Three Tips That Will Keep You in the Memoir-Writing Conversation
Recently, someone asked me what are the biggest barriers memoir writers face to being prolific. The following three came to mind right away. Below, I write about them and offer suggestions for eliminating these impediments to staying in the writing conversation. Writers often put… (more…)
Why You Should Work With a Coach or an Editor Early in the Process
Clients will often come to me after having done a considerable amount of writing. Sometimes I will receive 200- and 300-page manuscripts. Among them are manuscripts that are really at the editing stage, but… There are too many that are still—in spite of their polished look on the page—in an early stage of development. (more…)
Why Go to a Writer’s Retreat?
Why would I go away to a writer’s retreat to write when I can write at home, at my very own desk, with my cat and my favorite coffee mug? Writers at all stages of their writing life and in their projects can benefit from attending a retreat. Even in the beginning, when you may […]
Kate Christensen talks about writing Blue Plate Special / An Autobiography of My Appetites and about writing in general.
In her memoir, novelist Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man and the The Astral Hotel, has undertaken to organize her lifestory around food. It is an interesting concept, a theme, around which to make sense of a lifetime. If the memoir is, as Rainer Maria Rilke said of poetry, a momentary order, then Kate […]
How to Read the Memoir Writer’s Blog
How to Read the Memoir Writer’s Blog To Your Benefit Every day or so, I create a new memoir writer’s blog post. I write about a variety of topics to motivate and educate the writer. (more…)
Filles du Roi/Daughters of the King Meet their Prospective Husbands
The “daughters of the king” were introduced to prospective husbands at the Ursuline convent in the Upper Town of Québec (more…)
There Goes the Neighborhood, Part 1
Gunnar was mowing his field. This was odd. He never mowed his field. He was making ever-tightening circles around the knobby acre, the sweet grass and raggedy weeds falling in neat windrows behind him. (more…)
Mary Anne Benedetto: Amazon Best Seller Two Days in a Row!
A note from Mary Anne Benedetto, a Soleil Memoir Professional from Murrell’s Inlet, SC. about the recent success of her novel Eyelash on Amazon. Hang onto your hats… (more…)
The Kirkus Review on Peggy Kennedy’s Book
The Kirkus review on Approaching Neverland by Peggy Kennedy: A captivating memoir of love, loss, mental illness and redemption. Kennedy walked into her first day of first grade alone, with unkempt hair that both her parents had neglected to brush. So begins her saga of having a mother whose mental illness (eventually diagnosed as bipolar […]