The travel memoir constitute a sub-genre that has had many champions. From Marco Polo to D.H. Lawrence to André Gide to Bruce Chatwin, many people have tried their hand at recording their travel stories.
We only have one travel memoir to offer you, but we hope that, if you are writing—or thinking of writing—one, you will be in touch with us.
A developmental editor can take your story—perhaps you are still in first draft or perhaps you have retooled the piece but it still doesn’t convey the experience you wish to write about in your travel memoir—and make it as full as the experience you had itself was full.
Remember that it is not the drama of a story that makes for an interesting read. It is the dramatic development that will transform a tale into a page-turner.
We have worked with many people who have had dramatic stories to tell and yet when it comes to putting it into a story they manage to fail totally at the dramatic development of the telling. A lifestory needs to use all the fiction techniques available to the writer to make keep the reader reading. It’s that simple.
Be in touch. We can help.
Holding the Pen—Writing the Story of My Life
When writing the story of my life, I didn’t let anyone else hold the pen For the past eight months, I have been writing my lifestory. As a professional personal historian, I believe in practicing what I preach to those in my lifestory writing workshops. I have even gone as far as hiring an editor to help me. There is nothing quite like being accountable to another person. I firmly believe that everyone has a story worth telling. I’d like to share with you my motivation and exactly why I decided to get busy preserving my own story.
A valuable resource to remember the past more accurately when writing the story of my life
I possess 523 personal and heartfelt letters that were written over a span of thirty-nine years – precious letters written between my grandmother and myself. My dear grandmother was more like my mother and our relationship was a very close one. As I thought more about writing my lifestory, I wondered “how can I use these insightful letters to help me tell my story.” It seemed to me as if each one of these 523 letters were calling out to me. (Writing the story of my life, I found these proved invaluable.) A great many of the letters were written during the time I lived overseas with my husband, an Information Officer working for the Central Intelligence Agency. Together, we lived in six foreign countries from 1976 through 1992 making eighteen moves during that time. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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The Theme-focused Memoir
While many of the people whom I have helped to write a memoir have come ostensibly to write about their lives – to celebrate some achievement, I would say that many of these people are also writing a mission-driven memoir, a theme-focused memoir.
Behind the desire to tell about their lives, there is some intent to promote a point of view. This comes under many guises. Generally, of course, this point of view is called “theme.”
The theme-focused memoir is the most common model.
Writing a manuscript only of one’s experience—the dates, the facts, the activities—may often not enough to entice the reader—at least, it will not interest the reader who is not family and friends. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]