A few months ago, I wrote in a blog post that I was finally working on writing my memoir. Like, for real this time.
“I’ve started working on my memoir again, for real. I’ve set myself a strict rule of writing for at least one hour and 500 words per day. It’s a modest goal, to be sure, but in the past five days I’ve written 3801 words. For the first time in a while, I feel truly confident in my ability to complete this book.”
-Heather Mason (pretentiously quoting herself), February 2021
This wasn’t the first time I had made such a pronouncement so I wouldn’t blame you for not believing me. I’m not even sure I believed myself.
But here we are, a little less than four months later, and I’ve been keeping my word. I sit down every day at 9:00 a.m. and write for an hour. At the end of each hour I add the number of words I wrote that day — I committed to at least 500, and I’ve achieved that goal virtually every day — to a crude Google spreadsheet.
Each row of the spreadsheet is a chapter, following the story outline I created last year. Each time I complete a chapter, I highlight that row in yellow and move to the next line of the spreadsheet.
I can hardly believe I’m typing this, but according to my spreadsheet I have drafted 23.5 of the 25 chapters in my outline. My manuscript is more than 94,000 words — 70,000 of which I’ve written since February.
Disclaimer: I’m pretty sure my manuscript is shit. I’m not just saying this in an insincere effort to sound self-deprecating. I seriously think most of the writing is not good. I’ve made a specific point of not going back and re-reading what I write each day, because if I did so I would realize how terrible the writing is — uninspired and disjointed, boring, with terrible dialogue — and then I would pluck my eyebrows out and collapse to the floor in a puddle of tears.
But thanks to Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird and my new writing guru (thanks for the recommendation, Carla), I now know that the first draft of a story is always shitty. First drafts are meant to be shitty, in fact, and that’s why they are called “first drafts”. I just have to deal with that fact and get the thing done. I need to get the story down, in all its boring and uninspired glory, and worry about the rest later.
I’m doing it. I’m going to get this shitty draft done within the next month. And then I’ll re-read it, and tear my eyebrows out and collapse into a puddle of tears, and then I’ll pick myself up again and start editing.
In celebration of my nearly complete shitty draft, I’m sharing an excerpt below. This is one of the parts of the draft that I feel sort of okay about, mainly because it’s about an incident that is still fairly clear in my memory. (The hardest part about writing a memoir, I have learned, is that I can’t remember anything because I have a remarkably shitty memory. I’m still trying to figure out how to solve this issue.)
Those of you who follow me on Patreon have read this excerpt already. (Each week I share a brief memoir snippet — basically whichever section I wrote that week that I think is the least shitty — with my Patreon followers. It’s a way to thank them for supporting me and also to keep myself honest.)
Note the story below includes a description of a dead body.
Memoir Excerpt: The Morgue (December 2011)
Three days after Jon died, we went to the mortuary at Helen Joseph Hospital. “Mortuary” is too polite a word though. Really, it was the morgue.
For legal reasons, someone had to go to Helen Joseph to identify Jon. S, Jon’s sister, invited me along but I don’t think she expected me to accept.
I never considered not going. I felt desperate to connect with Jon in some way, any way — to feel like I was saying a real goodbye. I hoped seeing his body, even in a morgue, would comfort me or at least help me comprehend he was gone.
There were seven of us and we drove to Helen Joseph, the big public hospital on Perth Road, in two cars. Maybe I drove one of the cars. Someone else must have been in the car with me. But I can’t remember.
Helen Joseph is only a couple of miles from Melville but feels like a different country. It’s the type of hospital no one goes to — as a patient, staff member, or visitor — unless they have no other choice. Yet Helen Joseph is always overflowing with people. The outside is a maze of dirt parking lots and ambiguous signs and security guards pointing in various directions. The inside is the same, but darker. I’m not sure how we found the morgue.
The word “mortuary” was frosted into the glass above the door. We stepped into a drab little office. The manager, Mr. Van Dyk, stood up from behind a desk and greeted us without smiling.
Mr. Van Dyk was tall, pasty white, with greasy brown hair and 1970s clothes — exactly as I would have imagined a morgue manager to look. I felt certain he’d been sitting at that desk since well before the end of apartheid. S exchanged niceties with Mr. Van Dyk and explained why we had come. Mr. Van Dyk disappeared behind an interior door.
I expected a big room filled with cadavers, each hidden inside a sliding metal cupboard, like I’d seen on TV. In reality, the place where we went to see Jon was just a hallway. Mr. Van Dyk rolled the body out from somewhere else and it sat on a gurney, alone, with no other bodies around.
We waited around the corner, single file, leaning against the wall. J, Jon’s mother, went to see the body first. S went with her I think. I don’t remember how we decided the order. I don’t remember how anyone else reacted. But I think I went last.
I walked around the corner, approached the gurney, and stood a few inches away. Mr. Van Dyk looked on from a distance. I guess he wasn’t allowed to leave us alone.
I could tell it was Jon’s body, barely. It was wrapped in thick, semi-opaque plastic and I could only see his face. His head was swollen and his lips were bluish. There was dried blood under his nose.
