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Archive | Memoir Writer’s Blog

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.

If you want to know about what other services we provide besides the Memoir Writer’s Blog, click here.

NB: We also offer a Memoir Professional Blog for people who wish to teach, coach, edit or ghostwrite memoirs.

Memoir Writer’s Blog Posts

family stories

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There is a rich lode of stories that you can tap into quickly both for their historical content and for what they tell you about how members of your family wanted their young to be.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.”

writing a first draft

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 […]

memoir pre-writing

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…

finding the time to write a memoir

Do You Have a Foodoir in You?

The continuing popularity of books about food and cookery is well demonstrated by the vast range available—just look along the cookery and food shelves in any bookshop or at the long lists available online. Many are collections of recipes by well-known chefs and bakers, but there is also another genre which combines memoir writing with […]

money story

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, […]

writing prompt

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…”

memory recall

5 Memory Recall Tips

Recalling the details of our life stories can be a challenge. Devising a Memory List is the first best thing you can do, but if you want additional ideas, here are five memory recall tips for remembering more than you might have thought possible.

scenes and dialogue

Vignettes, scenes, and dialogues

Vignettes, scenes and dialogues are at the core of any memoir—your memoir. So how do you write them? How do you fit them into a story? Let’s explore how we can string those short pieces into a story. (more…)

right word

Word Lightning: the Right Word Will Dazzle Your Memoir’s Reader

Is choosing the right word really important in writing a memoir? “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” —Mark Twain Lightning dazzles the eye. The sky is split open. Sometimes it makes our hair stand on end. A lightning bug, on the […]