Ten Tips on How to Publish Your Own Book
You have finished writing your memoir or are nearing its completion. Now you begin to think about publication. Going the route of finding an agent and waiting years for your book to be accepted, does not appeal to you. You decide to publish your own book—a realistic option in this day and age> As you […]
Organize Your Memoir: Life Phases
Life phases are one way in which you can organize your memoir. Life phases are the emotional and psychological cycles or phases that have marked your life. They are a great tool to give depth and cohesion to your memoir. (more…)
3 Suggestions For Choosing the Right Publication Option For You
You have finished writing your memoir or are nearing its completion. You feel satisfied with the text… (more…)
Point of View in a Memoir, Part 2
In the previous post on point of view, I shared my challenge of trying to write point of view in a ghostwritten memoir that I knew to be true but which the subject was not forthcoming with. This is not “Truth” material. It is more the sort of reflection that a more intuitive, self-reflecting person […]
Point of View in a Memoir, Part 1
Point of View In a Memoir Is Important. I recently completed my mother’s memoir, We Were not Spoiled. It was a work of love that took me many years to bring to closure as I had other work to do to support myself that filled my days. Finally, she got to be quite a bit […]
Avoid Writing a Chronology: 4 Tips
Is writing a chronology of a life enough? Dates and facts are necessary to life writing in the same way route numbers are necessary to maps. It’s not only that dates and facts provide interesting information but that they keep your readers on the right path as they make their way through your life story. […]
Passive Vs Active Voice
Generally speaking, the passive voice of the verb (the subject has the action done to it) is weaker than the active voice (the subject does the action) in involving the reader in your story. That is crucial because as a memoir writer you are not sharing ideas but recreating life experiences to share. (more…)
Redundant word usage
Redundant word usage is rampant! As a writer, I am chagrined when words get misused and one particular miscreant is redundant word usage. (more…)
Is Writing a Memoir Important?
Let’s start with a basic question: is writing a memoir important? Okay, why do we tell so many stories? Stories fascinate us all our lives. As children, we loved to be told fairy tales and to hear, time after time, the tales our parents told us about what we did and said when we were […]