“Push Goals”… hit your writing out of the park!
Wanting to write a meaningful memoir is a start, but it is not enough. You must know how to write such a story. On the Third Thursday of every month (at 1 PM/ET, 12 CT, 11 MT, 10 PT), you can participate in a live memoir-writing workshop on ZOOM. As I write this, the next […]
Ouch! Your memoir characters are not as interesting as they should be! And, fortunately, you can easily change that.
Why Your Memoir Characters Might Not Be Interesting! In fiction, the people who appear on your pages and play a role in the story you are narrating are called characters. As a memoirist, you must take memoir characters as seriously as a fiction writer does. As with fiction characters so too with memoir characters Vivid […]
Three Pillars of Memoir Writing
Writing a memoir requires a lot of time and energy—but you can do it. You can succeed in writing a memoir. Many people just like you have succeeded in doing so already. Today I am offering you my three pillars of memoir writing. I want to share a system with you for getting started […]
Does calling yourself a writer make you a writer?
“How do you become a writer?” people ask me. While many of my memoir-writing clients are one-time authors, not everyone is in that category. Many people join The Memoir Network secretly wanting to become “a writer” and hoping that memoir writing will be their ticket into the writer’s life. I might, in all seriousness, respond, […]
Bringing Discipline in Memoir Writing
A big part of success is showing up and doing the work. The same is true in writing a memoir. To succeed you have to do some writing; you have to demonstrate some discipline, some nose to the grindstone. Now the writing process is not straightforward or linear and there are many unexpected twists and […]
My Mother Passes
On this blog, I have frequently offered excerpts of my mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled. It has been such a satisfaction for me to have written her story and to have been able to hand her a copy. One day, after I had presented her with the hard copy of We Were Not Spoiled, […]
How to Write the Last Chapter of a Memoir
“How do I write the last chapter of a memoir?” coaching and editing clients will sometimes ask me, wondering how to end a memoir. It is a good question because the last chapter of a memoir is your final shot at affirming your theme and at creating a satisfying and meaningful ending to the story […]
Clichés in your memoir—you need them like you need a hole in the head.
You can avoid cliches and stereotypes. If you do not avoid cliches and stereotypes, you will undermine the unique and personal feel of your memoir. Cliches and stereotypes place people in often erroneous and certainly indefensible categories. (more…)
Writing the right memoir
not writing the right memoir can constrict your writing. The person who has put down one memoir a number of weeks, or months or even years ago, may not be able to pick it up again because the energy that had initially informed it is gone. The memoir has become the wrong memoir to be […]