Writing When You Don’t Feel Like Writing
What to do when you don’t feel like writing? Writing a memoir is not easy. As I have written so many times—no one has ever promised it would be. Au contraire… Memoir writing can be difficult. Among the biggest of the difficulties is discouragement. How easy is it to write when you don’t feel like […]
Don’t De-value Your Characters by Using Cliches and Stereotypes
Don’t devalue your characters by using cliches and stereotypes. This will undermine the unique and personal feel of your memoir. Cliches and stereotypes place people in categories. As short-hand ways of writing and speaking, they reflect ready-made thoughts and adversely affect the ways we relate to our families and friends as unique individuals. (more…)
Mine Your Family Stories
There is a rich lode of stories that you can tap into quickly both for their historical content and for what they tell you about how members of your family wanted their young to be. These are “family stories.” (more…)
Writing a First Draft: Why They’re Called “First”
Nothing can rightly be called a first unless there is a second. That is why first drafts are called first drafts. A writer must expect to write a second draft, and a third even. No one can sit down and churn out countless pages of prose that don’t need rewriting. Jack Kerouac claimed he did […]
Three Tips for Effective Memoir Pre-Writing
Before you begin to write your memoir, there are a number of non-writing tasks which you must undertake—this phase of compiling your lifestory is called memoir pre-writing, and it is essential to writing better stories. Pre-writing can include… (more…)
3 Tips for Picking Up Your Memoir Again—and Finishing It!
Have you struggled with picking your memoir up again and not quite knowing how to get back into it? Rather than castigate yourself, why not simply set some time aside to re-read your memoir? The following suggestions are from the Pick Up Your Memoir Again—And Finish It! a course on successfully dealing with writer’s block. […]
Three Points Not to Forget When You Write Your Money Story
There is power in writing your money story. Your money story can transform you as it leads to understanding the money energy in your life and ultimately making that energy work for you. In this post I write about three features you must utilize in the writing of a money story. These are character, action, […]
3 Tips to Revive and Finish a Memoir—Without Eviscerating Yourself
All of us struggle to some extent to produce writing content that will finish a memoir. let me offer a few writing processes to help you create a flow so you can finish a memoir. There have been plenty of times when these tips have motivated me in the morning. (more…)
Use this instead of a writing prompt…
As readers of the blog know, I’m not a great fan of using a writing prompt. Sure, they get you to writing something and many will insist, “Writing something is better than writing nothing…” (more…)