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Courtney Kocak on How to Start (and Actually Finish) Your Memoir in Essays
by Writing Workshops Staff
An hour ago
Courtney Kocak will tell you that beginning a memoir and finishing one are two entirely different skills. Beginning means generating raw material and quieting your inner critic. Finishing means shaping that material into something cohesive, resonant, and worth rereading. She learned the difference the hard way while writing her debut memoir-in-essays, Girl Gone Wild, and now she wants to spare other writers the years she spent waiting for permission to start.
That conviction is the engine behind the 12 Months to a Full Memoir in Essays Incubator, an MFA-level program offered through WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature. Across 26 Zoom sessions and four one-on-one meetings with Courtney, you will generate more than 52,000 words, revise individual essays until they can stand on their own, and learn how a gathering of essays accumulates into a book that understands itself.
A writer, podcaster, and comedian who came to writing at 27 after a first life as an actress, Courtney teaches the way she works: she breaks overwhelming creative problems into clear, actionable steps. Expect to move past perfectionism and writer's block, to build a working table of contents and a revision roadmap, and to find the kind of accountability that actually carries a manuscript across the finish line. As she puts it, writing is solitary, but finishing a book is more collaborative than most people realize.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Courtney:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Courtney. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Courtney Kocak: I'm terrible at small talk, but I'm great at having super deep conversations with strangers, which makes me a terrific podcaster. I'm endlessly curious about people—why they do what they do, what they're ashamed of, what they long for, what they care about most. I'm also a dog mom of two pit mixes—I love rescue dogs so much. And I'm addicted to long walks. Walking is a huge part of my creative process. That's how I get the juices flowing between writing sprints.
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?
Courtney Kocak: I knew that I wanted to write a memoir someday, but someday kept getting delayed further and further into the future because I had no idea how to get started. I think a lot of aspiring memoirists get stuck waiting for some magical knowledge they don't have yet—assuming published authors just sit down and know the secrets of how to painlessly produce a book. But for me, the biggest breakthrough was realizing that writing a memoir is actually a zig-zagging process of accumulation, experimentation, and revision. It's hard, but entirely possible. Working on my debut memoir, Girl Gone Wild, taught me a ton of lessons—not just about writing and publishing, but about dedication, structure, tension, revision, emotional honesty, and what it takes to finish a big creative project. This class exists because I want to demystify that process for other writers. I want students to understand that you do not need to have everything figured out before you start. You just need tools, structure, accountability, feedback, and enough support to keep going when the going gets hard.
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Courtney Kocak: I want students to walk away understanding how to start AND how to finish their memoir manuscript. Those are two completely different skills. Beginning is about generating new material and ignoring your inner critic; finishing is about learning how to elevate and shape that material into something cohesive, dynamic, and emotionally resonant.
We'll work on moving past writer's block and perfectionism in service of writing new pages. We'll also spend a lot of time focused on scene craft, reflection, embodiment, structure, and themes. Revision is where a draft transforms from a series of events into something worth reading and remembering. My goal is for students to leave with a much stronger ability to fully express an experience on the page.
"Revision is where a draft transforms from a series of events into something worth reading and remembering."
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Courtney Kocak: David Grann opens The Wager with: "The only impartial witness was the sun." So good!
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop, one you were teaching or one you took as a student, where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Courtney Kocak: A few weeks ago, I taught a memoir class over Zoom where I guided students through a series of writing prompts designed specifically to pull out sensory details and embodiment in their scenes. Instead of just saying "add more detail," I broke the process down step-by-step: What did the room smell like? What was happening in the body? How was the dialogue physically delivered? What tiny gestures carried emotional meaning?
We did several writing sprints, and afterward students shared what they'd written. Where they landed was honestly kind of astonishing. Suddenly the scenes felt cinematic and textured. Several students were beaming after they read their work aloud because they could feel the shift themselves. That's one of my favorite things about teaching—watching the real-time elevation of someone's artistic skills is so thrilling and rewarding.
Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept, just a small, specific technique.
Courtney Kocak: I'm fully obsessed with embodiment right now. That was probably the biggest lesson I learned during the final revisions of Girl Gone Wild. The earlier drafts were focused on excavating the story itself: drawing out the plot and themes, figuring out the emotional arc, and understanding what the book was really about. But the later drafts became much more about how experience was physically expressed.
How was a line of dialogue actually delivered? What was happening in the narrator's body? Once I started thinking this way, it completely transformed my writing. Embodiment adds an entirely new layer of meaning and emotional depth because readers don't just understand the scene intellectually—they feel it. Now I spend a lot of time helping students learn how to access that same level of specificity and dimensionality in their own work.
Want to make your scenes land in the body, not just the mind? Courtney teaches embodiment and a full toolkit of memoir craft across twelve months of guided work.
Apply for the Memoir in Essays Incubator →Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Courtney Kocak: The last book that I gave multiple people as gifts was The Wager by David Grann. It's so propulsive, immersive, and incredibly well-researched, but what really stuck with me is how distinct the authorial voice is. You can feel the intelligence and obsession behind every page. It's one of those books that reminds you nonfiction can be incredibly rigorous while still feeling cinematic and compulsively readable.
Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Courtney Kocak: "Show, don't tell" can absolutely be useful advice, but I think it can be taken too rigidly. Sometimes you just need to tell the reader what's happening. There's no prize for making your work unnecessarily oblique or burying what you're trying to say in subtext. Good writing is about clarity and balance. Scene and summary serve different purposes, and learning when to use each is part of becoming a stronger writer.
"There's no prize for making your work unnecessarily oblique or burying what you're trying to say in subtext."
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."
Courtney Kocak: Most writing classes won't tell you this, but writing a book takes a village. Mine was the only name on the cover of Girl Gone Wild, but the book wouldn't exist without the teachers, classmates, workshop peers, editors, and friends who pushed the work further through feedback and encouragement. Writing is solitary, but finishing a book is more collaborative than most people realize.
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Courtney Kocak: Cheryl Strayed was and still is my literary crush. I love her plainspoken prose. She's so wise. Reading Tiny Beautiful Things and Wild were life-changing for me. Those books made me want to become a memoirist.
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe, in one sentence, not a paragraph?
Courtney Kocak: I boil overwhelming creative problems down into clear, actionable steps so my students can create their best art.
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Courtney Kocak: I'm a pretty open book, so I'm not sure there's much that would surprise them, but I like to tell my students that I actually started out as an actress. I didn't pivot to writing until I was 27, which I now think was a gift. Coming to writing later in life meant I had more experiences to draw from, more emotional maturity, and more perspective and wisdom. A lot of my students worry they're starting too late, but lived experience is one of the greatest assets a memoirist can have.
Courtney's own path is the best argument for her class: she did not start writing until 27, and she counts that late arrival as an advantage rather than a handicap. If you have been telling yourself you are too late, or too unsure of the process, or simply waiting to feel ready, this is the year to begin. Over twelve months, inside a small cohort and alongside a teacher who has finished the very book you are trying to write, you can turn a folder of loose essays into a manuscript that knows exactly what it wants to be.
Spots are limited to a small cohort of 7 to 12 writers, and acceptance is by application on a rolling basis. If this is your year to finish the book, start here.
Apply for the Memoir in Essays Incubator →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
