In this Strategies for Successful Writing category, you will read about processes and props you can implement to increase your success as a memoir writer.
While it would be comforting to think that “wanting to succeed” would be sufficient for success, it simply is not. Nor are best efforts, enthusiasm, and working hard.
You must master the craft—that is, the craft of memoir writing. Success for a memoirist is indexed both on the writer’s experience of best writing practices and ability to access feelings deep inside as well as on the reader’s experience. (The reader after all has to bring much to the story experience.) You don’t however have much control of the reader’s response, but you do of your writing.
Best Practices of Strategies for Successful Writing
As in all professions and trades, there are “best practices” for memoir writing that facilitate and improve your writing experience and your audience’s reading experience.
While no one would contradict that memoir writing is an art and requires intuition and sensibility, it is also a craft that relies on best practices of successful memoir writing.
In conclusion
The posts below will help you to write better narratives. But, don’t stop there. Read your way through the entire Memoir Writer’s Bog. Be sure to read How to write a memoir: our 21 Best Memoir-Writing Tips to get you writing your memoir—quickly and well—and getting it into the hands of your public.
As one of the most fundamental strategies for successful writing, let’s be sure to emphasize that when writers do not complete their memoir, they cannot be called successful. So…keep writing until you finish.
Good luck with your writing.
Commit to finishing your memoir
Today, I am offering you a dynamite coaching session. If you read through this post and check the links, you will have an experience that will set you up for success—when you commit to finishing your memoir.
Ahead of you is a week available to make progress on your memoir. By next week at this time, will you have written an encouraging number of pages on your memoir or…
Will you be regretting the week, saying, “Well, you know how it is…life got in the way! Ha ha!”
The choice of results is yours to make.
How are you going to use the coming week? Will you “try” to use it well – and find on Friday that you have let so much get in the way that you wrote very little in a week’s time? Or…
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Too Much Backstory–Are you making memoir writing more difficult than necessary?
When you overwrite a story by stuffing it with backstory—and many writers seem to want to tell their entire story in what ought to be a vignette—you disrespect chronology and drama and the reader’s patience.
Have you ever succumbed to this memoir shortcut?
“I just added a little bit of fiction to move the story along,” you say, to explain a memoir shortcut you have just taken, joining the ranks of such pseudo memoirist as James Frey in A Million Pieces?
Or, perhaps the ranks of Frank McCourt who fictionalized long dialogs in Angela’s Ashes. (No one remembers as much dialog as he tries to tell us he does years later from when he was six.)
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Writing more Deeply: The pain in telling the truth
My new memoir, French Boy (due out in the summer of 2023), is about my childhood. Much about this time in my life has a context that is unique and consequently different from that of my contemporaries. This memoir has a place in the world of memoirs, and I want it to find that place, but writing it has also brought up some pain which I did not want. Once again, I found out that there is pain in telling the truth.
My parents were thoughtful and loving people so their behavior towards me is not an issue. I am not writing about a reprehensible or shameful experience. I am dealing with a more average pain that is both little for the world and big for me.
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Solving Problems of Telling the Truth in Your Memoir
When telling the truth, how much of what happened do you have to tell? At what point does withholding the truth become a lie? For instance, in all her famous diaries, as Anais Nin celebrated the freedoms of her life as an artist, she never once mentioned that she was bankrolled by a husband. True, she could not mention his name or details of his life because he had refused her legal permission to do so in print. But wouldn’t the truth have been better served if she had mentioned the working husband who paid her bills and made her artistic life free of financial constraints possible?
Telling the truth is not easy
In that sense, her diaries have always seemed to me to contain a fundamental lie and avoided telling the truth. Nin clearly wanted her readers to believe that she lived independently as a woman and a writer. The fact of her husband’s support makes it evident that the self-sufficient persona she projected was wishful thinking. How much truth to tell is always a subjective decision that can be made only in the context of the writer’s life and family. The following are considerations to keep in mind as you decide how to solve telling the truth.
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Similes and Metaphors: Don’t Let Them Scare You!
“I don’t quite know how to describe what I’m feeling,” you might say during your writing as you grope for a way to describe in words this emotion that is beyond words. There is a solution to this dilemma that writers often resort to—but too many writers are sure they can’t handle it. The solution? It is the use of images, specifically similes and metaphors. These will bring your text to a level beyond words.
Not sure how to handle these literary techniques? Not to worry. The following article explains much. You will read examples of similes and metaphors and learn the difference between similes and metaphors.
1. A simile is a comparison that uses like or as.
When you say, “Life is like a merry-go-round”, you are making an image we call a simile—even if it’s not a terribly original one. It’s a simile, too, if you write, “I’m busy as a bee.” In a simile, because of the use of like and as, it is clear that the writer is making a comparison. Here is an example of a simile:
My love is like the red, red rose/That’s newly sprung in June, /My love is like the melody/That’s sweetly played in tune. —Robert Burns
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Three Pillars of Memoir Writing
Writing a memoir requires a lot of time and energy—but you can do it. You can succeed in writing a memoir. Many people just like you have succeeded in doing so already. Today I am offering you my three pillars of memoir writing.
I want to share a system with you for getting started on writing a memoir. I call it the three pillars of memoir writing.
As with so many projects you might undertake, you can reinvent the wheel or you can plug into a system that has been shown to work. My Memoir Network has been helping people just like you to write personal and family stories since 1988 and our proven system can help you, too, to write a memoir.
The system that I have found to be best for launching new writers—and many practiced writers, too—has three parts to it—three pillars of memoir writing.
1. When writing a memoir, create a memory list.
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Work With or Through Pain: Writing Painful Memories
In this video, Work With or Through Pain: Writing Through Painful Memories, I talk about writing through painful memories. Pain is often a barrier to memoir writing. Who wants to revisit difficult times? Although delving into the past is a generally pleasant experience and promotes healing and growth, it can also be painful.
Surviving Childhood Abuse: A Writer’s Experience
Congratulations to Denise Brown on the publication of her book, Transcending Darkness: A Memoir of Abuse and Grace. I recently had the opportunity to interview Denise about her experience writing her book on surviving childhood abuse. I am pleased to share her experience. To read Part 2, click here. To read Part 3, click here.—DL
Denis Ledoux: Can you tell our readers what your book is about and why you were impelled to write it? What was driving you to spend the time, energy and money to get this book out into the world?
Denise Brown: Transcending Darkness is a memoir about the abuse that I experienced during my childhood. Abuse led me on a path of self-destruction. This path encountered God and his mercy in unexpected ways. It sounds like a crazy story, but I began writing my memoir when I was in college after having an incredible dream. An angel brought me to visit three teenage girls who were suffering emotionally. Each of them had been reading a book and were crying. I realized that the book was giving them a glimmer of hope for their futures. Then the angel revealed to me that it was my book that I had not yet written that they were reading, and that I was being given the choice of helping them or not. After that, I couldn’t get the dream out of my head! I began writing what would become Transcending Darkness a few days later.
DL: Can you tell us how long it took from the time you conceived the book to the time you had it published? How many years did you spend in active writing? Were there long breaks in between active writing periods? If so, what happened to get you writing again? Writing about surviving childhood abuse must have been difficult. emotionally
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