For many people, getting started is the hardest part of writing. Grant Faulkner, who grew up in Oskaloosa and is the former director of National Novel Writing Month, has long inspired people to put words to paper with specific writing goals. The co-founder of Memoir Nation is challenging writers to spend the month of January starting their memoir by writing 500 words a day.
The challenge was inspired by Faulkner’s late father.
“My father was a lawyer in Oskaloosa for years and years, and he grew up in Iowa,” Faulkner said. “He died in 2017 and I kept thinking, if he'd only written 10,000 words about his life, how precious that would have been. It would have been more precious than anything else he left behind, I think. And so that's when the idea kind of formed itself.”
Faulkner said while everyone has a life story, most people don’t consider themselves writers, so they don’t end up writing it. Memoir Nation invites people to spend every day of January writing their story while providing a structure and community for the writers.
Faulkner said one of the most difficult parts of being a writer is finding the time in the day to write.
“I think 500 words a day is possible for most people,” Faulkner said.
Faulkner’s latest work of fiction is also inspired by bite-sized pieces of writing. He calls the book “something out there in the distance” a flash novel.
“[It’s] a kind of fragmentary writing, piecing things together, these little shards, these little fragments, these little pieces, kind of like a quilt or collage,” Faulkner said.
The story follows two characters traveling throughout the American Southwest, and each section is inspired by a different photograph from Gail Butensky, a longtime friend of Faulkner's.
Faulkner will be at Beaverdale Books in Des Moines on Jan. 23 to discuss the book with readers.
