How to Write More Efficiently #2
Memoir writer ask, “How can I write more efficiently?”
In a previous post, I had developed the concept of writing on a deadline. In this post I will stay with the concept of writing close to the finish.
Yes, writing is a process but…
While I continue to believe that writing ought to be open-ended and that you ought to remain in the process of discovering your theme and subject rather than opt for a too-quick closure (“This is what my story means”), I also believe in something that is a bit contradictory to this.
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How to Write More Efficiently #1
Is it possible to write more efficiently?
Too many writers (I have been among them) allow the book-writing process to go on and on. We lack efficiency which is a practice and, like all practices, it is possible to learn to write more efficiently. There are many ways to learn to write more efficiently but I want to propose only one way here.
As we probably all have done, we can clean a living space up rather well in a few hours if we learn that we have unexpected company arriving soon. It’s not the best clean up we’ve ever done, but it also didn’t take a week of clearing our schedules and doing nothing else.
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The Problem With Writing Prompts
Is there a problem with writing prompts? This is my issue with writing prompts: they tend to lead to isolated stories, stories that are searching for humor, searching to be shared with a group that is perhaps looking for entertainment. They are not, by and large, searching for meaning lost in the morass of your […]
Regular Writing Practice: An Important Decision!
In this post, you will learn the many benefits of a regular writing practice.
Many people set off to write their memoirs with considerable enthusiasm. It’s a new project and it’s full of energy. This is going to be the greatest memoir the world has ever known!
How long can that last? Enthusiasm takes you only so far. Over the months and years it takes to complete a manuscript, the initial enthusiasm wanes and the memoir project that had seemed so interesting at its onset now begins to bore the writer. We begin to hear about the writer “trying to write a memoir.” Unless the writer changes attitude, the memoir will soon be abandoned.
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The Difference between a Memoir and an Autobiography
The difference between a memoir and an autobiography can be rather minimal—or fairly large.
“So what is the difference between a memoir and an autobiography?” you may persist in asking as so many people do. Perhaps they are masking their diffidence about writing, wanting to “get it right.”
Practically speaking, for most people, there is no difference between a memoir and an autobiography. In common speech, the terms are interchangeable.
People say, “I’m writing an autobiography” or, “I’m writing a memoir.” (It’s the word memoir that has grown not the word autobiography that has shrunk.)
But, technically (or perhaps in the historical meaning of the two words), there is a difference between a memoir and an autobiography.
Two definitions
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Organize Your Memoir: Life Phases
Organize Your Memoir with Life Phases
Life phases are one way in which you can organize your memoir. Life phases are the emotional and psychological cycles or phases that have marked your life.
Every life proceeds in irregular and unpredictable phases. We can go along with our lives for a long time without much change, thinking that we have arrived at a resolution of the great “who am I?” question, and then unpredictably and perhaps quickly find ourselves dealing with totally different emotional and psychological challenges. Often, it is only in looking back on our lives that we are aware of these life phases.
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Point of View in a Memoir, Part 2
What is the importance of point of view in a memoir? In the previous post on point of view, I shared my challenge of trying to write material in a ghostwritten memoir that I knew to be true but which the subject was not forthcoming with. This is not “Truth” material. It is more the sort of reflection that a more intuitive, self-reflecting person might make to cast light on her/his life. The memoir in question is We Were Not Spoiled, a memoir I co-wrote with my mother Lucille Verreault Ledoux. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Point of View in a Memoir, Part 1
This is the first of several articles on point of view in a memoir.
My mother’s memoir, We Were not Spoiled, was a work of love that took me many years to bring to closure as I had other work to do to support myself that filled my days. Finally, she got to be quite a bit older, and beginning to feel urgency as many people do when in my position, I put the push on finishing her story.
I’ll be sharing with you in the next few blog entries my experience of writing someone else’s memoir. My mother was, after all, another person with her own agenda and experience. As the co-writer, my task was to listen to her and to write as close to her point of view as possible. How does one remain faithful to another’s point of view in a memoir? [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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Avoid Writing a Chronology: 4 Tips
Is writing a chronology of a life ever enough?
Dates and facts are necessary to life writing in the same way route numbers are necessary to maps. It’s not only that dates and facts provide interesting information but that they keep your readers on the right path as they make their way through your life story. So…
Writing a chronology is already a great contribution to your family story, but you can do so much more than just include the dates and facts. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]