Don’t Worry About a Thing / Katherine Sullivan
Denis Ledoux: At The Memoir Network, we had the pleasure of working with Katherine Sullivan for several years as she edited her memoir, Don’t Worry About a Thing, with one of our editors, Frances King, and focused on book production with Sally Lunt. Because of her insightful articulation of her life experience, I am delighted she agreed to do the following interview (conducted by email.)
Denis: Can you tell our readers—your fellow writers—what your book is about and why you were impelled to write it? What was driving you to spend the time, energy and money to get this book out into the world?
Katherine: Don’t Worry About a Thing is a coming-of-age memoir about life in a small Maine town in the middle of the twentieth century. As a child of a Greek immigrant and a Maine country girl, I tried to find my place in the world. Not all immigrant stories are success stories. I was impelled to write this book to help me find meaning after a childhood spent with a father whose gambling addiction affected every aspect of my life. I searched for answers in an unstable world, and writing was a place where I could question and discover who I was and where I fit in the world. My personal therapy.
Denis: Tell us about your writing process and how long you worked on this memoir.
Katherine: I began actively working on this book in my fifties, so about twenty years, but I knew from when I was a young girl that I wanted to write. There were long breaks when my life in the present got in the way of my writing about the past. I knew though, that I would finish, and to get me motivated during those dry spells, I took writing workshops at various intervals.
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Start to Write Your Memoir
Below, I have organized a video writing course on how to start to write your memoir. These six videos (admittedly an arbitrary number), once mastered, will guide you well through the start of your memoir writing experience.
Already started? This can be a great review to recharge your energy
There are so many great videos on the channel on how to launch your writing! How can I limit myself to 6 to help you to start to write your memoir! [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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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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