The Memoir Writer’s Blog offers a regular online newsletter to help you write the best memoir you are capable of. This help is available through the generosity of fellow writers who form the network part of our name. Not the least of these are our guest bloggers.
Below we have collected and published articles other memoir writers have submitted for your development. Please interact with these writers by leaving a note to continue the conversation.
More Than One Memoir: a Mosaic of Self
Can I write more than one memoir? Once upon a time, people assumed that memoirs were like souls – they were distributed one per customer. If that were true (about memoirs, not souls), then three of the books I’ve published wouldn’t exist. The truth is, each of us plays many different roles in the course […]
She Loves Her, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
Who were these Beatles, anyway? Everyone was screaming. Everyone, even Betsy, sitting next to me. Betsy was screaming her brains out. I stared at her in disbelief. But as I looked around Park Theater, the only movie theater in the Caldwells, the very green end-of-the-line little towns on the long boulevard that stretches from the […]
There Goes The Neighborhood, Part 2
We had already witnessed the demolition derby over the snowy weekend between Christmas and New Year’s. We figured the upcoming motorcycle party couldn’t top that. The demolition derby started with the arrival of large trucks bearing strange cargo.
There Goes the Neighborhood, Part 1
Gunnar was mowing his field. This was odd. He never mowed his field. He was making ever-tightening circles around the knobby acre, the sweet grass and raggedy weeds falling in neat windrows behind him.
Pudgy: A Childhood Memoir
When I was ten, I ran away. I packed everything that was important into my sturdy cardboard suitcase. I left a note on the kitchen table warning my parents not to look for me at the high-tension wires, those metal electrical towers that marked the back border of our property and which were in fact […]
Hemingway and Dinosaurs
My pulse quickened as we walked up the white cement stairs to Ernest Hemingway’s famed Cuban home, La Finca Vigia. His presence lingered throughout the house.
Something About the Water
The following memoir excerpt was written by Chris Madsen of Olympia, Washington. I never got used to that first splash of chilly water. It came from a natural spring concealed behind a stockade fence, so clean and pure that we all thought Mr. Trecartin should bottle it. Instead, he let the spring fill the swimming pool […]
Applying Denis Ledoux’s Motivation Technique
Using a Motivation Technique The Memoir Network was pleased to receive this answer from blog reader Justine Kuntz in response to Denis Ledoux’s article titled “Motivation Technique for Writing:” In the spring of 2012 I decided to do what you have suggested in your entry titled “Motivation Technique for Writing.” I had concluded a memoir […]
Giving Dad the Bird
We enjoy when our readers submit their memoir-writing samples to us! The following story is from the memoir of one of our blog readers, Lori Robinson. We hope you will enjoy this sojourn in Africa: Two kinds of people sign up for African safaris. Most, myself included, want to see “The Big Five”–-lion, leopard, rhino, […]