When you’re writing about a tragic or shocking event, one way to create suspense is to tease that something bad is coming. In the book she had a terrible accident on her bike, and at the beginning of the chapter a character calls out and tells her to be careful riding to school. From there until the moment of the crash she slows down time by including the tiniest details and specifics surrounding the moment—what time she left, her route to school, who she was meeting, why she couldn’t be late, and that first period math was her favorite. She described the actual ride, the way she rode with no hands, and later how she stood up on the pedals.

It took Sandy 14 years to write her book, and the structure changed from a book of essays, to a braided memoir, to a chronological, compressed timeline with a hook at the beginning pulled from the midpoint of the story.

An editor helped her to remove 50,000 words and bring the reader more onto the page by removing her analysis of the scenes. Her editor said, “Leave it to the reader. Let them decide. Let them process what happened.” 

Sandy wrote a synopsis and summary of her book before it was ever finished. She sent the synopsis to an agent and he picked her up—just like that!

She attended the San Francisco Writers Conference, where she pitched her book all day long to writers, editors, and agents. It was there she met her editor and book publisher. 

If you want to publish a book your story needs to have a universal theme. Once you have that and can really communicate that, then you need to figure out how to distribute it. Then you need a good publicist. (Sandy interviewed twenty-five publicists.)

First lines should make the reader curious to read more. They can be surprising, specific, and/or present a conflict.

It’s important to stay in moments longer by going deeper with details and going on tangents that add context. 

Write unsparingly about yourself to get the reader to root for you—without disclaimers. 

Write about complicated characters in your life by sharing stories that show their different sides.

Revealing the dark parts of yourself in writing makes those things less scary and less powerful. 

Simple, clear, no-frill writing can be just as powerful and moving as fancy prose. Lean into your style, whatever it may be. 

Sometimes writing can just be keeping a log of your feelings and experiences. It might not be something to publish now, but later, when you can look back at that time in your life and have rich details to include once you’ve had some separation from it. 

If you don’t know what to write about, write about what you’re struggling with.

Rhythm is important: Print out what you’ve written in a different font so it looks like somebody else wrote it and read it out loud. When your voice goes dead, there’s either something hiding behind that sentence or it’s just boring. 

Memoir is not a place to get revenge or cast oneself as victim.

Include details about the surrounding area. The weather, scenery, anything the characters interact with, other people in the room. This is especially useful at the start of the scene, and if/when the scene changes. 

When you add context for the reader it should relate to the dialogue before it. It can also help establish the relationship of the characters.

There are three people to consider in a two-person conversation: the two people in the scene and the reader. Dialogue can be inside-baseball between the two characters even it’s unclear to the reader, but interjections by the writer can clarify and invite the reader into what’s happening. 

A scene should not end at the end of the conversation, but at a point when a character says something that transitions into the next scene. 

It’s a way to add more details into your story. 

It allows the person to feel like they’re a part of the process of writing it as opposed to feeling like it’s one-sided. 

It makes you, the writer, more relatable and reliable because you’re giving different perspectives. 

Anaphora is when you start each phrase, sentence, or paragraph with the same word or words. But be careful: readers always remember the opening words but often forget the rest. So when using anaphora, be intentional about what you want to emphasize. Also, only using one word for the anaphora—as opposed to a phrase—is slightly less powerful but beautifully hypnotic. 

Epistrophe is when you end each phrase, sentence, or paragraph with the same word.

Diacope is when a word or phrase is repeated after a brief interruption.

Parataxis is short, clear, matter-of-fact sentences, often subject-verb, without conjunctions (think Hemingway). Knapp was selective with parataxis, using it when she wrote about the moment she found out her father died and again at the moment her mother died. In both instances, it was a shocking, cringey admission because she was drunk both times.

Pleonasm is the use of unneeded words, sometimes repeating the exact same word, other times saying the same thing in a slightly different way. This can annoy readers, but when utilized for intentional redundancy can be quite effective and powerful.

I have been writing as Charlie Bleecker for over four years. If you want to give it a real go, commit to it for a year. 

Do my friends read my writing? No. Does my family read my writing? No. That is the whole point. 

If you care at all about growing your audience in a time span of less than 10 years, don’t do it.

What about support? It’s nice to have your family and friends support you… That’s true. But give it time. You only need one or two people to support you in the beginning. I have SO much support now, and none of it comes from my friends or family, except for my husband. He is the one person in my life who knew about Charlie from the beginning.

How to choose your name: Pick a name you like! One that’s easy to say and easy to spell and isn’t super common if you search it in Google.