Does your memoir need developmental editing? In this video, I discuss what developmental editing is, what a developmental editor does and why you need it for your memoir.
Author Archive | Denis Ledoux
A Memoir Project Manager Helps You Start and Finish Your Memoir
A memoir project manager is someone most people don’t think about when starting their memoirs. People jump into their memoir writing projects without giving the function of project manager much consideration. A manager is someone who gives thought to the execution of the project: organization and timetable and the use of materials.
Succeeding in writing a book of memoirs in an expeditious and meaningful fashion is important. If you dwell in your 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, with 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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How to be a Better Storyteller
In this YouTube video on how to be a better storyteller, I share with you how you can learn to make effective use of a variety of technical skills to shape successful lifestories.
Use This Instead of Writing Prompts
In this video, Use This Instead of Writing Prompts, we discuss what to use instead of writing prompts. Writing should matter.
Who Are You Writing For?
“I want to my children and grandchildren to know me, and I want to place my life in a greater context. I’m hoping to have readers beyond my kin, readers who are interested in a larger picture of what life was,” a memoirist will realize. Let me share a shocking truth: your memoir—and mine—will not […]
Work With or Through Pain: Writing Painful Memories
In this video, Work With or Through Pain: Writing Through Painful Memories, I talk about writing through painful memories. Pain is often a barrier to memoir writing. Who wants to revisit difficult times? Although delving into the past is a generally pleasant experience and promotes healing and growth, it can also be painful.
Write Regularly for Great Results
Success is built on daily habits. Write regularly every day for a year or two and before you know it you have a book. How do you find the time?
Who Will Be the Audience for My Memoir?
Writers ask me all the time: “Who will want to read my memoir?” Recently someone said, ”If I were to write my memoir, it would probably be of no interest to you or anyone else. There is no audience for my memoir!”
Your memoir has a niche audience.
Wondering about the available audience for your memoir is legitimate and necessary. At the core of the effort most writers commit to is a deep desire to share with others—to reach an audience. Certainly this is true of a memoir writer also.
This is the challenge: stop thinking that no one will want to read your memoir. It may be true that I may not be interested in your memoir, but someone in this wide world certainly is. There are some billion people on this planet who read English. Surely you will find there will be “an audience for my memoir” among that billion!
Find your niche
The name of the game for an unknown memoir writer seeking an audience is niche writing and marketing.
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Three Ways an Inauthentic Memoir Theme Will Trip You Up
As you articulate your memoir theme, ask yourself if this memoir theme is really yours—does it reflect your present understanding of your story and of life itself? Or is it is a residue of the accepted “wisdom” of someone else: a parent, another adult figure, society at large?
1) A theme that is authentically yours makes for better writing.
It comes from your center of experience. Writers who recognize, acknowledge, and explore their authentic memoir themes in their writing are more apt to present us with clear, to-the-point stories than those who repeat inherited memoir themes or who think they can ignore the issue of theme.
Early in our lives, you and I were naturally and rightfully the recipients of someone else’s—a parent’s or grandparent’s—understanding and interpretation of life. As long as these interpretations correspond to our own adult views, we can write easily within their context. What often happens, however, is that we continue to espouse a point of view inherited from another without realizing that it has ceased to correspond to our own. When challenged, we will say “Well, I guess I really don’t believe that anymore. Isn’t it something how I wrote (or said) that!”
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How Long Does It Take to Write a Memoir?
Sometimes, years after I’ve heard from someone that he is writing a memoir, I will connect with the writer again. Perhaps it’s three or four or five years later, but the writer is working on the same memoir. I don’t get it. So I ask politely, “What has snagged the memoir?” In short…
How long does it take to write a memoir? Really? Well, I don’t actually know the answer to “how long does it take to write a memoir?” What I know is a memoir needn’t take so long to compose.
Why do some memoirs drag on?
Here are some reasons your memoir may be taking you too long.
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