New year, new habits: How to start writing with author Kelly Corrigan

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: Manoush interviews memoirist Kelly Corrigan about how she writes from ordinary life, why detail matters, and how journaling, reading, and accountability can help aspiring memoirists start. Corrigan reflects on writing about her father’s final days, the surprising success of her memoir The Middle Place, and how personal stories can resonate broadly when told with specificity and emotional truth.

Main Topics: Memoir as a practice of noticing ordinary life (Priority: 5/5): Corrigan explains that her writing often transforms mundane domestic moments into vivid, meaningful scenes through close observation and detail. How to start writing a memoir (Priority: 5/5): She recommends making writing a daily habit, reading while writing, joining a writing group or accountability partnership, and imagining a real recipient for the work. Writing about her father and grief (Priority: 5/5): The conversation centers on an excerpt from Tell Me More, describing her father’s last days and how writing became a way to process loss and make sense of grief. Why ordinary family stories can become bestsellers (Priority: 4/5): Corrigan discusses the unexpected commercial success of The Middle Place and argues that readers respond to love stories and everyday lives, not just heroic or sensational narratives. The power of specific detail in prose (Priority: 5/5): She emphasizes that concrete details—brands, textures, sensations—create immersion and turn general description into lived experience for readers. Writing as communication rather than compulsion (Priority: 4/5): Corrigan says she is compelled to communicate and compare notes, but does not experience writing as an irresistible internal force; solitude makes it the least satisfying mode for her.

Key Arguments: Aspiring memoirists should build a regular habit and use external accountability, because consistency matters more than inspiration. Reading while writing can improve craft and keep a writer engaged with language and structure. Imagining a recipient for the work can be motivating; Corrigan wrote so she could hand the story to her father. Specific sensory details are what make writing feel alive and place a reader inside a moment. Readers are interested in ordinary lives when those lives are told with honesty, love, and precision. Writing during grief can be especially productive because grief is isolating and writing can help make sense of it.

Data Points: Duration with father before death: 14 days - Corrigan describes spending 14 days with her father during the final stage of his illness in Tell Me More. Age of writing habit start: Since seventh grade - She says she has been journaling since seventh grade and has crates of notebooks. Camping letter length: 14-page letters - As a child at camp, she wrote long, detailed letters home describing daily life. Common nonfiction bestseller examples: Barack Obama, Tony Dungy, Lea(la) Coca - She cites the nonfiction bestseller list at the time as dominated by men’s memoirs and business/sports figures. Books occupying memoir market slots: Eat, Pray, Love; The Glass Castle - She notes these books as prior holders of the limited slot for a widely read personal memoir by women.

Pivotal Quotes: "It's the detail that makes it come alive." — Kelly Corrigan: Her core advice on how to make writing vivid and immersive. "I think it's a daily habit." — Kelly Corrigan: Her first recommendation for anyone wanting to start memoir or personal writing. "He loved and was loved in equal measure." — Kelly Corrigan (excerpt from Tell Me More): A concluding line from her passage about her father’s final days, summarizing the emotional heart of the memoir.

Implications: For listeners, memoir-writing is framed as accessible: start small, write regularly, and use detail. For the industry, Corrigan’s success suggests audiences want intimate, ordinary, emotionally true stories—not only sensational ones.