My first book is about twins who are attached: two people who are joined and can't escape each other.
What makes writing a memoir difficult is harder to quantify. Is it learning to know when you're ready to talk about something? Is it seeing the structure in a lumpen mass of fact? Is it finding out what you were really like as other people saw you? Yes to each.
I suppose that, for most of us, the fascination of conjoined twins is that such people can serve as symbols.
What's Denver's feel? I know there're mountains, and people in western hats, but I never got a good sense of the city.
Often it's the people who know a place least well who write about it best because they see it fresh.
Society isn't good at dealing with people who have something concrete to feel guilty about or who are dealing with a loss.
I guess when you write a personal story, people feel compelled to share their own stories.
I delivered Chinese food on Long island, which is pretty depressing. I lived with my parents and did that for six months. I got a job a few towns over from mine so I wouldn't have to see people from my high school.
You can work really hard and well on something, and someone you respect might hate it; worse, they're not empirically wrong for doing so. This is scary, especially for people who haven't been published.
The main thing is to think strategically about what will engage your readers. Trust me when I tell you that few people are eager to read a story whose opening lines sound like a dissertation on giant bugs.