Your Memoir: Write with Your Audience in Mind
Before you start your memoir, write with your audience in mind by answering your readers’ questions. How do you do that? Try this exercise.
Writing Hooks to Open a Paragraph or Chapter
How do you start a chapter with writing hooks that capture the reader’s interest? Try these 3 methods create curiosity in your reader!
Self-Editing Tips for Memoir Writers
Follow these self-editing tips to save time (and mistakes!) on your memoir manuscript before you send it to a professional editor.
Don’t Worry About a Thing / Katherine Sullivan
Denis Ledoux: At The Memoir Network, we had the pleasure of working with Katherine Sullivan for several years as she edited her memoir, Don’t Worry About a Thing, with one of our editors, Frances King, and focused on book production with Sally Lunt. Because of her insightful articulation of her life experience, I am delighted she agreed to do the following interview (conducted by email.)
Denis: Can you tell our readers—your fellow writers—what your book is about and why you were impelled to write it? What was driving you to spend the time, energy and money to get this book out into the world?
Katherine: Don’t Worry About a Thing is a coming-of-age memoir about life in a small Maine town in the middle of the twentieth century. As a child of a Greek immigrant and a Maine country girl, I tried to find my place in the world. Not all immigrant stories are success stories. I was impelled to write this book to help me find meaning after a childhood spent with a father whose gambling addiction affected every aspect of my life. I searched for answers in an unstable world, and writing was a place where I could question and discover who I was and where I fit in the world. My personal therapy.
Denis: Tell us about your writing process and how long you worked on this memoir.
Katherine: I began actively working on this book in my fifties, so about twenty years, but I knew from when I was a young girl that I wanted to write. There were long breaks when my life in the present got in the way of my writing about the past. I knew though, that I would finish, and to get me motivated during those dry spells, I took writing workshops at various intervals.
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Too Much Backstory–Are you making memoir writing more difficult than necessary?
How much backstory is too much? Today we will discuss how to avoid too much backstory in your memoir. My goal is to help you write better the first time around. The earlier you write better the less you will have to edit and rewrite.
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9 Tips for a Fast Start Writing Your Memoir
Ever wish you had the secret of generating a fast way to fast start writing your memoir—or most any other book?
A proven way to start writing is to follow a set of steps that will help you get into the writing habit. When I wrote and published A Sugary Frosting / A Memoir Of A Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage, I appreciated the efficiency and effectiveness of my writing process all the more. A Sugary Frosting is the story of the first 20 years of my deceased wife’s life. She had written a number of her stories but died before completing a memoir. When I took up the task, I followed what I consider to be “best practices” of memoir writing.
Below I offer them to you to help you get a fast start and to write more prolifically—and even bring it to a finish in the form of a published memoir.
Here are my nine “best practices” for memoir writing. They are tried and true and bear implementing today.
1. Set up a regular writing time. This will get you a fast start writing your memoir.
How long you write is perhaps not as important as how frequently you do so. Once you have set up a writing time, honor it as you would a medical appointment. Don’t allow others to usurp your time!
A schedule may be the tool you need to make a success of your writing. Don’t become another person who tried to write, who is thinking of writing.
What you need to write a memoir successfully is discipline not motivation. Motivation will likely get you only so far while discipline will see you to a completed memoir. A schedule flows naturally as a part of discipline.
2. Give yourself permission to write a rough first draft.
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How Long Does It Take to Write a Memoir?
Sometimes, years after I’ve heard from someone that he is writing a memoir, I will hear from the writer again. Perhaps it’s three or four or five years later, but the writer is working on the same memoir and is not close to finishing. I don’t get it. How long does it take to write a memoir? So I ask politely, “What has snagged your memoir?” In short…
It seems to have taken that writer too long to write his memoir!
So, how long does it take to write a memoir?
Well, I don’t actually know the answer to “how long does it take to write a memoir?” What I know is a memoir needn’t take so long to compose as many people take. People do get bogged down in writing. A memoir—an interesting and meaningful one under 200 pages—can be written in as short a time as 12 to 24 months.
If that’s so, then why do some memoirs drag on and on and risk never getting completed?
Sometimes, years after I’ve heard from someone that he is writing a memoir, I will connect with the writer again. Perhaps it’s three or four or five years later, but the writer is working on the same memoir. I don’t get it. So I ask politely, “What has snagged the memoir?” In short…
I has taken that writer too long to write his memoir!
How long does it take to write a memoir?
Well, I don’t actually know the answer to “how long does it take to write a memoir?” What I know is a memoir needn’t take so long to compose. A memoir—and interesting and meaningful one—can be written in 12 to 24 months.
If that’s so, then why do some memoirs drag on? [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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22 Memoir-Writing Goals for the Second Half of 2022: Your Half Year Boost
DL: This post was originally published on December 29, 2021 and I have tweaked them to fit the second half of the year. How many of these goals have you accomplished in the first half of the year? These remain great goals. There’s still 6 months left in 2022 for you to succeed at these!
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Did you find yourself wandering along with your memoir writing in the first half of the 2022 year and not achieving your memoir-writing goals? Do you have a sense that you might have accomplished a bit more writing than you have?
At the half year point, it is traditional to review how the past two quarters went for you and to create goals for yourself for the six months. (A goal is a wish with action steps and a timeline.) These goals need to be written and reviewed periodically.
Studies have shown that people who set goals in writing have a better outcome vis-à-vis accomplishing what they set out to do. Here’s a report on one such study. (The famous Harvard goal-setting study so many of us have heard of apparently never happened, but the concept of goal setting is clearly important and is explored in the linked article.)
22 Memoir-Writing Goals for 2022
Since this is a memoir writing blog, I thought it is appropriate for me to come up with goals that would further your writing success in 2022. And why not play with the year’s number—22?
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How to Write a Memoir for a Broader Audience: 4 Tips
Would you like your memoir to attract a broader audience? While family and friends are a worthy readership for your memoir, are you one of those many writers who aspires a larger public?
Writers will admit, if pushed, that they would enjoy a public response to their efforts. Your story can appeal to strangers—if you pay attention to these four tips—and may even move these strangers to new insights and motivations. And how knows—this broader audience may write you a fan letter.
My newest You Tube video offers you four easy-to-implement tips to help your story to appeal to a public beyond family and friends. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]