Your Story Doesn’t Have to Start at the Beginning | Amy Goldmacher

What happens when the story you need to tell won’t fit the structure you planned? Amy Goldmacher joins me on the Story Craft Café to talk about her memoir, Terms and Conditions, and how a collection of personal fragments became a book organized alphabetically. Amy originally imagined a chronological memoir about her relationship with her father. But as she wrote about family, genetic testing, and the desire to know what the future might hold, the book began taking a different shape. We talk about the spreadsheet that helped her see a new structure, why she chose to write in second person, and how those choices gave her enough distance to write about difficult experiences. We also discuss the limits of memory, the difference between memoir and autobiography, and why some of our best writing happens while we’re nowhere near a keyboard. Along the way, Amy shares how she uses Dabble to collect fragments, move pieces around, and experiment until a story begins to hold together. If you’re gathering pieces of a book and wondering how they’ll ever fit, there’s a lot in this conversation for you. Find Amy and learn more about Terms and Conditions https://amygoldmacher.com Visit her publisher https://stanchionzine.com Amy Goldmacher’s creative work has appeared in The New York Times, Essay Daily, Monkeybicycle, and dozens of literary journals and anthologies. She won the 2022 AWP Kurt Brown Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and her experimental glossary-form memoir about letting go of the terms and conditions that no longer serve her, Terms & Conditions, published on October 6, 2026. She lives in South Florida. Subscribe for more conversations with authors about books, storytelling, and the work of writing. What helped you find the structure for your story? Tell us in the comments. #WritingCommunity #MemoirWriting #AuthorInterview Try out Dabble free for 14 days and see why it’s the best writing tool on the planet—no credit card required! Visit our website at www.dabblewriter.com to get started. Subscribe to our channel for more live events like author interviews, Writing Sprint Wednesdays, Feedback Fridays, and Fireside Chats. We're all about helping authors hone their craft with engaging, fun, and educational content. On top of all that, Dabble Premium members get access to exclusive content like Craft Q&A Office Hours, Wordsmith Workshops, Deep Dive articles, bonus resources, and guest speaker workshops. Happy writing! 00:00 Introducing Amy Goldmacher and Terms and Conditions 01:14 The writing advice that made sense later 02:51 Well-meaning advice from nonwriters 04:09 Writing away from the keyboard 06:15 Using Dabble to see the whole project 08:11 How Terms and Conditions began 11:29 Finding a structure for the fragments 13:19 Bringing anthropology to personal storytelling 16:46 Choosing the boundaries of a memoir 18:30 Genetic testing and wanting certainty 20:06 Memory, accuracy, and imagined possibilities 21:34 Exploring unconventional structures 23:16 Experimentation and the need to get it right 24:11 Writing difficult material in second person 25:42 Finding the title Terms and Conditions 27:28 The next book and living with uncertainty 29:23 Where to find Amy and her book