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Do you find yourself wandering along with your memoir writing and not achieving your memoir-writing goals?  Do you have a sense that you might have accomplished a bit more writing than you have?

At regular intervals, it is traditional to review how the past went for you and to recommit to goals for yourself for the coming months. (A goal is a wish with action steps and a timeline.) These goals need to be written and reviewed periodically.

Studies have shown that people who set goals in writing have a better outcome vis-à-vis accomplishing what they set out to do. Here’s a report on one such study. (The famous Harvard goal-setting study so many of us have heard of apparently never happened, but the concept of goal setting is clearly important and is explored in the linked article.)

22 Memoir-Writing Goals especially for you!

(more…)

Today is Monday, and it’s a great day to write a bit on your memoir!

Your story is not formless; it is not an amoeba. A memoir needs form. You must give your memoir the backbone your readers want and need! Your memoir calls for structure to make as forceful a statement as it can make.

Eventually, after you have written awhile, you will likely have amassed a number of vignettes, story segments, and stories and wonder about how to best organize them into a coherent and interesting memoir. You must make a statement and create a bigger picture of your story.

How will you do it? Well, one answer is that you will do it by how you organize your story. Generally, people use chronology, topics, themes, and all of the above.

The Memoir Network’s “Memoir Writing Series” will lead you through the process of putting your story together, of making some narrative structure that will keep your readers reading.

For more info on structure from our blog, click here.

Good luck with your writing and remember to write a bit on your memoir today.

And remember: “Inch by inch, it’s a cinch; yard by yard, it’s hard.”

Best of luck to complete your writing project.

Best,
Denis and The Memoir Network Team

Your friends and family love your memoir. Apparently, they are sure you are an outstanding writer, but you’re not so sure. Perhaps you wonder if you need a manuscript review.

What they are telling you comes across more like support and opinion rather than as an evaluation.

It’s understandable you have your doubts about the assessments you have received from family and friends. These are people you will be seeing again. They want you to think well of them. But, you are not looking for support and encouragement.

An Objective Evaluation

You are looking for an objective evaluation of your book, an evaluation that is considered and reliable.manuscript review

“So where do I find out if my book is ready for the world?” you ask.”How do I find out if there is something—even a lot—I could do to improve it?”

You need someone who does not know and love you. You need to have an appraisal from a professional who has thought much about what makes a memoir interesting and meaningful and is willing to tell the truth about what is in your pages.

You need a manuscript review.

What’s The Difference Between a Manuscript Review and Editing?

A manuscript review is a critical, evaluative review of your memoir—or section of your memoir.

Editing—especially developmental editing—focuses on offering specific suggestions for improving text. Your editor goes deep into your story and  suggests revisions. In a sense, your editor becomes a co-author with you.

In a manuscript review, we evaluate what we read, and while we are likely to offer many comments, they will not tend to be developmental. Rather than point out how to strengthen the sketchy portrayal of your mother (for instance), we will tell you the character of your mother is sketchy and needs work. This is an especially good option for  the writer who is experienced and skillful and needs help to assess the manuscript—we are all a little blind to our own work, after all. This writer already possesses many of the tools necessary to improve the manuscript.

The neophyte writer can still benefit from a manuscript review but would probably do better with developmental editing.

Your Review Team

The editors at The Memoir Network are here to help you identify your manuscript’s strengths—and help you build on them—and its weaknesses—and help you to minimize them. There are many parts to a manuscript review. Below are some of them.

How We Respond to Your Need for  a Manuscript Review

We look at how you employ language: Inevitably a memoir is more than a collection of words. It’s that but a memoir also has to be both interesting and make sense.

  • Is your grammar correct and in the service of meaning?manuscript review
  • Is your diction at the level of the character’s education and social standing?
  • Is your language in the service of your theme?
  • Is your diction too elevated—or too pedestrian—for the audience you purport to be writing for?

Audience: You must always write for your reader. We will look into how you are addressing your audience.

  • Who is your audience and are you clearly addressing your intended readers?
  • What do they expect from a memoir such as yours?
  • Are you clearly providing solutions to the needs of your readers?
  • How are you delivering on your promise?

Narrative Development: This is also known as dramatic development.

