Self-Editing Tips for Memoir Writers
The self-editing tips I’m sharing with you in this post will save you a lot of time and mistakes! Whether you are self-editing as you write or are going through your manuscript one last time before sending it to a professional editor, you’ll find these tips to be super helpful for better self-editing.
While I am offering you the steps in a linear way—mentioning one thing and then another—in practice as you go through your manuscript, you’ll do well to be aware of all of these steps at one time. That is, you are looking to edit everything.
Of course, you will on various occasions perhaps slight one element of self-editing or another, but when you realize this, you can go back and re-edit.
Going through each of these self-editing tips on your manuscript will take a while. I even recommend that you do it several times and even perhaps a month or two in between times. What this does is distance you emotionally from your manuscript. When you return to it, you’ll read it as the reader rather than as the writer.
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Before Sending Your Manuscript To An Editor / Part 2: Use of Time
Note from the Editor: This second installment of Before Sending a Manuscript to an Editor series offers basic editing tips around time use of time. For Part 1: Self-Editing Techniques Click here. For Part 3: Time Sequencing and Flashbacks Click here
Clean Up Your Use of Time
This second post on self-editing revolves around the use of time. In the next post, I will write about time sequencing and flashbacks.
1. The historical present looks like the past, but it isn’t.
What tense are you going to use to narrate your story?
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Memoir Success: Approaching Neverland
Memoir Success
Over the years, I have worked with many writers to help them create and shape their memoirs. It’s my pleasure to bring to your attention once again the success of one such writer: Peggy Kennedy from San Ramon, California, for whom I had the pleasure of providing coaching and editing help that led to her memoir success
Many readers of this blog have been writing for a while and some are despairing of finishing. There is hope. After a number of years of preparation, Peggy Kennedy’s memoir of growing up in a family with a mentally-ill mother, Approaching Neverland, saw print. (Ordering information at bottom.)
While the information below is from over a decade ago, I believe this memoir success story is dateless. Approaching Neverland did well—and so can you. A review in the magazine the Midwest Book Review gave it five stars. Originally fearful of speaking before an audience, she was a guest on a number of radio and television programs. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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How The Memoir Network Evolved
The Memoir Network evolved with thought. Its services—which are necessary for the success of writers and of the Memoir Network—grew regularly over a decade.
How to write a memoir: our 21 Best Memoir-Writing Tips to get you writing your memoir—quickly and well—and getting it into the hands of your public.
Note from the editor: This post is a memoir-writing course. I suggest that you glance through the whole of it, and pick those best memoir-writing tips that you most need to read at this time. Later, bit by bit, you will read the rest.
Click on the links that interest you and study the posts where you land. The links in even just a few of the tips below will uncover articles that pertain to the topic(s).
Following these best memoir-writing tips, your knowledge of memoir writing will grow more certain, and you will write with more confidence. One day, sooner than you think possible, your memoir will be published and in hand.
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It’s later than you think. Don’t put off writing your memoir any longer.
Our 21 in-depth, best memoir-writing tips below will help you to start memoir writing today.
You’ll find these guides will see you through the process of how to write a memoir—an interesting and meaningful memoir—more easily and quickly than you may now think possible.
One day soon, you will have written your book.
The Memoir Network’s 21 Top Best Memoir-Writing Tips to get you to memoir success.
1. What is a memoir? Hint: it’s not an autobiography!
Is the difference important to the memoir writer? Somewhat! Knowing what you are writing will orient you from the start! It can be discouraging to realize that you have been headed in the wrong direction when you could have saved yourself time and energy by understanding the difference between memoir and autobiography as you launched yourself. While it’s not huge, it can be significant.
An autobiography is about a whole life: from birth to the present. A memoir is a part of your life that is characterized by a theme. It might be about the first years of your marriage during which you realized what an immature and selfish person you were and earned to be a giving souse. This may interest many people as it is a struggle many are waging.
The fact is that, while it is totally possible to write a memoir that will interest the public and draw an audience to you, the same is not true of an autobiography. If you are famous: possibly. If you are not, it is not likely that people will be interested in what grade school you went to and how much your grandmother loved you.
(This statement about autobiography is not applicable if you are writing for a family audience. Your children and grandchildren will definitely be interested in an autobiography.)
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The Difference Between Proofreading and Editing
After having written a good portion of their memoir, writers will sometimes begin to wonder if it is time to hire a writing professional to work with them to get the manuscript ready to go out into the world. At this stage, they may ask, “What’s the difference between proofreading and editing? And, how do I know which one I need?”
What Is Proofreading?
Proofreading is the more technical, nutsy-boltsy end of editing. Someone who is an editor will often also undertake to proofread a manuscript. Proofreading is concerned with mechanics: spelling, punctuation, noun/verb agreement, other grammar problems, consistency (abbreviations, digits vs. numbers that are spelled out as words, etc.), obvious breaks from styling (inconsistencies in fonts, line spacing, spacing between words, and margins), and factual errors (dates, place names, historical facts).
Obviously, proofreading requires a solid foundation in grammar, vocabulary, and general knowledge. It requires an eye for detail. Proofreaders refer often to the following in hard copy or on the internet: a dictionary, an atlas, and an encyclopedia.
What Exactly Is the Difference Between Proofreading and Editing ?
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What Is Developmental Editing and Why You Need It for Your Self-Published Memoir
What is developmental editing and do you need it? If the big New York publishing houses NEVER publish a manuscript without extensive editing, why would you as a self-publisher?
A professional memoir editor can quickly and effectively help you tweak your lifestory so that you get to say more clearly and dynamically what you have been trying to say. You can’t write your best memoir without developmental editing—it’s game-changing.
Editors come in many stripes: some are copy editors, others are content editors while still another kind is a developmental editor.
In this post, I want to focus on developmental editing and how it will help you write a memoir you can be proud to send into the world.
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How Memoir Editing Works
When I begin the memoir editing process with clients, I tell them that a proper editing requires three “read-throughs.” It is impossible to give a manuscript all the attention it deserves in one reading.
That’s simply how memoir editing works when done properly
Reading a manuscript without doing any specific editing and forming only a general impression has always seemed a good idea in theory, but I have not found a way to do so that is economical. I have therefore evolved this concept of read-throughs as a memoir editing technique. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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How Memoir Coaching or Editing Works
There’s often only a permeable line between memoir coaching and editing. In practice, as we writers at the Memoir Network work with a writer, we find myself slipping from coaching a memoir writer to editing the manuscript we are working with and back to coaching. That’s how organically close coaching and editing really are. Depending on the state of your manuscript, coaching or editing or both are called for.
Choosing memoir coaching or editing–How it works
Generally, I, or the editor who has been assigned to you, read sections of your manuscript—say 20-30 pages—and return this edited portion to you with comments and suggestions—and sometimes edits [also known as suggested corrections]. All our notes are done in Microsoft Text Edit—which you can learn in minutes. Manuscripts are returned as an attachment—but snail mail can work well, too, but it is too slow for most people.
I find working on a short segment of your manuscript—20- to 30 pages—to be more effective for contributing to the quality of the memoir than reading the entire text. Sometimes, of course, I have a question on, say, page 17 and then you might protest, “But, this is answered on page 85! You haven’t read the whole manuscript yet!” [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]