Imagine a pen hovering over a page—in a moment of suspension, before the idea takes shape. You have a sense of the story you want to tell, but the shape of it is still inderminante. You don’t have all the answers. You’re not even sure if you’re asking the right questions.
The only way forward is to start and find out.
Memoir Nation began in the same spirit as any memoir—as a daring creative act that we trusted would take shape in meaningful, inspiring, and perhaps life-changing ways.
Brooke and I had a vision—a community where memoir writers could find one another, develop their craft, and feel less alone in the vulnerable work of writing their stories. We had a blueprint, one drawn with the deep experiences we’d each had with writing communities over the years, but most of all we had trust and faith—faith that the act of beginning will deliver its own kind of wisdom.
We believed in the wise words of Tina Fey: “You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.”
That goes for writing a memoir as well.
We went down the chute, and we hope we have served your writing, shepherded your writing, and lifted up your writing in all of the following ways and more!
We’ve hosted nearly 100 “Show Up and Write” accountability writing sessions
We’ve posted approximately 1,000 inspiring social media posts
We’ve held monthly classes with memoir masters such as Maggie Smith, Carvell Wallace, Sue Williams Silverman, Amanda Knox, and more
We’ve celebrated hundreds of thousands of words written during JanYourStory 2026
Guess what? We’re going to do it all again—and more.
If you haven’t subscribed to Path #2 or Path #3, sign up now!
Here are some lessons from our first year that we plan to carry forward next year.
Trust in others
One of the gifts of diving in is that you discover what something actually wants to be, rather than just what you imagined it would be.
Memoir Nation became something we couldn’t have fully designed from the outside because it became yours as much as ours from the start. The community formed itself in the spaces between the prompts and the write-ins, in the conversations after a class, in the way you showed up for each other’s creative breakthroughs and challenges with generosity and care.
We provided the container. You filled it.
That’s the thing about community: you can’t manufacture it. You can create the conditions for it, but then you have to trust the rest to happen.
Untold stories don’t just need a page—they need a room to be heard in. Over the past year, we’ve watched something genuinely rare take root: a group of writers who make each other braver. Who remind each other that their lives are worth writing about. Who push each other, gently, toward finding their truth.
On commitment
Finding one’s truth requires something that is as important as imagination itself : commitment.
Research has shown that commitment is even more important for success than intelligence or talent. It is a superheroic elixir. It’s more than just persistence. It’s a persistence that’s fortified with passion, optimism, and hope.
Enthusiasm says: I love this idea. Commitment says: I’m still here, even when it’s hard, even when I’m tired, even when I can’t remember why I started.
We think of commitment not as a gritted-teeth obligation but as a form of love—a decision you keep making, quietly, over and over. This is true of writing, and it’s true of community, and we hope it’s true of Memoir Nation as well. Staying in a room with people, over time, through all the seasons of the work—that’s where the real thing grows. Not in the launch, but in the long middle.
A year is not a long time. But it’s long enough to know that this is real. Long enough to have been changed by it. Long enough to say: we’re committed to this, and we know what that means now in a way we couldn’t have known at the beginning.
Here’s to year two
So here’s what we’re celebrating: the writers who dove in alongside us. The ones who came to the first session, and the ones who found us six months later. The ones who shared difficult memories and the ones who wrote about joy. The ones who almost quit and came back. The ones who are still figuring out what their story is about.
We’re celebrating the shape that emerged when we stopped trying to control the shape. We’re celebrating the commitment—yours and ours—to keep showing up.
The blank page is still a little terrifying. That’s how we know it matters.
Here’s to year two!
Join us to toast our birthday!
Join us Friday, May 22, from 2 - 3 PDT for a celebration and a check-in about how this first year of Memoir Nation has gone. We’ll revisit what we’ve done, what we’ve been writing, past goals set or met, and what we hope to bring to the Community for Year 2.
Join us with tea or champagne or whatever suits your afternoon/evening celebration plans. Come say hi in real time in a more unstructured kind of Zoom space to celebrate us, the citizens of Memoir Nation, and all we’ve done!
Next Class is May 21st:
Marketing for Memoirists!
Weekly Inspiration!
Weekly Prompt
Travel back in time. You’re observing the world you were in when you were just one. Who held you? How did they hold you? What drama was happening around you? Were you safe and secure? Were things stable? What were your parents hopes for you? What were their fears? Write one page to create the world you saw at the age of one.
Weekly Quote
“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die,
we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”
― Sue Monk Kidd
Weekly Question
Answer this in the Community.
“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen,” said the American novelist Katherine Anne Porter. What do you think?
Courtney Kocak on Writing
Openly About Sex
Lots of writers want to write about sex and all the ways it shows up in their lives—and yet, it’s incredibly challenging to do. It’s exposing and uncomfortable. It means sharing the most intimate moments of our own lives, but also the lives of others. It can involve sharing mistakes, shame, and also some of the worst things that have ever happened to us when it comes to the negative side of the sexual spectrum: assault and abuse.
That’s why this week’s show and conversation with Courtney Kocak is extra impactful. She talks about her own journey and evolution, and what she learned about herself and her own journey from writing her “accidental” feminist coming-of-age story, as she calls it. An encouraging message this week that you can do it, too. We’re all learning to live out loud a little better through our writing, one word at a time.
Courtney Kocak is a writer, podcaster, and comedian based in Los Angeles. She originally hails from a rural farming community in Minnesota, home to more cows than people. As a writer, Kocak wrote for Amazon’s Emmy-winning animated series Danger & Eggs and Netflix’s Know It All. Her bylines include The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan, Slate, HuffPost, The Sun, Catapult, BUST, Bustle, and others. She hosts three podcasts, The Bleeders, Private Parts Unknown, and Podcast Bestie, and her new memoir is Girl Gone Wild.
Free event: Feedback Friday
Join us for this Friday, May 8, from 9 - 10 PDT for Feedback Friday: 10 readers will read their work to a supportive audience. This is a free event, open to all!
Read our Substack post about why we love this monthly event so much already.
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Congrats and thank you for your first year. I've been a Path 3 member since the start and have participated in webinars, JanYourStory, and Sunday Show Up & Write zooms. The community and the craft talks are so helpful. Exactly a year ago this week, I turned in a problematic, messy, incomplete, too-long first draft to Brooke for assessment. I completely started over my memoir last summer with a different structure and focus. Thanks in large part to Memoir Nation's support, the rewrite is done, and I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about it!
Congratulations. Well done. Looking forward to hearing more craft lectures in the coming year.