Who Cares About My Memoir?
Have you ever asked, “Who cares about my memoir?” Certainly, a lot of people have!
A perennial, and perhaps inherent, challenge every memoir writer faces is that of audience. Specifically, every writer is saddled with the incapacitating doubt that there is an audience for his/her memoir.
“Who will want to read my memoir? Who cares about my memoir?” asked enough times can bring your writing to a halt.
Of course, it’s a good question. Who will want to read about someone else’s life or even—horrors!—MY life.
“But,” you gasp, “isn’t that what a memoir is—the story of my life? What’s the point of writing if no one is interested?”
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How to Finish Writing Your Memoir
I’ve noticed that many people who come to The Memoir Network have already been writing a while. They are not people who are just starting out on the memoir journey. Many have already written 5, 10, 15 or more stories or vignettes. They have been writing for a number of months—sometimes even years—and are concluding that they are spinning their wheels, that they are not producing a book as they so want to do. They realize they are not on the path to bringing their memoirs to a finish. What they are doing is writing stand-along piece after stand-alone piece. Well, a stand-alone piece is not a bad goal really—wouldn’t you love to have stand-alone stories from your grandparents? It’s just that stand-alones are really just not what they want to leave as a legacy. So, how do you finish writing your memoir?
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Become a Better Writer: 4 Ways
You can become a better writer, but it will take some work.
How do you become a better writer? Well, how do you achieve mastery in any skill? The answer, however it is presented, comes down to both acquiring knowledge pertaining to the skill and to putting in the time to practice the skill with critiques available to correct your technique and approach.
This is what I look for in the membership sites I am a member of. I benefit from significant new material sent to me regularly, from the live interactions via conference calls, individual contact or webinar and I also appreciate returning to the membership pages to review material. In this way I have contact with a master and I am revising my skills in a community of practitioners.
At the Memoir Network, I have created a master writer group that meets many of the same needs I have had met in the membership groups I subscribe to. This master writer group is called Write Your First Memoir Draft Course. A membership in the Write Your First Memoir Draft Course can get you in the frame of mind to undertake and finish your memoir.
This course has all the components to guide you to become a better writer.
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The Work of Writing a Memoir Can Be Hard: Do it!
No one said it would be easy to do the work of writing a memoir!
“Writing is hard,” you realize again as you look at your production for the day. “Perhaps I’m not cut out for this work of writing a memoir.”
To your dismay, you have been writing in snippets for many days now. In the mornings, when you show up at your laptop—later and later it seems, you must face, as does every writer, a demanding master: your daily writing. Why can’t writing be more fun? Why can’t it be—well, to tell the truth—less hard?
Oh, how you wish it were the end of your scheduled writing period for the day! Why did you think you could do this book-writing thing!
“Whom am I kidding?” [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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How to Pick up Your Memoir Writing Again When You’ve Slacked Off
If you have stopped writing because of a holiday, a vacation, an illness, or lassitude (read: “It’s too hard! I want it to be easy!”), make today—now—be the time you pick up your memoir writing again and write to the end.
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Writing Your Memoir One Story at a Time—It Adds Up
Make Writing Your Memoir Less Daunting
Writing your memoir does not have to be an intimidating task. Envisioning your autobiography as a series of stories makes the sizable task of writing the stories of a lifetime tolerable and ultimately enjoyable. Lifestories, written singly just as they are told, one by one, add up—sometimes effortlessly—to a memoir.
Whenever I have written a book, I have written it several pages at a time. Were I to ask a beginning writer, “can you produce a 140-page story for me?” most would blanch and then protest, “I can’t write that much!” When I ask people if they can write a 3-, 4-, 5- or even 7-page story, most will answer, “Sure I can do that.” [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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3 Tips for Picking Up Your Memoir Again—and Finishing It!
Re–read Your Lifestories
Have you struggled with picking up your memoir again and not quite knowing how to get back into it? Rather than castigate yourself, why not simply set some time aside to re-read your memoir?
The following suggestions are from the Write to the End–Eight Strategies to Deal With Writer’s Block! an ebook on successfully dealing with writer’s block. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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9 Ideas to Help You Finish Your Memoir
When your writing is stalled and you find it difficult to finish your memoir, turn to your writing journal for help. The following are suggestions for what you might ask yourself in your writing journal. They are taken from the How to Write to the End—Eight Strategies to Deal With Writer’s Block, a book on successfully dealing with writer’s block. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Show Up and Do the Writing!
To your dismay, you have been writing your memoir in snippets. In the mornings, when you show up on your laptop, you face, as does every writer, a demanding master: a writing stint for the day.
Oh, how you wish it were the end of your scheduled writing period!
Like many memoir writers, your memoir writing time is perhaps not long. Then you need to move on to the numerous chores that are attendant on keeping a life and a home going. You feel some urgency to write deathless prose because of the short time allotted.
But some days, even your short writing period seems too long. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]