  • Is your manuscript as compelling as it can be
  • Here we’ll look at how the narrative pulls us along. This will invariably include suspense and foreshadowing but also the consistency of your story flow. Nothing handicaps a story like time problems. This is often referred to as time sequencing.
  • Is there a conflict (often this is a psychological one rather than an external one)? Have you selected events to happen in a reasonable and compelling order? Are you providing resolutions too early in the story and then telling the rest of the story in flashbacks? Is your plot serving your theme?  

Character Development: This is where we look for how you present the people in your memoir

  • Are your characters detailed enough to come across as “real” people?
  • Are your characters static or do they change over the story time as most people do in life?
  • Your kind mother on page 56 cannot be mean on page 195—perhaps stern or assured but not mean. We see this a lot—it’s a sign you are probably making something up.
  • Something has got to happen to the characters. Have you clearly identified their struggles?

Theme: Theme is what your story is really about. It is the soul of your writing.

  • Is your theme meaningful and not merely a cliché? (“We were poor but happy.”)manuscript review
  • Does your theme really flow from how your characters interact and how your action unfolds?
  • Is the value and importance of your theme shown to grow?

In conclusion to “Need A Manuscript Review”

Please visit our Manuscript Review pages to determine if this service is appropriate for you. You will find pages devoted to the process and to outlining fees.

Your commitment to writing your memoir must be ongoing. It’s easy, as most of us know, to start to write with a burst of energy, but over the months and perhaps years it takes to write a memoir, your energy almost invariably wanes—at least to some extent.

Commit to staying the course

What to do to get yourself enthused again?

Today, I’m offering tactics you can implement to help sustain your motivation and see you to the end. Of course, there’s always willpower, but willpower is known to weaken gradually until it is ineffective. Learning how to get—and stay—motivated is easier.

Motivation is both intrinsic and extrinsic.

Intrinsic motivation comes from inside of you: you like to think of yourself as a writer; you enjoy the introspection of memoir writing; making sense of the past is fun for you. When you want to motivate yourself intrinsically, you call upon these (and many other) reasons.

Extrinsic motivation comes from the outside: you have a family reunion coming up and you want to share your memoir; you want to publish a book to show off your accomplishments to your detractors; a publisher wants your book by a certain time; you tell friends and family that the book will be ready by a given date. Lining up many extrinsic motivators is usually helpful.

The best motivation is, of course, personal, and it is often a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic. For instance: you love to write and enjoy reminiscing about your past. This sort of motivation could see you through years and years of seemingly never-ending writing! When you add to this extrinsic motivation—for example, you are having a class reunion next year and want to have your book available to show off, you are on a course to have written your book in a reasonable time.

By the way, it need not take you forever to write a memoir. In fact, it should take you only 12 to 24 months.

Here is a link to a YouTube playlist to steep yourself in more thoughts about commitment and motivation.

Why not bookmark The Memoir Network’s YouTube channel to acquire skills for consistently better memoir writing?

And remember: “Inch by inch, it’s a cinch; yard by yard, it’s hard.”

Good luck writing your stories! And commit to staying the course!

Keep writing. Your memoir is important.

Best,

Denis

Today is Monday, and it’s a great day to write a bit on your memoir!

People tell me all the time that they are going “trying to write” their memoir. By and large, people who “try to write” get sidelined by so many good reasons.

Really. You know how it is: work, family, fatigue.” In the end, they tried but didn’t have time.

I urge you to set a writing time for yourself today rather than to “try to write” when you have time.

Don’t wait: get started today to write—or continue to write—your memoir.

“Trying” to write doesn’t get a memoir written. There’s an abyss between writing and trying to write. In this Monday Focus, I urge you to stop fooling yourself with “try to write”—”when I can”—and to start to write—regularly and prolifically. Committing to action and then taking action—not talking about action and thinking about it—is the only way to get your memoir written.

Your memoir doesn’t get written by itself by “trying.” Really! The only way to get your memoir written is to commit to writing it and writing it regularly.

Some of my coaching clients, although stating they want to write a memoir, find the commitment to writing to be difficult. Because they are now paying good money to work with me, they grudgingly set a writing schedule for themselves and make themselves write. Invariably after a while, they report writing has become so much easier and that they don’t feel right when they don’t write regularly.

But, the only way you’ll get to the point of enjoying writing is to write and the only way you will finish your memoir is to write it.

To be sure you receive these updates, sign up here. 

Recently, we sent our  list of free resources. “Free” is great—in fact, we call it “superior”—but “free” can take you only so far. For more memoir-writing resources, explore the following.

