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Archive | Strategies for Successful Writing

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.

truth in memoir

“Making Nice” Will Trip You Up

You can always tell the story in the “official” version, but you will be at odds to tell the story well. When you distort your insights in order not to contradict other people’s take on your story, your readers will sense that something is wrong. (more…)

the best memoir writing book

Should You Create an Outline or a Memory List for your Memoir?

I do not write a memoir from an outline. Instead I create a Memory List as outlined in Chapter 2 of Turning Memories Into Memoirs. The Memory List helps you to follow the promptings of the unconscious rather than the dictates of the conscious mind as is the case with an outline. (An outline is […]

Writing time wasters to aviod

Writing Time Wasters

I’m no more immune than anyone else to the plague of time wasters. Time wasters are habits we fall into that consume the time we have allotted (or could allot) to writing so that we end up not writing! Here are some of the most insidious that take up too much time and squander my […]

write your story

Don’t Wait To Write Your Story!

It is later than you think. In the years I have been helping people write memoirs, I have seen people die and people grow too old. The energy not only to write deeply but to write a memoir at all has been lost to them; their stories have been lost. We go through our days […]

finish writing your memoir

How to Finish Writing Your Memoir

Do you wonder how to finish your memoir? I’ve noticed that many people who come to The Memoir Network have already been writing a while. They are not people who are just starting out on the memoir journey. Many have already written 5, 10, 15 or more stories or vignettes. They have been writing for […]