Keeping The Memoir Writing Conversation Going Can Be Difficult Unless You keep Yourself Motivated. Without motivation, you will stop writing. Period. Here are suggestions I hope you will find helpful to “keep your nose to the grindstone.” 1. Read professional writing journals. Poets and Writers is good motivation from cover to cover. Other people read The Writer’s Digest or The Writer. I receive the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance e-newsletter—The Peavy—every week. It’s a membership newsletter and comes chock full of news about what other writers are doing, readings schedules, and announcements of book publications. If you have an ounce of (more…)

Questions On Memoir Writing

The following interview with me appeared in the Nov. 19, 2010, Oral History Education blog, and was later published in 2013. Over the years, these questions on memoir writing still rank as some of the most common questions I receive, and I have to say, the answers haven’t changed either–enjoy!

1. How did you get started in your profession of memoir writing?

I started writing autobiography-based fiction. Some of these have won literary awards, and, while I like that, I feel the most satisfaction from helping readers who are stimulated to tell their own stories after reading my work. This happened in 1988 when my first collection of short fiction, What Became of Them, came out.

After I had read for a group of senior citizens, I was overwhelmed by their eagerness to share their stories with me and each other. That’s how I began helping people to write their memoirs.

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Many writers suffer from writer’s block, yet few understand its possible causes. Memoir writing certainly has its difficulties which can create it. There are a number of reasons that contribute to difficulty in writing. 1. In memoir writing, “writer’s block” can be the result of dealing with uncomfortable material. Perhaps you haven’t admitted to yourself the importance of your topic or you are not yet telling the truth about it. What are you evading? What is the worst consequence that could happen to you if you write this story honestly? 2. Perhaps you are writing your story from someone else’s (more…)

Get More Show and Less Tell in Your Memoir There are ways to rework your stories so that you can minimize “telling” and maximize “showing.” The biggest “telling” offense against more show and less tell is perhaps the overuse of descriptive adjectives and adverbs. Adjectives and adverbs often tell the reader what to feel or how to interpret the story instead of evoking that feeling and interpretation. While adjectives may seem to add color and movement and insight to a scene or description, they are often simply a lazy way to write. This is especially true of descriptive adjectives like beautiful and kind (more…)

Editor’s note: We came across this guest article published by Justine Kuntz back in 2013, and were so taken with her story of retiring to memoir writing that we decided to publish it again. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did and that it inspires reflections on your own life and memoir.

Eight years ago as a retirement project for church, I introduced memoir writing at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton, FL. Earlier, after twenty-two years of teaching English, I chose to flee the regimen of teaching and accepted a position in the business world. The new position required learning more about computers than what I had used in the classroom but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise when I fully retired nine years later. While in business, I had missed teaching, so developing a curriculum for memoir writing made me feel at home once again and helped ease me into retirement and doing what I loved most—teaching.

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Why Insert Fiction Techniques in a Memoir?

We all love well-told stories. We love the entertainment, the sound effects, the punchy plot built around solid characterization. As we share stories in our everyday conversations, we inevitably use fiction techniques to keep our listeners’ attention and interest. When we say “And then she said…,” we are using dialogue – that’s using fiction techniques in a memoir.

In our memoir writing, we will often veer toward the same techniques fiction writers use. In fact, we don’t seem to need urging at all to adapt our stories to make them more compelling or to ensure that they drive our point home. We make spontaneous use of fiction techniques in a memoir.

Are Fiction Techniques in a Memoir Valid?

Many life writers ask, “But, am I twisting things when I use fiction techniques in a memoir? Is it really okay?”

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The theme is the soul of the story. Every story needs a theme. The negative underside of theme, however, is being preachy. You are preaching when you insist that your reader endorse your theme, message or point of view.

1) Here’s a way to distinguish between being preachy and the right use of theme.

Read your text out loud to yourself. If you have been preachy, your grand, all-inclusive phrases will jump out at you. Sometimes people laugh aloud with awareness as they read aloud such phrases as:

“I’d like to see how many kids today would…” (more…)

Writing a memoir is not easy.

Writing a memoir requires a lot of time and energy—but you can do it. You can succeed in writing a memoir. Many people just like you have succeeded in doing so already.

I want to share a system with you for getting started on writing a memoir.

As with so many projects you might undertake, you can reinvent the wheel or you can plug into a system that has been shown to work. My Memoir Network has been helping people just like you to write personal and family stories since 1988 and our proven system can help you, too, to write a memoir.

The system that I have found to be best for launching new writers—and many practiced writers, too—has three parts to it.

1. When writing a memoir, create a memory list.

A Memory List is a list of everything you remember either in your life or in the life of the person you are writing about or, instead of memory listing an entire life, you can choose a part of a life—the period you are currently writing about. In fact, I usually ask people to chose some small period of their intended memoir and To make a Memory List of that time.

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To celebrate my birthday today, I would like to reprint a post from 2013. It is a passage from my mother Lucille Verreault Ledoux’s memoir, We Were not Spoiled/A Franco-American Memoir: — My second pregnancy was also easy enough. This time, the war was over and Albert was not in the Army. He and I could live this time together. My mother had had most of her babies at home, but by the mid-1940s, women were being urged to have their babies in the hospital. (Dr. Desaulniers must have been urging me, too, but I can’t remember.) We were still (more…)

Turning-Memories-Into-Memoirs-Denis-Ledoux-Picture

What to Do to Stay in the Memoir-Writing Conversation—And Why it’s Important.

By Denis Ledoux

I read professional journals. Poets and Writers from cover to cover. I receive the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance e-newsletter weekly. It’s a membership newsletter and comes chock full of news about what other writers are doing, readings schedules, and announcements of book publications. Do you have… (more…)

Ten Questions On Memoir Writing

By Denis Ledoux

(The following interview appeared in the Nov. 19, 2010, Oral History Education blog.) How did you get started in your profession of memoir writing? I started writing autobiography-based fiction. Some of these have won literary awards, and, while I like that, I feel the most satisfaction from helping readers who are stimulated to tell their […]