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How do you know if you have the right memoir coach? The guidelines below will help you evaluate your writing coach prospect to ascertain if you are choosing the right memoir coach for you. This article contains evaluation guidelines centered on the availability of the right memoir coach.

1. Can your coach work with you so that you meet your deadline?

As you develop your memoir project, you may become aware of a natural deadline, such as a family reunion or a birthday. The right memoir coach for you will be able to meet your date. This deadline should be discussed before you and the coach commit to each other.

Your deadline may also simply focus on a time when you would like to be finished. This is a completely internal deadline.

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Many of the biggest challenges facing memoir writers can be alleviated by joining a distance-learning writing program.

Your participation will convince you that you can succeed.

Memoir writers—as all writers—work in isolation. There are many times when a memoir writer would like to have a contact with a system that could help her/him to resolve a writing issue—whether it’s  a question of grammar, style, or structure.

If you were not a plumber, would you do the plumbing to your house without first learning as much as you could about plumbing?

Of course, you would want to inform yourself.

You might peruse YouTube, buy some how-to books on plumbing, give a call to a person who is a plumber to ask your questions.

Here’s how you as a new writer can follow the same process to write your first memoir draft. (more…)

“Interested” in writing is about self-image while “committed” to writing is about the writing itself.

“But I do want to write my book. I am very interested in writing my book,” I can hear too many writers insisting.

“Wanting to write” a book, “trying to write” one, “being interested in writing” doesn’t make it. It never does.

What I am exploring here with you is a commitment to writing your book and bringing it to successful completion.

In this post, I walk you through the significant distinction between “being interested in writing” and “being committed to writing” and how you can commit yourself to be “committed.”

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Sara Etgen-Baker

Editor: In this memoir excerpt which uses fiction technique to emphasize feeling, Sara Etgen Baker writes about a defining moment of her childhood as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded.

It was an autumn day, October 22, 1962—far enough from summer to have lost the heat and not close enough to winter to have that bite of cold. Above me, brilliant shafts of sunlight ignited the color in each falling leaf.  Below me, each leaf fell, not knowing that this was its last dance in the sunlight—its last chance to play in the crisp October air.  It tumbled with such elegance, but all too soon it was lost in the sea of autumn leaves swirling around my feet.  Part of me wanted to find it, pick it up again, and toss it high so that perhaps it would have a second time around.  But time was short; and whether I liked it or not, twilight stole away the opportunity and the vibrant colors of the day.  So I scurried home crunching the dried leaves under my feet.

         “Where have you been, young lady!” Mother peered around her newspaper.   

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Many memoir writers are under the impression that you need to have an extensive vocabulary to write. An extensive vocabulary can only help you–if by “extensive” you mean many precise words—not just “big” ones. More important is using precise language.

Precise words are specific

Precise words are specific and not vague and ineffective like nice, awful, big, OK. “She was nice” is vague. “She understands different points of view” is specific.

“He was awfully big” is vague. You might write instead: “My father measured six foot five and weighed 275 pounds.” Now that is using precise words! (more…)

Many memoir writers are under the impression that you need to have an extensive vocabulary to write. An extensive vocabulary can only help you–if by “extensive” you mean many precise words—not just “big” ones. More important is using precise language.

Precise words are specific

Precise words are specific and not vague and ineffective like nice, awful, big, OK. “She was nice” is vague. “She understands different points of view” is specific.

“He was awfully big” is vague. You might write instead: “My father measured six foot five and weighed 275 pounds.” Now that is using precise words! (more…)

If understanding the interplay between destiny and fate worked for the Greeks, why not for us memoir writers?

Over the years, I have found that the concepts of destiny and fate, which explained so many things for Greeks in the centuries before the Christian era, also explain so much about the characters of a memoir. Sometimes the concept has proven to be the key to unraveling the meaning of a life.

A refresher on Destiny and Fate

Let me take just a moment to refresh your understanding of destiny and fate.

Destiny can be described as “what you are meant to be.” It is what the Christians label as “What God wants me to be” or “What I was placed on earth to be and do.” It is often called your potential.

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Note: This is the 4th article in a series of 4 on the writing process of A Sugary Frosting published in 2016. It is full of book publishing tips. I hope you enjoy it.

Post 1: I Finish A Sugary Frosting: Notes on the Memoir Writing Process

Post 2: Mechanics of Writing a Memoir: It’s not all Inspiration

Post 3: Preparing for A Successful Book Launch

Post 4: Book Publishing Tips: Better Book Production is Possible

Here are a few book publishing tips to prepare for better book production that I learned from publishing A Sugary Frosting / A Memoir of a Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage.

