You can now access our best memoir-writing blog articles as YouTube videos. These videos bring you the most read and the most important posts on our site’s blog archives.
A different medium
Many people learn well—and perhaps best—when accessing information both in writing and by listening. For these writers, our the Memoir Channel is an excellent learning vehicle.
Others find that using YouTube videos as a review is what works well for them. Each of us has to review material many times before we really master it. Our YouTube channel not only contains videos and the spoken word but also contains links to the print article. Now that’s an opportunity to review material many times.
Still others listen to posts of YouTube as their primary source of information as they do mindless chores at home or while driving. It’s part of their Automobile University curriculum—and it can be part of yours, too!
What we have included so far
In this “YouTube Videos” category, we include a number of our best blog articles—that is, the most read. (As far as we are concerned, all our posts are “best blog articles!”)
These videos we feature do not have an organizing theme other than they are among the most read and the most important to helping people. It’s reasonable to presume, moreover, that you, as our other readers, will find these YouTube videos very useful.
In conclusion
Once you are on YouTube, please “like” the post. This will give both the post and the YouTube Memoir Channel ranking. This ranking will lead to more people viewing the posts as YouTube moves them up in its listing.
The Memory List: How to identify events and relationships to put in or leave out of a memoir
Don’t write without a Memory List. If you’ve already started to write your lifestory: Stop and compile your Memory List as soon as possible.
Don’t Let Feelings Tyrannize You. Focus On Your Goal
Don’t Let Feelings Tyrannize You. Here’s what I do: Feel like writing? You write. Don’t feel like writing? You write.
Regular Writing for Great Results
Success is built on daily habits. Write regularly every day for a year or two and before you know it you have a book.
Shaping Your Plot Line Is Important
What should you include in your memoir’s storyline for shaping your plot line? How do you structure your memoir’s story line?
Difficult, Painful Memories Can Make a Memoir More Psychologically Astute.
We all arrive at adulthood with some difficult painful memories. In this post, I offer you procedures for dealing with and healing those memories.
First of all, writing about painful memories should not be an occasion to re-traumatize yourself. Stop for the moment if you feel overcome, but if you feel ready to write about a painful time, begin by writing all the details of the memory. Details need not be significant. If there was a cup of coffee on the table, mention it. You will find that little details help bring your memory back.
Yes, difficult, painful memories are disturbing.
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Five Tips for Avoiding Vagueness in Your Memoir
Avoiding vagueness in writing is something many writers struggle with.
When writing slips into vagueness, the reader reads and rereads the text and does not quite “get it.”
I’m sure this has happened to you. You are reading something and you find yourself wondering: “What’s the author trying to say? What’s going on here?”
Not a good place for an author to land a reader.
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10 Ways to Stop Writer’s Block
Why should writers have writer’s blocks? Do plumbers have plumber’s block? Do accountants have accountant’s block?
A block is simply a failure of process. A plumber lines up his pipes and couplings and begins to work. And an accountant takes her spreadsheets out and begins to analyze them.
Ways to Stop Writer’s Block
In the case of a writer, it is a failure of a writerly process or a professional approach to one’s work that gets dignified with the name of “writer’s block”.
I’m not one to give much credence to “writer’s block.”
I’ll grant that there are times when the “muse” seems to be absent and has wandered off someplace else, but you can draw the muse back by strategic inducements.
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What is Your Memoir’s “BIG WHY”
What is your memoir’s BIG WHY? Without a BIG WHY, your memoir will not shine. You story will be smaller than it needs to be.
As I interview prospective clients for coaching—something I do often, I listen to why their reasons to write a memoir. Many do not yet have a compelling reason to write their memoir, a pushy “why.” I strongly suspect they will not continue into coaching or editing—and may not finish their memoir at all.
What is your memoir’s BIG WHY?
Yes, there is something that has urged them to be in touch with me, but that presenting reason, I sense, is not yet gnawing at their consciousness, boring into them until they have to give in to it, causing non-writing to be more painful than writing. These people will “try to write” a memoir, but I sense they are not committed.
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Banish Fear of Revealing Too Much: Be a Bigger Presence in Your Memoir
The fear of revealing too much of ourselves in the memoir we are writing can be paralyzing.
We wonder: “What will people say? How will people react to what I am revealing?” So…
We hold back in our writing. We stop ourselves from personal revelation, from sharing secrets.
The fear is founded—it’s not always a friendly world out there. And, of course…
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