When your writing is stalled and you find it difficult to finish your memoir, turn to your writing journal for help. The following are suggestions for what you might ask yourself in your writing journal. They are taken from the How to Write to the End—Eight Strategies to Deal With Writer’s Block, a book on successfully dealing with writer’s block. (more…)
When starting on a memoir, it can be difficult to remember all the stories and memories you would like to include. You naturally want to jog your memory.
When you are intent on writing “from the inside out” as we at The Memoir Network hope you will, there are some useful techniques you can use—to add to compiling your Memory List and perhaps even to stimulate it.
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How sharing your memoir will help
A critical step for a brand-new writer is sharing your memoir writing in progress with others. There is nothing like a reader to help you develop a healthy critical sense of your work. This article is especially for the writer who cringes at the thought of sharing his/her writing.
Memoir writers sometimes ask, “Is writing with good grammar important?”
Yes and no. To anyone beginning to write lifestories, I would caution, “Get your story down on paper and don’t worry about “good grammar”—at least, not at first.” (more…)
To your dismay, you have been writing your memoir in snippets. In the mornings, when you show up on your laptop, you face, as does every writer, a demanding master: a writing stint for the day.
Oh, how you wish it were the end of your scheduled writing period!
Like many memoir writers, your memoir writing time is perhaps not long. Then you need to move on to the numerous chores that are attendant on keeping a life and a home going. You feel some urgency to write deathless prose because of the short time allotted.
But some days, even your short writing period seems too long. (more…)
While some people decide to write a memoir according to structure—healing memoirs, investigative memoirs, etc—as I wrote in a previous post, others write with an audience in mind. (Writing with structure in mind often calls for writing with an audience in mind, also.) Sometimes the audience is of specific people but many other writers, while they do have a specific audience in mind, are really writing to a group according to their interest.
“I want to write for my kids and grandchildren. I want them to know who I was,” one sort of memoirist will realize. While another will think, “I want to my children and grandchildren to know me, too, and I want to place my life in a greater context. I’m hoping to have readers beyond my kin, readers who are interested in a larger picture of what life was.” (more…)
People who attend Turning Memories Into Memoirs workshops will sometimes say, “I want to write my stories but I have forgotten so many details. Is there any way I can get them back?”
There is one tool above all others that makes the experience of lifewriting successful. That tool is the Memory List. In this article, I will talk about the Core Memory List. (more…)
A successful book reading requires a little planning upfront. If you use the following tips, you will have a great book reading and engagement with your audience.
At a recent author book reading, I read from my mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, to a group of Senior College people. Since the program was offered in Lewiston, Maine, where my family is from, I looked forward to the event because I knew that the space would have many individuals who had known my mother, me or many people in my family. (more…)
Are you wanting to finish your memoir? How do you pick it up and finish a memoir that you started some time ago?
There are writers who stop writing and then do not know how to re-connect to the writing life. Writers who have stopped writing may want to write again, to pick up their memoir, but what has happened is that the train of thought, the feeling, and the sensibility that went into the creation of those previously-written stories have now been lost. They are no longer in that realm where writing a memoir is something they can do easily.
The source of their inspiration has dried up.
9 Ideas to Help You Finish Your Memoir
When your writing is stalled, turn to your writing journal for help. The following are suggestions for what you might ask yourself in your writing journal. They are taken from the Pick Up Your Memoir Again—And Finish It! a course on successfully dealing with writer’s block. (more…)
(More) Better than Prompts: Five Tips to Help You “Jog Your Memory”
When starting on a memoir, it can be difficult to remember all the stories and memories you would like to include. You naturally want to jog your memory. When you are intent on writing “from the inside out” as we at The Memoir Network hope you will, there are some useful techniques you can use—to […]
How to Get the Most Out of Sharing Your Memoir In-Progress
A critical step for a brand-new writer is sharing your memoir in progress with others. There is nothing like a reader to help you develop a healthy critical sense of your work. This article is especially for the writer who cringes at the thought of sharing his/her writing. Those others you will share with might […]
Five Takes for Writing with Good Grammar
Memoir writers sometimes ask, “Is writing with good grammar important?” Yes and no. To anyone beginning to write lifestories, I would caution, “Get your story down on paper and don’t worry about “good grammar”—at least, not at first.” (more…)
Show Up and Do the Writing!
Show Up and Do the Writing! That’s how you get your memoir finished. Inch by inch it’s a cinch: yard by yard, it’s hard. (more…)
Should You Write With An Audience in Mind?
While some people decide to write a memoir according to structure—healing memoirs, investigative memoirs, etc—as I wrote in a previous post, others write with an audience in mind. (Writing with structure in mind often calls for writing with audience in mind, also.) Sometimes the audience is of specific people but many other writers, while they […]
4 Tips For Making and Using a Core Memory List to Write More Efficiently
The Core Memory List is a list of the crucial relationships and events which have shaped your life. It contains just ten or fewer items. Use it to write more efficiently. This is because Core Memory Lists are about the relationships and events which, had they not occurred, your life (or your mother’s or father’s, […]
How to Have a Successful Book Reading–Author Book Reading Tips
You can have a great book reading by following several guidelines. I would call them best practices of doing a public reading of your memoir. They are now somewhat natural for me now but they were originally studied and rehearsed. You may know some of them intuitively and others you can learn. (more…)
How to pick up and finish your memoir at last
There are writers stop writing and then do not know how to re-connect to the writing life. Writers who have stopped writing may want to write again, to pick up their memoir, but what has happened is that the train of thought, the feeling, and the sensibility that went into the creation of those previously-written […]