You start with a burst of writing motivation. You are super energized!
“By gosh, this memoir is going to get written and it’s going to be good!” you tell yourself. And the writing flows for the first while. Your energy remains high. You write regularly and you think about how to make your memoir better and better. At last, you feel like you are a “real writer!”
Then, you stall.
A day—or two or three—goes by without any writing. Then that “not writing” repeats itself the next week.
“But that’s ok,” you tell yourself . “I’m just taking a few days off.” But…
The few days off eventually become many days off, and the memoir begins to seem a bit less interesting.
You realize you aren’t making much progress. You may even be losing the feel of what you were creating. Your motivation for writing your memoir is on the wane. You may ask yourself…
“Is this really worth my time to write?”
You have entered a dangerous path! It leads to quitting. Your motivation for writing your memoir is wavering. It is at risk of disappearing.
Don’t go down that way—at least for long!
If you want to renew your motivation for writing
Below are articles whose goal is to help you to sustain your motivation for writing your memoir for the long run of creating a memoir.
No one said it was going to be easy—just that you can do it. The fact is…
Many people just like you have written interesting and meaningful memoirs and so can you.
In conclusion
Keep your motivation for writing strong!
Who Cares About My Memoir?
Have you ever asked, “Who cares about my memoir?”
A perennial, and perhaps inherent, challenge every memoir writer faces is that of audience. Specifically, every writer is saddled with the incapacitating doubt that there is an audience for his/her memoir.
“Who will want to read my memoir? Who cares about my memoir?” asked enough times can bring your writing to a halt.
Of course, it’s a good question. Who will want to read about someone else’s life or even—horrors!—MY life.
“But,” you gasp, “isn’t that what a memoir is—the story of my life? What’s the point of writing if no one is interested?”
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What Motivates Me to Write?
The simplest answer to what motivates me to write is that I’ve always loved to write, and lacking the creativity to write fiction or the tenacity to research subjects for non-fiction, I write about what I know, my life. I love memoir.
If I look beyond my lack of creativity, I see writing memoir feeds a certain voyeurism. I’ve always been fascinated by letters and the glimpse they provide into other people’s lives. I’ve never been able to resist an epistolary book, fiction or non-, and I’ve come to realize that many of the memoir pieces I’ve written are basically letters to myself, or to the family that comes after me. I love reading letters, so I write them. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Why I’m Motivated to Write My Memoir? This is how I process life.
I’ve been reflecting on why I’m motivated to write my memoir and realize that I come back to my writing every day because I cannot stay away. It is how I process life. Writing helps me understand what has happened and how I feel about it. My dad’s Norwegian stoicism and our family’s isolation caused by his alcoholism prevented much communication with anybody, in or out of the family. I turned to writing to “talk” to someone. I wrote letters to any relatives and pen pals who would write back, and who I felt were my friends.
As I now write my memoirs, every memory I write about teaches me something new about myself and how I’ve become the person I am. When I started my memoir, I began to forgive myself for self-defeating behaviors I could not overcome. Re-living events buried for years has brought tears, but it has helped me let go and be a less fearful, ashamed, and workaholic person. Writing is the best thing I do for myself.
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What Motivates You to Write a Memoir? Joe Skinkis shares his reason
D: What motivates you to write a memoir? I asked Joe Skinkis. Here he shares how his many life experiences have impelled him to write his life stories.
I am a 75-year-old man who lives in Thailand with my 30-year-old wife. One day, we may have a child. I would like to have my child learn from my mistakes and to glean the positive aspects of my experience. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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3 Great Tips to Keep You Writing on Your Memoir—Day After Day!
Recently, someone asked me what are the biggest barriers memoir writers face to being successful. Three came to mind right away…
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.
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3 Tips for Picking Up Your Memoir Again—and Finishing It!
Re–read Your Lifestories
Have you struggled with picking up your memoir again and not quite knowing how to get back into it? Rather than castigate yourself, why not simply set some time aside to re-read your memoir?
The following suggestions are from the Write to the End–Eight Strategies to Deal With Writer’s Block! an ebook on successfully dealing with writer’s block. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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How to pick up and finish your memoir at last
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Writing with passion! How to Bring Passion into Your Story
Why does what you want to write become so difficult to do the moment you sit down to write a memoir? Where are the words you need to convey the excitement or the dread or the anticipation of your life experience? After writing a while, you are shocked to realize that what appears on the computer screen has no pizzazz! This drivel is not what you had in mind when you thought with excitement of writing your memoir. So why is writing with passion so hard sometimes? [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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3 Tips to Help You Write Today and Everyday
All of us struggle to some extent to produce writing content. Writing is often difficult. It takes time and energy—both of which the laws of entropy suggest we ought to preserve. Here are a few writing processes to help you write today and every day. While the following are not exactly self-motivation, they have gotten […]