Age takes to memory, it has been said, as youth takes to poetry. That is why seniors writing memoirs and lifestories is such a natural.
In this category [Seniors Writing Memoirs and Lifestories], how-to and motivational articles have been gathered to help first-time, and perhaps only-time, writers to generate more meaningful and interesting lifestories than they might on their own by “winging it.”
Seniors writing memoir is an excellent opportunity
Seniors have the benefit of experience—years of it. Experience backed by reflection is the stuff of memoir. If a function of memoir is to shed some light on the meaning of life, then seniors are in an excellent position. Seniors writing memoir can shed light on the meaning of life for younger readers.
Age has known youth, but youth has not known age.
You can learn to write better stories.
People just like you have written interesting and meaningful memoirs using methods and ideas outlined both below and throughout the Memoir Writer’s Blog.
Don’t forget to search the BLOG CATEGORIES to the right of the page for specific topics that interest you or promise to be of service to your memoir writing. There are hundreds of published articles here that cannot fail to help you write the best memoir you are capable of.
Please share this wealth with your friends and colleagues.
If you are someone working in senior education…
Seniors Writing Memoirs and Lifestories is also valuable to the professional seeking resources to work with older writers. In addition to these pages, as a professional, you will do well want to check out our specific resources to help memoir professionals succeed more quickly.
Remember: whatever you do today, write a bit on your memoir.
Show and not Tell: Don’t Tell Us About Your Characters—Show Them Walking Across the Page!
Show Don’t Tell Rules the Day!
How many times have you heard “Show your story rather than tell it!”
And, how many times have you gone right on and did a lot of telling! I know I have.
“Showing” is one technique that will always improve your writing. I admit that there is some great writing that makes a precedent for “tell,” but as a rule “show” is more effective.
Here are three “show don’t tell” ideas to improve your story—every time. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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How to Write a Significant Memoir
DL: This is a piece about how to write a significant memoir I published on the LinkedIn blog Pulse. It addresses a major challenge many writer face—at least writers who want to have an audience beyond family and friends.
That our memoir is insignificant is about the last thing we memoir writers ever want to read about our magnum opus. How do we write a significant memoir?
What separates a significant memoir from an insignificant one?
A memoir tells the story of a hero’s journey.
I’ll give you a hint: it’s not fame, it’s not the scope or the arena of the action. The key to significance lies elsewhere.
When memoir writers set out to record the facts and the dates of their lives, they are doing first-draft work. We’ve all read reviews of memoirs—and possibly read the memoirs themselves—that bemoan how the famous memoirist has not given anything away. The writer has regurgitated info that could be found in newspaper and magazine articles of the time. Other than “I was happy that…” there is little insight to be found.
The reader is likely to find this memoir insignificant.
The more famous and well-known or high achieving the memoirist may have been, the more this may be one of the writing challenges: to go beyond thinking that the facts and circumstances are in themselves significant enough to carry a reader through several hundred pages. (How much more so when the writer is not well known!)
What makes a memoir have significance to the reader?
[Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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How Long Should It Take to Write a Memoir? Set a Deadline!
How Useful Is A Memoir Timeline?
Have you ever wondered, “How long should it take to write a memoir?”
One answer, of course, is that it takes as long as it takes. While so true, this answer is not useful to those writers who are trying to get their duckies in line—looking at where the time is in their schedules to write, knowing what support to ask from their life partners, etc.
I’ve come up with a calculation for those people who want some sense of how long writing a memoir might take. The following time frame is realistic for any writer who needs a timeline to complete a 200-page memoir. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Memoir Versus Fiction, or Is Memoir Fiction?
I emphatically don’t agree that memoir is fiction. Although a memoir invariably uses fiction techniques—and we will look at one memoir in this post, it must be an as-much-as-possible true accounting of an experience. I must confess to not seeing a problem with the idea of memoir versus fiction. Memoir IS NOT fiction!
A strength of fiction is its ability—when it is done right—to place us in the story, to enable us to get out of our “present” and enter into the time of the story. The memoir writer has to aim for the same level of involvement. In that sense, there is again no conflict of memoir versus fiction.
In many cases, this involves removing the narrator from our field of attention.
An easy mistake to correct
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Don’t Wait: Continue to Write Your Memoir Today
Why not continue to write your memoir today?
—Phil Cousineau in Stoking the Creative Fires
The Phil Cousineau quote above ought to be for all of us a stirring call to continue—or to begin if that is where we are at—the writing we may have procrastinated about for so long. We fill our days with lesser tasks when we know that what we ought to be doing is writing a memoir.
It is later than you think. In the twenty-five plus years I have been doing this work, I have seen people die without writing their memoir and I have seen people grow old and lose the energy to write their memoir.
In both cases, a lifestory has been lost.
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How to Pick up Your Memoir Writing Again When You’ve Slacked Off
If you have stopped writing because of a holiday, a vacation, an illness, or lassitude (read: “It’s too hard! I want it to be easy!”), make today—now—be the time you pick up your memoir writing again and write to the end.
[Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Writing About Family Stories You Don’t Agree With
How do you write about family stories whose interpretation you don’t agree with?
We all have family stories that we have heard over and over again. When they are told in family gatherings, no one expects any contradiction. After all, the stories are the accepted “truth” about someone in the family. The problem is that you don’t agree with the meaning people ascribe to it.
How do you write about these family stories you don’t agree with? There’s no problem when you are in agreement with the storyline and the interpretation, but what do you do when you are not—especially what do you do when you are out of sync with other relatives in the way you interpret the story?
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Writing Your Memoir One Story at a Time—It Adds Up
Make Writing Your Memoir Less Daunting
Writing your memoir 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—sometimes effortlessly—to a memoir.
Whenever I have written a book, I have written it several pages at a time. Were I to ask a beginning writer, “can you produce a 140-page story for me?” most would blanch and then protest, “I can’t write that much!” When I ask people if they can write a 3-, 4-, 5- or even 7-page story, most will answer, “Sure I can do that.” [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Use this instead of a writing prompt…
Writing prompts lead to nothing
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…”
Well, I’m not so sure of that. Writing should matter. It’s hard work, and life is short. What’s better than nothing about writing some text on “the most fun things I did this summer?” as we sometimes had to in school. (No wonder we did not learn to write while in that context!)
Writing from insipid prompts is not much better than writing nothing—not if you are someone who is interested in writing “from the inside out” as I hope all readers of this newsletter are. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]