Don’t De-value Your Characters by Using Cliches and Stereotypes
Don’t devalue your characters by using cliches and stereotypes. This will undermine the unique and personal feel of your memoir. Cliches and stereotypes place people in categories. As short-hand ways of writing and speaking, they reflect ready-made thoughts and adversely affect the ways we relate to our families and friends as unique individuals.
Writing a First Draft: Why They’re Called “First”
Nothing can rightly be called a first unless there is a second. That is why first drafts are called first drafts. A writer must expect to write a second draft, and a third even. No one can sit down and churn out countless pages of prose that don’t need rewriting. Jack Kerouac claimed he did […]
When You Must Have The Photos You Don’t Have/How To Journal Without The Photos, Part II
The Memory List will suggest topics to write about, but what follows is additional tips you can use when you don’t have the photos.
Regular Writing Practice: An Important Decision!
Many people set off to write their memoirs with considerable enthusiasm. Frequently however over the months and years it takes to complete the manuscript, their enthusiasm wanes and the memoir project that had seemed so interesting now begins to bore the writer is soon abandoned. I don’t think there was ever a writer whose interest […]
Thinking About Memoir Writing
Our right thinking about memoir writing projects or our right talking about them can lead to success or failure. We can be very clever about our evasive tactics and disguise them as right thinking. Here are three examples that can pass for thoughtfulness rather than evasion.
Fiction and memoir writing: When Is It not a Memoir?
It’s an interesting book, very well-written in terms of style and organization, but my nagging doubt is that it is autobiographical fiction and not memoir…
Three Causes of “Writer’s Block”
Many writers suffer from writer’s block, yet few understand its possible causes. Memoir writing certainly has its difficulties which can cause writer’s block.
Evoking Emotions in Your Readers
You Can Evoke Emotions in Your Readers. Here’s How. Instilling your memoir with enough emotion to stir up a response from your readers is do-able. It is undeniably one of the most important results an author must set out to achieve. A memoir seeks to move a reader and without evoking emotions, a memoir cannot […]
Writer’s Block Is Often Caused by Lack of Discipline
Some people successfully use the notion of writer’s block to convince friends and family that, while they’re real writers, they just happen not to be producing–but a person can do this only for a while. Remember: you can never successfully use writer’s block to get your stories written!