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Don’t Talk Your Stories Away

When a writer talks too much and too revealingly about a work-in-progress—especially at the early stage before the writing has taken shape—the energy to get the story written is often scattered. Sometimes what passes for a writer’s block is only a failure to relate to your stories in a way that’s conducive to getting them written. This may seem like a writer’s block but it’s not. It’s really poor writing discipline!

People have an urge to make their stories public—in any format that will satisfy the impulse. Talking over a cup of tea may be just as satisfying a release as shaping a memorable poem or novel or life story.

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Reaching a Larger Book Audience for Your Memoir

It is possible to reach a larger book audience than family and friends with your memoir. Here are four suggestions to enable your story to appeal to a larger public. 

1) Write a story that is truly well-written and whose reading—the prose itself—will bring joy to your reader.

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Where Do You Start Writing Your Memoir?

It’s a quandary: where do you start writing your memoir? Many people may say: from the beginning. So? Does that mean you start from the first thing you can remember in the sequence of the story? I suppose you could do that, but, I don’t think that is the best place to start your memoir. So where is the best place to start your memoir?

1. The answer is actually quite simple: Start your memoir anywhere in the story. 

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DL: May 5 marks the anniversary of my mother’s death in 2015 so it is fitting today to commemorate her memory by running an excerpt from her memoir, We Were Not Spoiled. This excerpt is typical in many ways of a Franco-American girl of her generation. To read other excerpts, click here and here and here and here. In the fall of 1929, Robert joined me at school, and because he was born in February, he was two years behind me. I entered the first year of third grade. St. Peter’s School had this practice of having all the children (more…)
Are you making a mistake not planning to include ebook publishing in your publication schedule? People interested in independent publication ask me if they should publish their manuscript as an ebook, a hard copy book or both. The honest answer on my part is I don’t know. The decision is individual and unique to you. What might be right for one person is not necessarily right for another. What I can do is give you some of the best reasons I can come up with why you need an ebook. There are many good ones, and I’m offering you some (more…)

We read memoirs for many reasons. These reasons can perhaps be summarized into two: we want to be entertained and we need to be informed.

In this post on the mythic journey of your life, I want to write about the second of those reasons: our need to be informed.

Whether they articulate it or not, many people read memoirs because they want to understand something about the lived experience of life. Life is not easy. It is full of challenges, defeats and conundrums.

“What to do?”

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Mary Ellen Ellwell was a writing client with whom I especially enjoyed working. She brought to the relationship a sense of the value of collaboration. This made the time together a creative one for both of us as we worked together, first with coaching and then with editing—the two often not separable—to write a successful memoir. Below is her account of writing her book. Mary Ellen departed from the Q/A format but very smoothly managed to cover all the same points that the other interviewees had. My book, With No Extraordinary Power: A Social Worker’s Life, (2008), is a memoir (more…)

While in the past I had published only hard-copy versions of my books, I have increasingly included a digital version. It just makes sense, and I would advise writers that they need an ebook.

Ebooks are on the ascendancy are more and more a viable publication option. Every year, their share of the book-reading audience grows. Granted you can’t experience the ebook as a satisfying weight in your hand (unless it’s the weight of the e-reader) nor can you feel the page turning, but the ebook has become a good choice at many levels.

A Good Buy for the Reader

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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 language, not just big words.

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

“He was awfully big” is vague. You might write instead: “My father measured six foot five and weighed 275 pounds.”

Don’t write: “The job was OK.” Write: “The job was in my field of competence, but its salary was inadequate and its requirements did not challenge me.”

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A Long Distance Writing Program

Don’t Talk Your Stories Away

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When a writer talks too much and too revealingly about a work-in-progress–especially at the early stage before the writing has taken shape–the energy to get the story written is often scattered. Sometimes what passes for a writer’s block is… (more…)

memoir writing information

No Smile on my Face

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Dr. Morin would say that my mother had not put a smile on my face when she carried me, but I think it was because, as the oldest, I was made to be a too-serious child. (more…)

ebooks from the memoir network

5 Reasons to Undertake Ebook Publishing

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Are you making a mistake not planning to include ebook publishing in your publication schedule? People interested in independent publication ask me if they should publish their manuscript as an ebook, a hard copy book or both. The honest answer on my part is I don’t know. The decision is individual and unique to you. […]

family myths

Shaping your memoir: The mythic journey of your life

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You have undertaken to write the mythic journey of your life. We read memoirs for many reasons. These reasons can perhaps be summarized into two: we want to be entertained and we need to be informed. In this post on the mythic journey of your life, I want to write about the second of those […]

write a successful memoir

How to Write a Successful Memoir: With No Extraordinary Power

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Mary Ellen Ellwell was a writing client with whom I especially enjoyed working. She brought to the relationship a sense of the value of collaboration. This made the time together a creative one for both of us as we worked together, first with coaching and then with editing—the two often not separable—to write a successful […]

best ebook production

Why You Need an Ebook

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While in the past I had published only hard-copy versions of my books, I have increasingly included a digital version. It just makes sense, and I would advise writers that they need an ebook. Ebooks are on the ascendancy are more and more a viable publication option. Every year, their share of the book-reading audience […]

exact word

Why Use Precise Speech?

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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…)