? Good, bad, and indifferent?

"The wish to tell one's story may be stronger than the anxiety of exposure, but not by much," Daphne Merkin has written. "Memoirists...risk being judged not only on the quality of their prose but on the content of their character."

Over a period of time, like other memoirists I gradually found a way to turn my caution into a kind of writerly courage.  

With warm regards,
Laurie 

News About Word for Word:

• Publisher's Weekly's BookLife named Word for Word an Editor's Pick for its "outstanding quality."
• Publishing consultant Jane Friedman posted on her popular blog an excerpt from the last chapter of Word for Word
• An interview by Thomas Hill of Vassar College for the Library Cafe
• An interview by Marshall Miles of WHDD Radio
• An interview by Gretchen Hackmeister of the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon

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Perhaps the most problematic part about writing a memoir is writing about others, dead and alive. Especially alive.

What to do? You can drop names and change names. You can express yourself extremely carefully. You can be absolutely sure of your facts. You can get liability insurance.

The problem is usually more daunting at the beginning than at the end of writing a memoir.

What I and other memoirists often discover while working on draft after draft is that anger gradually softens through more insight and turns into something else. Like compassion.

With warm regards,
Laurie

I spotted this cartoon -- a little yellowed and faded from being on my bulletin board -- in The New Yorker a year or so ago.  It expresses the fear that friends and family may feel when someone announces they're writing a memoir. Happily, my husband Robert was never worried.