The Memoir Writer’s Blog is our on-line magazine. It contains a collection of over 500 stories and articles to inspire you to be a better and more prolific writer and provides the technical knowledge and practice to make this happen.
You can make a success of your memoir writing.
We ought to know: we have worked with thousands of people and have been centrally involved in the production of hundreds of published memoirs.
We’re not going say it’s easy to write a memoir, but we are most definitely going to affirm that you can do it. Huge numbers of people write and finish their memoirs every year. Many have gotten their start by studying the Memoir Writer’s Blog. These people are, for the most part, just like you, people who started to write one day and persevered to the end.
I have learned so much from your blog. There is content for every issue and need a writer might have. Thank you for being so generous with your information.
—Mark Manzone
a memoir writer who is still at it!
Let the Memoir Writer’s Blog—which is our online magazine as well as our online memoir university—help you start, write, finish and publish your memoir as it has helped many others. Go from wannabe to published writer.
Just-in-time learning
The beauty of the Memoir Writer’s Blog is that you can access the information as you need it. Our blog is “just in time learning” at its best.
Before you know it, you will have a memoir in hand—a memoir that you will be proud to share.
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NB: We also offer a Memoir Professional Blog for people who wish to teach, coach, edit or ghostwrite memoirs.
Memoir Writer’s Blog Posts
Your Life as a Myth Part 2
The following is the second installment of a three part series on the use of myths and archetypes in memoir writing. In the first part of Your Life as a Myth, I wrote about both archetypal patterns in general and about the martyr archetype. In today’s post, I write about the orphan and the prince-left-at-the-pauper’s-door. […]
Your Life as a Myth Part 1
In your life as a myth, we discuss myths as the stories we create to express how we perceive the world and life. How we live our lives is determined by the myths we live by, but our lives also reveal our myths to ourselves and to the world. What are your myths? Look at […]
Writing About Family Stories You Don’t Agree With
How do you write about family stories whose interpretation you don’t agree with? We may all have family stories that we feel are wrongly told. When you distort your insights in order not to contradict other people’s take on your story—to “make nice,” your readers will sense that something is wrong.
Going Beyond Family Myths to What Really Happened
Family myths aren’t always true. Your family myths may be stories your people choose to tell about themselves regardless of what really happened. Myths are stories we tell about how the world seems to us to be organized. Most of us are familiar with the religious myths Greeks and Romans told as they sought to […]
An Effective Strategy to Work Through Writer’s Block
“What can I do about writer’s block?” I am asked regularly by stumped writers. “Pretty much the same as plumber does with a plumber’s block,” I’ll respond. People twitter at this reply. Perhaps it’s because they take my response to their writer’s block question for a joke and they’re anticipating a good punch line. But, […]
Writing Your Memoir One Story at a Time—It Adds Up
Memoir writing does not have to be an intimidating task. Envisioning your autobiography as a series of stories makes the sizable task of writing the stories of a lifetime tolerable and ultimately enjoyable. Lifestories, written singly just as they are told, one by one, add up to a memoir.
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.
Writing a First Memoir Draft Was Daunting
At age 54, I wrote the first 56,500 words of the first draft of my Showbiz Survival Memoir. It was cathartic getting the first draft up and out of me. Honestly, it was a bit grueling though, — emotionally and even physically — to relive some of the most painful times in my life.