Your fee-based options to learn memoir writing:

Our store:

~ The Memoir Store contains dozens of titles on the art and craft of memoir writing. Stock your ereader and / or bookshelves with quality memoir-writing titles.

Your books have given me a foundation in writing. They’ve taught me what to expect and how to go about writing.

Our programs & packages offer more memoir-writing reosurces:

(more…)

We can say emphatically that you can’t! Especially when you receive free memoir-writing resources.

Our experience tells us that the higher your skill level, the more easily and the more deeply you will write.

~ Do you want to jumpstart your memoir? It’s stalled, and you don’t know how to get it going?

~ You have written large parts of your memoir, but you know it needs fixing. How to do that?

~ You’ve written your memoir, but you know it needs something more. If you knew what and how, you’d already have done it.

Below are MANY free memoir-writing resources to help you learn better memoir writing.

My Memoir Education

~ The My Memoir Education membership is free as it gets. There is no fee for this program which offers you much by way of long-distance learning: e-courses, e-books, interviews with master writers, whitepapers, bi-weekly Writers’ Guides (in-depth articles on the art and craft of memoir writing), and more. Learn memoir writing via this free membership—and you can’t beat the price!

I purchased Denis’ book, Turning Memories Into Memoirs, years ago but had lost track of it. I went online looking for it again and discovered his website and all its resources. Wow!

Ebooks and ecourses

~ The Start to Write Your Memoir program is a free five-lesson e-course delivered to your inbox that shows you where to start to write your story and how to remember more than you ever thought possible. You’ll learn to mine your photos, journals and other materials on hand to bring depth to your memoir as well as how to come to terms with disappointment and impatience. Start to write your memoir the right way!

~ The Memoir Writer’s Blog contains over 500 posts that are available to you as a member of My Memoir Education. The posts range from technical how-to posts, to tips for an effective memoir start, to how to deal with painful memories, to telling the truth, to almost anything you’d want to know as a writer from motivation pieces to excerpts of published memoirs. And it’s free.

~ The Memoir Professional’s Blog is geared to writers who are interested in teaching memoir writing in their communities. If you think you would enjoy sharing your writing gifts and experience with others and would welcome some heads-up with how to go about doing so, sign up to receive the free ebook, Jumpstart Your Memoir Business, and be alerted as new blog posts as they are published.

In addition to the book, you will also receive a ten-lesson program via email when you sign-up to help you launch yourself as a memoir professional. Don’t miss out.

21 Must Do Memoir Writing Tasks is an ebook that fleshes out of the post How to write a memoir: Our 21 Best Memoir-Writing Tips to get you writing your memoir—quickly and well—and getting it into the hands of your publicIt is available free on our site. With this freebie we do ask a return favor. We would so appreciate if you left a review on Amazon. Even a review as short as “This little book got me excited to write again” or “Denis Ledoux shows in this book that he knows his stuff” or even “Loved this.” Of course, if you want to write a longer appreciation, that is great too. Your help is so appreciated. This book is the lead to our Memoir Network Writing Book Series.

~ An excerpt from Writer’s Time: Management That Works [scroll down in linked page] This is a program developed to help writers to master their time management skills. Even so short an exposure as this free download is sure to help you master your writing schedule.

The Memoir Network on YouTube

The Memoir Network YouTube

For lots offree memoir-writing resources from us in audio, be sure to sign up for our YouTube channel. CLICK HERE to visit The Memoir Network channel on YouTube.

We will be sending you a list of our fee-based solutions soon.

Today is Monday, and it’s a great day to write a bit on your memoir!

Look to doing pre-writing today. Your pre-writing lays out the ingredients of your memoir on the “kitchen counter” of your mind.

Pre-writing is the process of gathering and ordering information before you begin to write. It includes memory Lists, genealogical research, Internet research, interviews, reviewing diaries and scrapbooks, etc.

No memoir should be written without some or even significant pre-writing. What you do before writing is important. It’s like—and all comparisons break down at some point but bear with me—organizing all your cooking ingredients on the kitchen counter before you start to mix them. Obviously, doing so takes a bit of planning, but it makes cooking easier—you don’t end up without certain ingredients for one thing—and you are more likely to arrive at pleasing results.

Having done your pre-writing you’ll find yourself prepared to create a better memoir—and probably save time in the process. Pre-writing asks you to collate everything you need before you actually start to write.