My book, A Sugary Frosting / A Memoir of a Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage, made its way to publication. To launch it, as many readers know, I created an advanced reader community and was able to gather 90+ people who volunteered to write a review for Amazon in exchange for a heartfelt thank you from me, and upon sending me a copy of the published review, a link to the finished e-version, a hard copy and a $50 voucher in The Memoir Network’s e-bookstore.

The response from readers had been gratuitously generous. I had about 90 people who agreed to review the book. I was elated! Not only were these wonderful people provided me with a review but so many offered suggestions that made the book into a better one than it was initially. I don’t only mean by sending in corrections of typos but by suggesting tweaks for the story—adding and taking out text. This experience of working with advanced readers was a tremendously positive one for me.

I offer the following review of what I learned on my way to better book production. I hope it helps you in the process of preparing a book for publication.

What have I learned? Book publishing tips…

1. I created too tight a deadline.

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Note: This is the 3rd article in a series of 4 on the writing process of A Sugary Frosting published in 2016. 

Post 1: I Finish A Sugary Frosting: Notes on the Memoir Writing Process

Post 2: Mechanics of Writing a Memoir: It’s not all Inspiration

Post 3: Preparing for A Successful Book Launch

Post 4: Better Book Production is Possible

Preparing for A Successful Book Launch: I’m finished writing the text for my next book, A Sugary Frosting/A Memoir of A Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage. What follows is a synopsis of what I am doing to promote the book so that its natural audience is aware of it.

(more…)

Note: This is the 2nd article in a series of 4 on the writing process of A Sugary Frosting published in 2016. 

Post 1: I Finish A Sugary Frosting: Notes on the Memoir Writing Process

Post 2: Mechanics of Writing a Memoir: It’s not all Inspiration

Post 3: Preparing for A Successful Book Launch

Post 4: Better Book Production is Possible

The mechanics of writing a memoir involve the work of writing a story and how life can insert delays & provide contemplative times, yet leave time left to write.

I started to write the memoir seriously in May of 2015. Since I continued to be active in the daily running of my business, The Memoir Network, I could commit myself only to writing 30 minutes a day—but, and this is important, to show up every day for the writing. 30 minutes a day may not seem like much, but it adds up to 3 1/2 hours a week.

It is not just 3 1/2 hours. It adds up to more than that because, as I went about my days—writing emails, taking notes for a coaching session, walking along the lovely river trail in our town—knowing that I would be writing the next day, my imagination would create text. When it came time to sit at my computer the subsequent day, I often had much of what I wanted to write already composed in my mind. In that way, I was able to create text more quickly in the allotted half hour then I might have otherwise had I sat down and written for 3 1/2 hours straight—not knowing what I would be composing that day.

Life happened even as I wrote

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right memoir coach

How to Know if You Have the Right Memoir Coach

By

Can your coach work with you so that you meet your deadline? As you develop your memoir project, you may become aware of a natural deadline, such as a family reunion or a birthday. The right memoir coach for you will be able meet your date. This deadline should be discussed before the coach and […]

memoir writing program

Six Reasons to Join a Long Distance Memoir Writing Program

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Memoir writers—as all writers—work in isolation. When you join a memoir writing program—a forum, you not only get answers to persistent questions or reassurance to debilitating doubts, but you form community as you persist in the long, lonely task of writing. (more…)

TO OZ? YES, TO OZ!

TO OZ? YES, TO OZ!

By

In this memoir excerpt which uses fiction technique to emphasize feeling, Sara Etgen Baker writes about a defining moment of her childhood as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded. (more…)

Using Precise Language

More on Using Precise Language

By

Many memoir writers are under the impression that you need to have an extensive vocabulary to write. An extensive vocabulary can only help you–if by “extensive” you mean many precise words—not just “big” ones. More important is using precise language. (more…)

write your story

Book Publishing Tips: Better Book Production is Possible

By

My most recent book, A Sugary Frosting / A Memoir of a Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage, made its way to publication. To launch it, as many readers know, I created an advanced reader community and was able to gather 90+ people who volunteered to write a review for Amazon. (more…)

Successful Book Launch

Preparing for A Successful Book Launch

By

I’m finished writing the text for my next book, A Sugary Frosting/A Memoir of A Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage. What follows is a synopsis of what I am doing to promote the book so that its natural audience is aware of it. (more…)