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The books you need are probably not about your subject.

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Guides, reading maps, and close reads for memoirists. Everything here starts from one idea: someone has already solved the problem your draft is stuck on, usually while writing about something else entirely.

About the Writer

I'm Kristie Schmidt, an award-winning literary nonfiction writer, former English teacher, and longtime writing coach. My work explores memory, identity, chronic illness, and the stories we tell about ourselves, often through fragmented, braided, and experimental forms.
 

My essay “Molasses Brain: Notes from a Mind Rearranged” received the 2025 International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir, and my experimental essay “System Feedback Survey” is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review.
 

I'm currently working on two memoirs-in-essays, Illegible: The Body as a Misread Narrator and Saudade: A Geography of Longing.
 

My editorial approach grows out of both my teaching experience and my own literary practice. I know what it's like to have pages full of material and still struggle to recognize the story taking shape. I read closely for the patterns, tensions, and structural possibilities a writer may be too close to see, while protecting the voice that makes the work distinctly theirs.

"The sheer strength of the writing, through the entire work, and the writer's admirably delicate touch. This is an altogether mature piece of writing."

--Judge Sharon Butala

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Built for your book

What the Draft Knows

$225

A close editorial reading for memoir and personal essay writers.

Send me up to 3,000 words.

 

I'll read your draft twice and return marked opening pages and a two- to three-page editorial letter identifying the patterns, structural possibilities, and governing question you may be too close to see, clarifying what your draft is doing beneath the story you meant to tell, and identifying the one revision that would matter most. All in writing, no meetings.

Send me your pages

Mentor Text Map

$145

You answer ten questions about your book. Ten days later you get ten books chosen for the problem your draft actually has, along with my best guess at what the book is about, offered for you to argue with. I don't read your pages.

See how it works

“This is easily the most invaluable guidance this manuscript has received. It truly encouraged me to uncover the book’s core essence.”

Mike, on his Mentor Text Map

Memoir Study

$95, after a Map

Twelve books on a single axis (form, stance, or content) for when your Map has named the problem and you want to go deeper into it.

About the Study
Free

What Is Your Memoir Actually About?

Seven questions I ask when I read a memoir, my own included. A short guide for the moment when you know exactly what happened and still can't see what the book is about. It comes with a free subscription to

Cognitive Dissident, my Substack on memoir and craft.

Guides

Ready-made reading guides for the walls memoirists hit most. Each one gives you a sentence to try, three things to do this month, and ten books chosen for the specific problem each one solves. Read it in an evening and use it for a year.

Writing About Family Without Writing an Indictment
Writing About Family Without Writing an Indictment

For the writer with a parent in the draft, and the fear of what happens when that parent reads it.

$25

Get the guide
Writing the Year Without Writing the Calendar
Writing the Year Without Writing the Calendar

For the book built around a project (a race, a diagnosis, a renovation) whose structure keeps borrowing the project's shape.

$25

Get the guide
Writing Your Subject Without Writing Everyone Else's Book
Writing Your Subject Without Writing Everyone Else's Book

For the writer who has read forty books in her subject and decided there's no room left for hers.

$25

Get the guide
Writing in Pieces Without Writing a Mess
Writing in Pieces Without Writing a Mess

For the memoir that belongs in fragments and does not yet add up: a floor full of index cards, a folder called “pieces.”

$25

Get the guide
Writing Grief Without Writing a Eulogy
Writing Grief Without Writing a Eulogy

For the grief memoir that keeps turning into a tribute, so the person you lost never quite comes back to life on the page.

$25

Get the guide
Writing the Ending Without Writing a Lesson
Writing the Ending Without Writing a Lesson

For the last chapter that lectures, or the one that just trails off, and the story that is not over yet.

$25

Get the guide
Writing the Hard Thing Without Writing a Dirge
Writing the Hard Thing Without Writing a Dirge

For material heavy enough that early readers flinch, and a draft that holds one note for three hundred pages.

$25

Get the guide

Not sure where to start?

Start with the free guide. Every path from there is marked.

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