This day was bound to come. I might even say it is long overdue. Took a deep dive today into the research to come up with an outline, settle on a word count for my first draft, and find “similar” books that echo thematically the memoir I want to write. The memoirs Educated by Tara Westover; The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and the play August, Osage County by Tracy Letts resonate deeply. If you know those books, that should give you insight into where my project is going. In my professional writing career, I learned that an 8″ x 11″ page of double-spaced copy equals approximately 250 words. This generally accepted desirable “mean” manuscript length (more or less) is around 50,000 words. That means I have to produce at least a 200-page manuscript as a start. That is the easy part. What to put into those 200 pages is where the project gets tricky. In writing memoirs or personal narratives, take for granted that large swaths of your life will end up on the cutting room floor. No one wants to read page after page of pointless deep and sticky details. I know I don’t. I don’t want to write like that either. So we must get selective about what we bring back and plan to put in the book. We cannot produce every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking for guests coming over for dinner on Saturday night. We have to pick and choose what to share, one dish at a time. Ensuing dinner dates and the dishes we serve at those meals can be compared to cooking up chapters in our book. I acknowledge this is something of a mixed metaphor. Still, I hope you – dear reader – get my drift. As my craft deepens, I can only hope my metaphors improve. Still, looking forward to a Julia Child entree for dinner next weekend isn’t such a shabby analogy, metaphor, what-have-you. With the writer’s retreat in New Smyrna Beach, Florida behind me, keeping up my motivation is mandatory. I feel very lucky to have stumbled into the online company of a group of great women writers who are more or less focussed on the same writing goals as me. They show up from across the continent on a scheduled Zoom call three times a week from Hawaii, and, California and Colorado and Texas, and Costa Rica. As an added bonus, I get weather reports from all over the continent. We start with a grounding meditation, set our intention in the chat box, go away for an hour to work on whatever we are working and come back together at the end of the hour. to debrief what we accomplished That said, we are a garrulous lot. The topics of our half-hour freespeak time after we’ve all checked in have covered the known universe. Lately, those topics have touched onAI, universal themes in life and literature, writing blocks and how to push through them, and how our personal lives support or detract from our writing progress. The topics are as diverse as the women in the group. If you are looking for a supportive platform to share your work, create an accountability group of your own. I have hooked up to a “group in progress” and have lucked out. Like the formation of any social group, you need to feel out the temperature and tone to see if the people you are connecting to are simpatico. That can take some time and a little alchemy to find. Be prepared to do a little online “writer’s group” shopping until you find your pack. So worth it.