I wanted to feel like I was with Jon. I wanted to feel him — to force myself to make some kind of connection. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
I couldn’t bring myself to touch his face. I reached out and lightly touched my fingers to the plastic, about where his shoulder would be. It felt like touching a frozen chicken that had been thawing in the fridge. I recoiled.
I stood there, shaking, and cried, trying to think of something meaningful. I didn’t want to feel like I’d come to this horrible place for nothing. I closed my eyes, wracked my brain, and thought of one word: Believe.
I doubt I stood there for longer than two minutes.
T, Jon’s brother, told me the night before that he thought Jon’s soul left his body ten days before he died. I found that idea hard to think about. I didn’t want to believe he’d already been gone so long.
But I know I wasn’t with Jon in the morgue. I would find him later, far away from Helen Joseph and the thick plastic and Mr. Van Dyk.

If that little snippet is anything to go by, I can’t wait to read the rest. You have an incredible ability to make one feel as though they were right there with you. Looking forward to your more fun times and experiences.
Thanks! I really appreciate that. It’s just really hard to keep up this level of excitement in the lass exciting parts. But I’m working on it 🙂
Wow Heather. Great writing about a seriously sad experience. I hope you share some more before you publish.
Thanks Peggy, I’m sure I will.
You are a great writer, Heather, first drafts are first drafts, for sure, but you have always been a wonderful storyteller – you know how to take us on the journey with you, I am also looking forward to reading the whole book ????
Congrats on being so accomplished – writing with such focus, and almost the whole thing in such a short time is pretty amazing.
Thanks so much, Dagmar!
Keep going Heather, Love your writing. My name is on the list to buy your memoir!
Thanks Wendy 🙂
This extract evokes gut feelings and definitely makes me want to read more so – add me to the list of buyers.
I admire your discipline with your writing; hoping to follow your example ‘when I grow up’…
Thanks so much, Margaret. Hope you’re well.
Wow, well done Heather, sooo many words. Very readable first draft. Can’t wait for the book.
Thanks Di! I’m also amazed by how many words it is!
Heather. This is wonderful. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been to write – and remember- about it. I eagerly await the whole thing! And even if YOU think this is shitty, it really isn’t — it’s gripping and evocative.
Thanks Nancy. This is definitely one of the best parts. My goal is to get the rest of it to be like this, which feels impossible right now but I’ll just take it step by step.
Your writing is story telling on paper and by reading the words you get involved in your live by the way you write down the words. Looking forward to read the rest of the book.
Thanks Maarten!
Struggling with my own writing as I am right now (and often being very unimpressed with it) this excerpt which you shared (thank you) is very readable, real and also moving. Hope you will carry on until you reckon you’re done.
I’ve only shown mine (now finished and shorter than yours) to one friend and it was very useful and I’ve changed and edited a lot in the last week.
Keep going Heather – you’ll get there!
Thanks Ruth, it sounds like you’re also making great progress. Good luck to both of us 🙂
Excellent work getting that first draft done! I wish I could put all the celebratory emojis in this comment. Anne Lamott has some of the best quotes and advice, doesn’t she?! Especially when it comes to memoirs.
That’s a heartbreaking piece on the mortuary. Took me back to saying good-bye to my mother, struggling to find one last moment of connection–though I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing until I read your piece. Well done.
That is a really nice compliment you just gave me. Thank you.
It must be arduous writing about one, past, relationship when you are in a new one. But 500 words / hour – that is some going girl! (If I get down 1,000 a day I give myself a free beer)
Thanks David. I feel like I need to add the qualifier that lots of times my word count is augmented by blog posts/journal entries that I’ve already written and am just pasting into the text. But it’s still hard somehow.
PS, in response to your first point: interestingly I’m finding it easier to write this memoir since my new relationship started. Thorsten is so supportive and encouraging and that really helps! In fact he was the one who convinced me to start writing every day with a specific word goal.
Congrats on your writing practice and getting through to the end of your first draft! I have no doubt of your success. Enjoy the journey, xo
Thanks Lani!
Heather, may I quote the successful Irish author Jean Grainger who has published something like 22 top sellers in 8 years. Her principle is to write 2000 words per day without considering the quality. She says that “if you haven’t written it, you can’t edit it.” Then she re-visits it many times over, until it comes right for her. She does not agonize over a blank piece of paper trying to find a good starting passage.
To me that seems a reasonable way to create quality work, and I think you are already on that path. You are also sincere in everything you write and that certainly keeps me looking forward to reading every word of it.
Thanks Stan!
Beautiful. Keep at it, looking forward to reading more.
Thanks Hitekani ????
Reading part of the memoir really evokes some sort of hurt that I haven’t even experienced yet of losing a loved one and a very dear loved one. I wonder if you were not teary as you wrote this. It’s absolutely beautiful and hurtful
Ooh. I hope I will also adopt your daily challenge to finish the memoir into my own writing ????????
Thanks Jane. I’m sure I did cry when I first wrote this down (it was many years ago actually).
Mother nature loves back all. Loved your writing.