Writing a Memoir Is a Big Project. It Calls For the Project Manager Function.
Succeeding in writing a book of memoirs in an expeditious and meaningful fashion is important. If you dwell in your memoir project manager function for even a short while before you jump into your worker mode and write, write, write, you may be very pleased with how more smoothly and quickly you create.
I am not talking about outlining a story here. No, I am talking about setting writing schedules that don’t interfere with commitments, clearing unnecessary commitments so that they don’t nag at you, getting cooperation from other people in your household, and making sure you have the research capacity to pull off writing your memoir.
Writers love to dream and to do the writing. What they don’t like is planning their writing life. So… the planning is overruled and then the writing life is full of interruptions and rough going.
A Memoir Project Manager Helps You Set Goals for Your Memoir
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A Room of One’s Own to Write Memoir In
Are you a writer who has felt cramped because you do not have a dedicated space for writing your memoir?
You have read about writing spaces and have longed for one, but do you really need one?
An outside writing space
A dedicated writing space sounds great to me—and a luxury I am not willing to let my writing wait for. In fact, I have never used outside writing rooms (also known as “office”—except for once when I borrowed a summer home for a week and finished The Photo Scribe / How to Write the Stories Behind Your Photos there as I wrote ALL day. Being at that oceanside house was very productive as I had nothing else to do. It was either write or be bored. The book had been stalled and it raced to the finish line in that week.
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Make a Memoir Writing Schedule That Works For You—It Will Free Your Imagination
When you follow a memoir writing schedule to write your lifestories at a certain time, then you will not feel anguished if you are not writing all the time. Because the unconscious seems to thrive on ritual—and memory depends heavily on the cooperation of the unconscious as well as the effort to remember you will inevitably find yourself remembering more when you write regularly.
Write at the same time—say every evening from 7 to 8:30 PM or every other morning from 6:30 to 7:30 AM. You will find your imagination automatically gearing up at those times when you yourself open up to writing at set times. It’s like your appetite being whetted by knowing a mealtime is approaching. One moment you’re not hungry and the next—after you’ve realize it’s quarter to twelve—you feel famished!
You must live like a bourgeois so that you can write like a bohemian. —Honoré Balzac
There are many options for creating a schedule.
1. You can assign your writing a number of hours per week.
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Book Publishing Tips: Better Book Production is Possible
Note: This is the 4th article in a series of 4 on the writing process of A Sugary Frosting published in 2016. It is full of book publishing tips. I hope you enjoy it.
Post 1: I Finish A Sugary Frosting: Notes on the Memoir Writing Process
Post 2: Mechanics of Writing a Memoir: It’s not all Inspiration
Post 3: Preparing for A Successful Book Launch
Post 4: Book Publishing Tips: Better Book Production is Possible
Here are a few book publishing tips to prepare for better book production that I learned from publishing A Sugary Frosting / A Memoir of a Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage.
My book, A Sugary Frosting / A Memoir of a Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage, made its way to publication. To launch it, as many readers know, I created an advanced reader community and was able to gather 90+ people who volunteered to write a review for Amazon in exchange for a heartfelt thank you from me, and upon sending me a copy of the published review, a link to the finished e-version, a hard copy and a $50 voucher in The Memoir Network’s e-bookstore.
The response from readers had been gratuitously generous. I had about 90 people who agreed to review the book. I was elated! Not only were these wonderful people provided me with a review but so many offered suggestions that made the book into a better one than it was initially. I don’t only mean by sending in corrections of typos but by suggesting tweaks for the story—adding and taking out text. This experience of working with advanced readers was a tremendously positive one for me.
I offer the following review of what I learned on my way to better book production. I hope it helps you in the process of preparing a book for publication.
What have I learned? Book publishing tips…
1. I created too tight a deadline.
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Memoir Writing Deadline: How To Set Yours
As in most endeavors in life, when you write a memoir as an open-ended task without any end in sight, you are likely to procrastinate and extend the project. What happens when you do not set a memoir writing deadline is, next year or the year after that, you are still writing, revising, and polishing your lifestory. You know how it is: you want to get it right. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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A First Step to Becoming a Disciplined Writer
Becoming a disciplined writer is a practice.
Do you struggle with becoming a disciplined writer on a regular basis and do you wish you could be more focused? Do you ask yourself, “Why is it so hard to write when I really do want to write?” [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Writing When You Don’t Feel Like Writing
Writing a memoir is not easy. As I have written so many times—no one has ever promised it would be. This is especially trying when you don’t feel like writing. Au contraire…
Memoir writing can be difficult. Among the biggest of the difficulties is discouragement. How easy is it to write when you don’t feel like it and are sure you are producing junk words? In case you haven’t guessed (but I’m sure you have been there done that)… [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Use Time Wisely to Write Your Memoir
Below, I share two ideas about how to use time wisely to write your memoir. Time has many permutations and I would like to take you on a coaching journey. We’ll make a couple of stops to help you hone your ability to use time wisely. I hope you enjoy reading these ideas and let […]