When a Memoir Becomes a Novel

A conversation with Rosa Kwon Easton

Today, over at the #amwritingpodcast I to talk to my friend Rosa Kwon Easton about her debut novel, White Mulberry.

Rosa holds a very special place in my heart and my history because she was at the first ever workshop where I taught my Blueprint framework, which is a method of inquiry for getting a book out of your head and onto the page before you start to write.

We met in the back of a gift shop in Redondo Beach, where the shop owner loved to support the arts. There was a little room she let people use and I signed up to teach the Blueprint to five writers.

At that time, Rosa thought that she was writing a true story about three generations in her Korean and Korean-American family. She was calling it a memoir.

She planned the book, wrote the book, revised the book, and pitched the book. Then she pulled back to re-imagine the story, decided to write a novel, and did it all over again. She was persistent and diligent, becoming a student of the writing process and the publishing marketplace, and volunteering her time at her local libraries.

Ten years after that workshop, Rosa’s story is being published by Lake Union as a novel.

In this discussion, we talk about that long development process and the profound switch from writing a true story to writing fiction and how Rosa navigated the whole thing.

It’s a fantastic conversation for a book coach, because while we are in the business of helping a writer catch their vision, sometimes that vision is very hard to pin down!

You can listen here: #amwritingpodcast

---