When is the best time to start working with a writing coach? The obvious answer is when you feel the need to, but “the need to” is not always obvious. Many times, writers will decide that they need to submit polished material to a coach and so will put off the coaching process. This is […]
Your life as a myth–is your life determine by the myths you live by? Myths are the stories we create to express how we perceive the world and life. How we live our lives is determined by the myths we live by, but our lives also reveal our myths to ourselves and to the world.
Writers seem to grasp the need every memoir has to have well-developed character and action, but the same is not true of memoir setting.
Too many writers omit to tell us enough of the setting of their story to make their memoir feel solid and real. It is as if we are reading about spirits who do not inhabit a tangible world. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
Memoir ghostwriting is a viable option if you choose not to write your memoir yourself. There are many reasons you would choose not to write a memoir by yourself and most of them are good.
Understandably, people want to know how much memoir ghostwriting will cost. Depending on the length of your memoir, it may take months and even years to complete your book. Here are a few considerations for you to ponder over as you assess how much a co-author might cost.
Many factors will affect the time required for a crossing: the wind, the distance between the ports of departure and the arrival you choose, the design of the boat itself, the number of people and the amount of materials and supplies on the boat, whether or not you wish to cross directly or whether you would like to make a few forays along the way—say, visit Iceland before landing in Portugal.
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Writers ask me what they can do the most easily to write a better memoir. While I can understand the wish to write more quickly and easily, I’m going to share with you that writing a better memoir needs to be done slowly and thoughtfully. A rushed job is probably going to be a botched […]
Once you have diligently followed the suggestions for publishing your book and your book is published, it’s time to enjoy being a “famous author” and start promoting your book.
Two ways to do that that come readily to mind are doing a book launch party and securing as many readings of your memoir as possible in a public setting. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
May I present a surprise blocking solution to complete your book manuscript: don’t write just now.
Learn how to continue writing to the end.
Here is an example of what I mean: one summer when I was serious about gardening, I went away on a late June trip. It was a fun vacation with my family, but the trip fell at a time when the garden seriously needed daily weeding, hoeing, and watering. As you can imagine, when I returned home, I found my garden overrun with weeds. The vegetables that I had so carefully planted were just about choked out, so I was, to say the least, challenged seeing the overgrown mess of weeds.
Rather than tackle the job immediately, however, which would certainly have been reasonable, I made a counter-intuitive decision: I spent time across several days just sitting on the edge of the garden, envisioning how I wanted the various parts to look once my work of cleaning up was done, imagining the lovely vegetables I would have.
After three days of on-again, off-again scrutinizing and visualizing, my time for action had come.
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You’ve been writing for a long while. Your book has been edited professionally. You are ready to get your independently-published book into your readers’ hands. Let’s explore and execute options for packaging and printing your memoir.
Sometimes people ask me to come help them choose a title for a memoir. Here are some guidelines I use to generate a memoir title. Choose a title for a memoir: it’s about the reader not about the writer.
Interviewing family members and friends is clearly a form of research, but interviews alone are usually not enough to give your stories the depth they require. For that, you need formal research.