Dona Munker: Writing a Biography

Dec 23, 2012 11:29 AM EST

This is great advice for any writer, not just a biographer. Thanks

- Nevin

Dec 19, 2012 2:29 PM EST

Thank you. It's been a struggle for me, and I make lots of exceptions like "it's holiday time, there's too much else to do." BTW, the link to Charles Shields' post did not work for me.

- Ann H

Dec 19, 2012 6:51 PM EST

I think it's a struggle for nearly every writer, except perhaps those who have to produce on deadline, like journalists. For writers who have to tell a story from research, developing a routine is complicated by having to frequently interrupt the story-writing process to consult our research or look something up.

That's why I found Shields' post helpful. By the way, thanks for letting me know that the link wasn't working. I've fixed it, but if you still have trouble, click on Shields' name in the sidebar to get to his two posts; it's the one called "Chop Wood, Carry Water."

I do think that if one can find a way, or several ways, to make the hard work of writing easier and less onerous, and if one can focus on the parts that are fun and rewarding instead of the parts that are pure agony, it becomes easier to begin and thus easier to keep going. Enjoyment is more likely to lead to a routine than flogging oneself for not getting it done, a technique that I've found usually has the opposite result from the one I'm hoping for. :)

- Dona Munker

May 18, 2013 12:06 PM EDT

Thank you so much for this article on following the narrative thread throughout a biography (or any story for that matter). I have published many human interest articles and am contemplating my first biography. Your reminder to stay focused on the central theme applies to my magazine article writing and causes me to think that if I can keep sight of the "red thread", I can write longer pieces (biography) too! Thank you.

- Alicea Jones

May 19, 2013 5:05 PM EDT

You're welcome--glad to help!

I was once a baby editor at Little, Brown & Co, and one of the things that struck me when I read book proposals from journalists was how good they were at writing succinctly but serially, rather than developing an overarching theme. It's hard after years of developing the essential skills needed to "write short" (which I definitely do not possess!) to make the transition to "writing long." But "writing long" really just involves identifying and fully developing what Vivian Gornick in "The Situation and the Story" calls "the thing the writer has come to say"--the overarching message--and then making every single chapter and paragraph and sentence and episode and character build toward saying it, or illustrating it.

If you attended the "Beginnings and Endings" session at the end of the BIO conference, I'm sure you were as struck as I was by what Debby Applegate and her co-panelists had to say about how fundamental that is: "The thing one has come to say" has to start in the first paragraph and (one way or another) run all the way through the book to the last paragraph.

That demands a somewhat different skill set, and sometimes developing it can be scary and frustrating, but it's not magic. It's a learned skill--and it's a big part of the fun, the discovery, the excitement of writing a biography.

I took a lot of notes at that session and in the next couple of weeks I will try hard to get around to posting them, so hopefully I'll have more for you soon (well, relatively soon) on the subject of "following through."

- Dona Munker

Sep 22, 2016 12:35 PM EDT

Thanks for the details on the red thread, I was looking it up with the hope of finding it in other languages.

- Eleanor