Memoir is Long Form Writing.
One challenge many first-time and only-time writers of memoir face is understanding that long-form and short-form writing are not the same. That is, long form is not just longer short form. Long form has its requirements.
Let me explain how memoir is long form
Many of the writers who come to me for coaching and editing are already fine writers—of short form. They can write coherent and clear sentences and their paragraphs convey meaning. There is no problem with their ability to write short form—the essay or blog post. This may lead them to overestimate their ability to produce long form.
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Too Much Backstory–Are you making memoir writing more difficult than necessary?
How much backstory is too much? Today we will discuss how to avoid too much backstory in your memoir. My goal is to help you write better the first time around. The earlier you write better the less you will have to edit and rewrite.
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Before Sending Your Manuscript To An Editor / Part 2: Use of Time
Note from the Editor: This second installment of Before Sending a Manuscript to an Editor series offers basic editing tips around time use of time. For Part 1: Self-Editing Techniques Click here. For Part 3: Time Sequencing and Flashbacks Click here
Clean Up Your Use of Time
This second post on self-editing revolves around the use of time. In the next post, I will write about time sequencing and flashbacks.
1. The historical present looks like the past, but it isn’t.
What tense are you going to use to narrate your story?
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Better Self-Editing: 3 Easy Techniques
In today’s post, we look deeply into 3 techniques for better self-editing—obviously there are many more but these three are a start for a short post.
I have been a memoir editor since 1990. In that time, I have worked with hundreds and perhaps thousands of memoir manuscripts.
A few manuscripts have come to me requiring only slight tweaking. The texts are clear, coherent and concise. They are nearly ready for publication. Their authors have created an interesting and well-crafted piece of writing. They have clearly mastered better self-editing.
Too many other manuscripts, however, have come to me at a stage that reflects tired or exasperated writers. They seem to be saying I’m-ready-to-have-this-writing-over-with!
The challenge of self-editing
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Who is Your Memoir Narrator?
This may sound like a trick question, but it’s not. In fact, “who is your memoir narrator?” is a very serious question that will determine—or at least greatly influence—the tone and the theme of your narrative and how your reader views your story as being truthful.
Your choice of memoir narrator and the consequences of this choice.
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Commit to finishing your memoir
Today, I am offering you a dynamite coaching session. If you read through this post and check the links, you will have an experience that will set you up for success—when you commit to finishing your memoir.Ahead of you is a week available to make progress on your memoir. By next week at this time, […]
9 Tips for Self-Publishing a Memoir
Can you master these 9 for self-publishing a memoir? If so, you are on your way to succeeding.
1) Do you want to reach a larger audience than family and friends?
If so, you will need to write a book that will appeal to that larger audience. Your book must contain history and psychology and references to social concerns to appeal to a larger readership which knows neither you nor your family and friends
Simply said, the reader drawn from a larger audience does not care about you. This reader cares about how you embodied a certain category of people, and how you were representative of a certain grouping of the population.
Explore how you were universal in your particular responses to life.
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Have you ever succumbed to this memoir shortcut?
“I just added a little bit of fiction to move the story along,” you say, to explain a memoir shortcut you have just taken, joining the ranks of such pseudo memoirist as James Frey in A Million Pieces? Or, perhaps the ranks of Frank McCourt who fictionalized long dialogs in Angela’s Ashes. (No one remembers […]
Writing Another Person’s Memoir: Can you use the first person pronoun?
Shouldn’t writing another person’s memoir be called writing biography rather than writing memoir? You the writer are, after all, not the subject. Doesn’t that make it a biography?
But, are there occasions when a biography can justly be called a memoir?
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