The 90-Day Memoir: Tell the Story of Your Life

by Alan Watt

Join the 80,000+ writers who have taken the 90-day journey! The 90-Day Memoir is a day-by-day guide through the process of outlining and writing the first draft of your memoir. Bestselling author and founder of L.A. Writers' Lab, Alan Watt, teaches the process of marrying the wildness of your imagination to the rigor of structure to tell the story of your life. The 90-Day Memoir was workshopped at L.A. Writers' Lab for over a decade. Many of Watt's students have gone on to become professional writers, bestselling authors, and win major literary awards.

“Alan Watt is a master at bringing out the stories hidden in your subconscious. The 90-Day Memoir is the perfect companion to bring forth your story that is begging to be told.”
— Jennifer L. Scott, New York Times Bestselling Author of Lessons from Madame Chic

“Alan Watt’s 90-Day Memoir is a masterful guided tour to your interior world, structured perfectly. And, amazingly to me, it ends with a mostly completed rough draft in just three months.”
– Bill Buzenberg, Former head of NPR News, Minnesota Public Radio and the Center for Public Integrity)

“Writing a memoir requires direction and care. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the intuitive guidance of Alan Watt’s brilliantly constructed 90-Day Memoir.” - Sophie Uliano, New York Times bestselling author of Gorgeously Green

"Watt teaches you to live in your scenes and set aside the hypercritical surveillance that can plague the process."
- Frank B. Wilderson III, American Book Award Winner for A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid

"Where do professional writers and writing instructors turn when they need inspiration and guidance with their own work? This one turns to Al Watt. Al is not only a guru when it comes to structure and form, but his teachings reach deeper into the emotional and spiritual reasons for telling our stories. The 90-Day Memoir distills some of his best guidance. I turn to his words again and again."
- Samantha Dunn, bestselling memoirist of Not by Reconstructing a Careless Life

“Having had many powerful teachers, creative and otherwise, Alan is in a league all his own. His well-honed and well-earned mastery of the craft of writing, his awareness of the human condition, and his own very apparent evolution as a person, among many other qualities, coincide to create an experience like no other. If you have the opportunity to study with Al, don’t miss it.”
– Robert Gant, actor Queer As Folk

“The workshop was without a doubt the key to getting my travel memoir about living with the poor in Vietnam out of a rut. Al is brilliant and has an uncanny ability to draw out the issues and angles you didn’t know you had in you. It was also fascinating to hear the work of other writers and learn from Al’s comments to them. I finished my book and had offers from two publishing houses.” —Karin Esterhammer, author of So Happiness to Meet You, Prospect Park Books, Winner of the Nautilus Book Award’s Silver Medal

"Alan Watt is a master teacher, with a brilliant intuitive understanding of story.

Genres: Writing

338 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 3, 2023

About the author

Alan Watt is a novelist, screenwriter and playwright. His bestselling novel Diamond Dogs (Little, Brown), won numerous awards including France’s 2004 Prix Printemps (best foreign novel). He recently adapted the book for French film company, Quad, and it is soon to be a feature film. His book, The 90-Day Novel, is one of the top-selling books on writing. He's also the author of The 90-Day Rewrite and (coming Fall 2013) The 90-Day Screenplay.

Al founded L.A. Writers’ Lab in 2002 as a place for writers to deepen their craft by learning to marry the rigor of structure to the freedom of the muse. He has taught everyone from award-winning authors to A-list screenwriters, journalists, poets, actors, professional athletes, war veterans, housewives, doctors, lawyers, television showrunners, Emmy-winning directors, first-time writers, and anyone else with a story to tell.

Reviews

[Richard P · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 90-Day Memoir is the best, most comprehensive book I've read on the topic. It includes everything, from expert how-to teaching to prompts. This is a book one can utilize to actually write and have a tangible product at the end of. It's step-by-step, day-by-day, bite-by-bite (bird-by-bird) -- so it's manageable, really do-able -- not overwhelming. It's also fascinating and fun. So many books want you to adhere to a specific formula. This book is different. It explains structural things, but teaches you how to get your subconscious involved, so your book is uniquely you and uniquely true. I highly, highly recommend. (This is Gabrielle Lennon, Rick Knowlton's wife, by the way.)

[Jodi J · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells you step-by-step how to write a memoir. It’s like having my one personal coach right there walking me through the process, encouraging me, and addressing my fears as I go. As I continue to work through Al’s process I find myself having small and large transformations within that are life-changing. I used to just dream of writing a memoir but now I am actually doing it! I feel certain that will publish someday, but even if I don’t, the internal shifts I’ve had throughout this process are worth a thousand times the price of this book. If you are like me and have thought about writing a memoir for years, but don’t know where to start, definitely get this book!! And to the author, if you read reviews, thank you for being such a profound guide and teacher.

