Dear Colleagues:

We’ve all been there, stuck on a plane with some guy who talks and talks. But it’s not just that he’s endlessly talking that tickles that gagging valve.  He’s talking about himself -- and he’s not very interesting. So you’re stuck for hours on end listening to him, either out of courtesy or because every now and then he does drop a nugget of useful information. But that guy is always telling you how he felt, and his manner implies that this is the way you should feel, too.

Adam Hochschild has been there too. And he has some good advice for when we’re using personal experience in our narrative so that we can make sure we’re not that blowhard on a 12-hour transatlantic flight.

For one thing, Hochschild told us in his session, we need to be sure that if we’re going to use personal experience, it’s used in the service of making some larger point. An event is interesting because it’s a part of humanity, “not because it happened to YOU,” he reminded us.

It’s kind of odd that Hochschild would have to remind us -- of all audiences -- to write things down, but it’s still necessary advice. Most of the time, as reporters, we only break out those notebooks when we’re covering something on deadline and we’re going to write about it in a matter of hours. But, he told us if you think you might want to write about it someday,  it’s time to write it down, even if you might not come back to it for years. Plus, “taking notes forces you to be more observant,” he said. The attention to detail is crucial in making compelling reading.

In fact, Hochschild suggests we just carry *two* notebooks, one for the story we’ll write right away, and a second for the experiences we’ll use in the future. “Learn to dip into it,” he said, leading into the other tool that is useful for writing effective memoir: time. “It’s always helpful to let some time go before you write,” when you’re writing personal experience, he said. “You need time to dissect it, to absorb, to figure out fully what (these experiences) mean.” But it’s also a good idea to review those notes periodically, and start organizing them into containers so that your notes are easier to organize if and when you’re ready to use them.

And when it’s time to actually sit down and write, Hochschild urged us to run this past other people. Use friends as a sounding board, he said, both before and after you write that first draft. Friends will let you know if you’re on the right track.  He strongly suggests deciding on your structure early on. If it’s a book you’re working on, outline and take a stab at a first draft early on, so that it’s easier to see where and what kind of holes you want to fill in.

It’s this attention to detail that makes Hochschild interesting to read. But what stuck with me most was one of his ending thoughts. He said the goal is “not to talk about your own feelings, but give the audience the facts and situations as you experienced them, in hopes that the reader will feel the same way.” It shows respect for the reader to allow him or her to draw their own conclusions, instead of forcing our life on them. And a few hours later, as I checked in at the airport, I silently hoped I’d get “stuck” on a transatlantic flight with Hochschild someday, a day when my experiences might prove as interesting to him as his are to me. As it was, I spent my flight home redlining a lot of my own work, and composing e-mails to my friends, asking them to have a look-see at yet another revision.

Veronica Rusnak is a freelance writer and photojournalist.