Memoir Study

Your Map covered three kinds of mentor at once, because when we started I didn't know which one you needed. Now you do. People usually find out by reading. The content mentors were reassuring, the stance mentors clarified something, and then one book came apart in your hands and you couldn't stop thinking about how it was built.

A Study follows that one axis for twelve books.

The annotation goes further than the Map's. For each title you get the move, the place in the book where you can watch it happen, and a short note on what it would look like in your draft. There's a reading order, and there are three things to try when you've read the first four.

Form is for drafts that collapse or sprawl, for material that won't go in order, for the sense that the container is wrong and you can't tell what the right one would be.

Stance is for the ethical questions, the tonal wobble, the people in your book who didn't ask to be there, and the fear that someone will say it didn't happen.

Content is for when you're ready to read your own subject again without it costing you anything. Chosen to be unlike each other, so the territory opens.

If you aren't sure which you need, say so and tell me what you read. Choosing correctly is most of the work, and it's on me.