[Lis Anna-Langston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. I also highly recommend the 90 Day Novel and especially the 90 Day Rewrite. There are a few things I really love about this memoir version. First, it sets a timeline. When working on a project you need a deadline. You need some type of schedule to reign in the process. This book is going to help with this because of the prompts and the way it is structured.

Second, the biggest problem I see when people sit down to write about their lives is sheer overwhelm. They literally think they are writing about their entire lives beginning to end. Not true. While you may explore the entire landscape of your life you are writing to a theme, a moment, an experience, a specificity that threads all seemingly disparate moments together in a coherent narrative. This book is extremely helpful in this respect. It gives direction and pointers, exercises to deepen the mystery and a thoughtful well organized way to navigate the chaos of truly great writing. Highly recommend.

Al is a great teacher and I highly recommend his classes if this book is really helping you achieve your goal. The classes will take you to the next level.

[philipjmcgrade · Rating 5 out of 5]

It arrived on time. There is a reading for each of the ninety days with a quotation and guidance and writing excercises. It uses a great mixture of open ended writing prompts and structure beats that helped me to stay on track with my first and second drafts. I have done a lot of different courses and I own a lot of books on writing but this is one of the best as it is pragmatic but also free flowing where it has to be so that I never felt that I was 'painting by numbers'. For anyone looking for a wise guide through a first draft or a rewrite it is a Godsend and great value for all the material that is in there. I would highly recommend this book to one and all.

[Julie Lancaster · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so inspiring. Al is inspiring in all the good ways. Even though I’m writing from my own story he is masterful at supporting writers in building tension - using their imagination to show, not tell and uses humor and metaphor to get his point across. So smart. This book is a must read if you want to mother your work before you father it. My perfectionism can kick up and instead I’m leaning in - and that’s a miracle! Thanks Al!

[Sharon Silber · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book by a well-regarded writing teacher is a useful guide for getting into your story. I have had the book for a month but have been working with the author’s prompts on his website, LA Writer, for the past 6 months, directed there by a former writing workshop teacher. Alan’s prompts are excellent and his writing exercises are too. (He suggests doing some of them with your non-dominant hand but for someone who can barely read her writing done by her dominant hand, I would disregard that. Also the idea that writing with a non-dominant hand has some special relationship to your unconscious seems to me far-fetched and unscientific) But aside from such quibbles and some advice you are not going to take anyway (write for 2 hours a day and don’t make any major life decisions for the next 3 months?!), this has much that you can use. One piece of advice I wished I had read, “Don’t discuss what you are planning to write with family members” would have saved me from the “you’re not going to write about x, are you? I don’t think our y (substitute your own dead parent here) would want you to write about that” comment which I received. In this generous book Alan Watt gives you over 200 prompts and many exercises. The way I see it is this way: Mr. Watt’s writing course costs $1500. By buying this book for $16.95 you are saving yourself $1483.05. So how can you lose? But whether you buy the book or not, start writing (if you didn’t want to you wouldn’t be reading this review). My mom took a free course at her public library in a small city in Florida and her book of stories written to prompts (write about money, write about religion, write about your first job, that kind of thing) about growing up in Brooklyn during the 1930s and 1940s are a treasure for us. If you write for 15 minutes a day (about half a page) for the next year, you will have 180 pages by the end of the year. Get going.

[Laura Levine · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the things that differentiates "The 90-day memoir" from even the very best of its competitors is its insight into how the mind works. This is particularly true when it comes to the subject of fear. In the preparatory exercises, for instance, Watt asks writers to make a list of every possible fear they have about writing a memoir. Not content to have writers merely acknowledge their fears in order to relocate them “outside,” the mind, as other how-to books often do, Watt demonstrates the way these fears are actually constitutive of the characters themselves. The book’s wisdom about how to make use of negative emotions—ones which might ordinarily inhibit writing-–is part of what makes it so valuable. In his classes, Watt invokes Einstein’s claim that a problem can’t be solved on the same level of consciousness that created it, in part to suggest that what may seem like “bad writing” is the inability to see the whole problem before a draft is written, an inability endemic to the writing process. Reminders like this one suggest the book’s philosophical insight as well as its worth as a practical guide.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The 90-Day Memoir" is like having a friend guide you through writing your life story, breaking it down into easy daily tasks spread over three months. it's all about keeping it real, digging deep into your experiences, and sharing the lessons you've learned. With loads of practical tips and prompts to get you thinking, this book takes you on a journey of self-discovery and creativity. It's like therapy, but way more fun! So, if you've got a story to tell, grab this book and get writing!

[Jennifer P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an excellent day by day guide for getting your stories on the page. It's insightful, well-structured and completely motivating. I wrote the first draft of a book thanks to Al's method. I will return to his approach again and again.

[Teresa Bitler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been such a big help to me. I've had an idea for a memoir for some time now but had a hard time getting anything on paper. I didn't know where to start. This book gave me a framework to start with but also the creative license to let the story evolve. I'm now well into the first act of my book and find the pages seem to flow.