Pre-writing serves as a valuable stimulus for creating and expanding your Memory List (which I sent you info about last week). When writing my own memoirs, I’ve found that some Memory List items also required some pre-writing tasks. Undertaking pre-writing led to information or memories that, even though they perhaps did not make it into the memoir, uncovered other material that I had not thought to include previously. Once I had become conscious of these retrieved memories, I found this pre-writing material to be an important contribution to my story.

Caveat: pre-writing, done too long and exclusively, can be an avoidance of the actual writing. I have worked with people who have spent months and years in pre-writing and couldn’t get out of their rut. At its best, however, pre-writing is a form of creative lingering with your material and of doing valuable research.

Learn more about recalling information and organizing your writing before you begin. Click here.

___

“Denis coached me closely week by week and helped me turn my compulsive research into a well-written manuscript and then into a handsome book.” Jean Crichton Digging for Treasure/Two Pioneer Coal Developers

 

And remember: “Inch by inch, it’s a cinch; yard by yard, it’s hard.”

Good luck writing your stories!

Keep writing. Your memoir is important.

Best,

Denis

When learning to write memoir, it can feel awkward and uncomfortable as you learn the process, just like in learning to swim. We often see people who are not comfortable swimming flail about in the water, their heads reaching up high, desperately, to catch a breath of air. They usually execute strokes too fast. This awkward gesture soon tires them. Try as they might there is not enough air for them as they constrict their ribs, twist their heads, contort their jaws. Soon enough, considering that they had set out to enjoy the water, these people quit and return to the shore. Swimming is over for the day.

Stay with me a moment as I extend this image. As I was swimming in Ceasar Pond last summer, not far from my home, I remembered learning to swim. A woman who was my coach told me that, if I positioned my arms correctly – and she showed me what “correct” was, I would find a pocket of ample air. I could breathe into this pocket without stressing my rib cage, my lungs, my mouth and I could get as much air as I needed. Of course, her telling me was not enough for me to find that pocket where I could have as much air as my lungs good hold, as much air as I could breathe were I in the middle of a field.

Needs More Practice

After her instruction, when I entered the water and positioned my arms as I thought she had told me, I was still not able to find that pocket of air. For a while, I went up and down the pool struggling to find the air that she had told me would be there. Occasionally, I would stop and she would say to me, “Stretch your left arm more. Turn your head slightly more towards your shoulder. Be sure your right hand is at your knees about ready to come out as your left hand goes into the water.”

Very easy to say but hard to do. Left arm, right arm, head. It seemed too much, but I continued to practice because I wanted to be a good swimmer.

Then came the moment when, all of a sudden, I found myself breathing as much air as I could possibly want, as much air as I could breathe in the middle of an open field.

As I was swimming at Ceasar Pond, I remembered these swimming instructions and felt gratitude for my coach. What I struggled to learn then has been second nature for me now for decades. I became an excellent swimmer and continue to enjoy swimming in lakes and ponds here in Maine. Swimming has been such a pleasure!

Learning to write a memoir is like learning to swim

It is possible for a writing coach to instruct a person on proper writing techniques, on better styling, on effective characterization and on using action to move the reader along the narrative arc. If the coach were to give a written test to that person, it is entirely possible that the apprentice writer would get an A+. But something happens between the knowledge of what one ought to do and the practice of it.

The writer sits at her computer and begins to compose. Her story does not come out as she thought it would when she was envisioning it in her head. There’s something missing!

“What’s missing? Why isn’t this working?” she asks herself.

Like the swimmer who is gulping in water and growing increasingly tired, our writer is growing frustrated and she is sure she will never learn to write memoir well. She might even think, “I’m such a terrible writer.”

A memoir coach is like a swimming coach

A coach—whether a swimming coach or a writing coach—can impart valuable feedback to a learner. Perhaps your writing teacher will tell you to write in shorter sentences or to write more spontaneously or perhaps what you need is fewer adjectives or a re-conceptualization of your story.

Often the writer may not need new information. What the writer needs is practice and feedback on that practice. As with a swimmer, the writer arrives at a point when he knows that he is doing something right. All of a sudden, like the swimmer with air, he finds that pocket of inspiration and learned technique where everything he needs to keep going is there available to him.

It is possible, of course, both for the swimmer and for the writer to learn craft or skill without working with a coach. But it can take much longer. Read on.

