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 […]
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 […]
Too Much Backstory–Are you making memoir writing more difficult than necessary?
When you overwrite a story by stuffing it with backstory—and many writers seem to want to tell their entire story in what ought to be a vignette—you disrespect chronology and drama and the reader’s patience. (more…)
Before Sending Your Manuscript To An Editor / Part 2: Use of Time
Clean up your use of time. This second post on self-editing revolves around the use of time. Proper use of time is crucial to understanding a memoir. (more…)
Better Self-Editing: 3 Easy Techniques
Writing can be a long and tedious task after the initial rush of creativity and enthusiasm. Once the glow fades, Pegasus drops the once-enchanted writer from the skies and—horrors—the writer now has to mount a pack mule to trudge the slopes of rewriting. (more…)
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. (more…)
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? In one of my books, A Sugary Frosting / Life in a 1960s Parsonage, […]
Writing more Deeply: The pain in telling the truth
My new memoir, French Boy (due out in the summer of 2023), is about my childhood. Much about this time in my life has a context that is unique and consequently different from that of my contemporaries. This memoir has a place in the world of memoirs, and I want it to find that place, […]