The example of Winston Churchill

I once read that Winston Churchill, who was a talented amateur painter, spent two years learning perspective on his own. Later, Churchill discovered that perspective in a painting could be taught in a studio class in a matter of a few weeks.

“But aren’t you glad you learned it on your own?” someone said to him.

“No,” responded Churchill (and I’m paraphrasing here), “learning perspective was not the most interesting thing that I might have done as an artist in those years. I would much rather have pursued my subjects without having to spend so much time on technique.”

The Leap from swimming and painting to writing

Think about how you can spend the next year working on writing techniques alone, never knowing if it is measuring up or not knowing how to stop gulping all that water, not knowing where there might be shortcuts. Alternately, you can spend the next months with a memoir coach who is also skilled at teaching. You can learn quickly the writing techniques to write a memoir that will enable you to move on to telling your story, to delivering your message.

Below is a link to this week’s FREE video e-course.

 

And remember: “inch by inch, it’s a cinch; yard by yard it’s hard.”

Good luck writing your stories!

When learning to write memoir, it can feel awkward and uncomfortable as you learn the process, just like learning to swim. We often see people who are not comfortable swimming flail about in the water, their heads reaching up high, desperately, to catch a breath of air. This awkward gesture soon tires them. Try as they might there is not enough air for them as they constrict their ribs, twist their heads, contort their jaws. Soon enough, considering that they had set out to enjoy the water, these people quit and return to the shore. Swimming is over for the day. (more…)

set-goals-brainstorming-2398562_1920

22 Memoir-Writing Goals to Jumpstart your Memoir Writing

Do you find yourself wandering along with your memoir writing and not achieving your memoir-writing goals?  Do you have a sense that you might have accomplished a bit more writing than you have?

At regular intervals, it is traditional to review how the past went for you and to recommit to goals for yourself for the coming months. (A goal is a wish with action steps and a timeline.) These goals need to be written and reviewed periodically.

Studies have shown that people who set goals in writing have a better outcome vis-à-vis accomplishing what they set out to do. Here’s a report on one such study. (The famous Harvard goal-setting study so many of us have heard of apparently never happened, but the concept of goal setting is clearly important and is explored in the linked article.)

22 Memoir-Writing Goals especially for you!

[Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]

We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.

Already a Member?

Not a Member Yet?

a memoir needs form

Monday Focus: Your memoir is not an amoeba: a memoir needs form.

Today is Monday, and it’s a great day to write a bit on your memoir! Your story is not formless; it is not an amoeba. A memoir needs form. You must give your memoir the backbone your readers want and need! Your memoir calls for structure to make as forceful a statement as it can […]

manuscript review

Need a Manuscript Review?

Friends and family love your memoir. They say you are an outstanding writer, but you’re not sure. Perhaps you need a manuscript review. See inside.

More memoir-writing resosurces

More memoir-writing resources at The Memoir Network.

Recently, we sent our  list of free resources. “Free” is great—in fact, we call it “superior”—but “free” can take you only so far. For more memoir-writing resources, explore the following.

Your fee-based options to learn memoir writing:

Our store:

~ The Memoir Store contains dozens of titles on the art and craft of memoir writing. Stock your ereader and / or bookshelves with quality memoir-writing titles.

Your books have given me a foundation in writing. They’ve taught me what to expect and how to go about writing.

Our programs & packages offer more memoir-writing reosurces:

[Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]

We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.

Already a Member?

Not a Member Yet?

best memoir writing practice

A Best Memoir Writing Practice

When learning to write memoir, it can feel awkward and uncomfortable as you learn the process, just like in learning to swim. We often see people who are not comfortable swimming flail about in the water, their heads reaching up high, desperately, to catch a breath of air. They usually execute strokes too fast. This […]

write memoir

Learning to Write Memoir Is Like Learning to Swim!

When learning to write memoir, it can feel awkward and uncomfortable as you learn the process, just like learning to swim. We often see people who are not comfortable swimming flail about in the water, their heads reaching up high, desperately, to catch a breath of air. This awkward gesture soon tires them. Try as they might there is not enough air for them as they constrict their ribs, twist their heads, contort their jaws. Soon enough, considering that they had set out to enjoy the water, these people quit and return to the shore. Swimming is over for the day. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]

We'd love to have you access this content. It's in our members-only area, but you're in luck: becoming a member is easy and it's free.

Already a Member?

Not a Member Yet?