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Teach, Coach, Edit, and Ghostwrite Memoirs

Before you head down to the blog, I want to take a moment to tell you about how I became a Memoir Professional and began to teach, coach, edit and ghostwrite for people from around the world.

One day in 1989, I stood outside a conference room, listening to the chatter inside. I had been invited to speak to a group of older people about What Became of Them, my then-new book of short autobiographical fiction. Little could I know that I was pausing before walking into my future! How could I suspect I would teach, coach, edit, ghostwrite memoirs for the next decades.

After my presentation, I asked members of the audience to share their personal and family stories which my stories had been evoked. The outpouring of memories was truly amazing and that led the group leader to ask if I would be willing to lead members of the group in a memoir writing workshop.

The rest, as they say, is history—a delightful history that I have been privileged to live.

You can succeed as a Memoir Professional

If you are here on this blog archive, you must be interested in exploring how you, too, can become a Memoir Professional. Whether you are just starting out or have already done this memoir work, there is much here to support you to be successful—critically and financially—as a Memoir Professional.

When I began to offer the Turning Memories Into Memoirs® workshop in 1989, I already had many years of high school and university teaching behind me. I hold a master’s degree in education. With this background, under the auspices of grants from the Maine Humanities Council, I developed the first workshops that evolved into the curriculum that led to my success. Subsequently, I began to teach, coach, edit, and ghostwrite memoirs. So can you.

As a Memoir Professional, you will wear many hats: that of writing teacher, lecturer, businessperson, and publicist—and perhaps that of coach, editor, and ghostwriter. You will assist people from all walks of life to access the writing skills they need to make their lifestories as effective and as successful as they hoped them to be when they came to you.

Denis Ledoux’s Memoir Professional materials are an excellent, comprehensive training focused on how to start and operate a memoir business successfully.

—Robin Waldron, Memoir Professional
The Write Source, Franklin, Indiana


A rewarding venture: teach, coach, edit, ghostwrite memoirs

In this process, you will also be helping yourself to grow emotionally and psychologically as you engage in the writing process of the men and the women who will come to you. Because you are their teacher—or perhaps you are serving as their coach, editor, or ghostwriter, you will know them in a very special and rewarding way.

The articles below will help you to succeed at this important work as you teach, coach, edit, and ghostwrite memoirs.

There are more resources in our Memoir Store to help you succeed. You will find that they have been designed to jumpstart your success—financially and critically.

Memoir Professional Blog Posts

5 Questions to Accelerate Your Financial Success

By on September 16, 2020

Do you have a strategy in place for the financial success of your memoir business? Memoir work attracts idealistic people who often have few business skills. This article focuses on five skills-building questions a memoir professional ought to ask himself/herself to accelerate his/her financial success. They are five important questions but not necessarily an exhaustive list. (more…)

A Better Way to Teach Memoir Writing

By on August 12, 2020

Writers have been able to teach memoir writing from Memoir Network packages since 1996. The idea of creating packages started when people began telephoning us to ask if we could help them teach memoir writing. “I’d like to do what you do right here at home,” they’d tell us. At the time, we had no materials but, in 1996, I took four months out to write the two core manuals: The Curriculum Manual and The Presenter’s Manual. We are now in the process of a major update of the revisions of these texts.

By now, hundreds of individuals—600 and counting—have made great use of the materials to engage people in their communities in memoir writing. One could easily presume that 100,000 memoirs and lifestory collections have been written as a result of the memoir teachers we have helped launch. In the process… (more…)

Pay Attention–A Writing Based Business Launch Tip

By on June 17, 2020

Pay attention to your writing-based business. It is this practice of paying attention that will make the difference between your success and failure as a business person.

In today’s business marketplace, the quality of your work is a given. It is almost not something you can market-the public expects you to offer only. (more…)

Nine Tips For Making a Business Strategy Plan

By on May 20, 2020

Creating a business strategy plan takes time and focus but it need not be difficult. Much of the business plan info on the internet is intimidating and a waste of your time if you are a small outfit. A business strategy plan is much simpler and may be just what you need. It is essentially a “to do” list with a projected income attached to it: what you want to do, how you will do it, and by when. (more…)

Succeeding As a Memoir Professional – Filling the Pipeline

By on May 5, 2020

Filling the pipeline through marketing is not magic. It’s the measurable result of sustained outreach! Marketing is not rocket science. In many ways, it is an intuitive process that is constantly in need of a “reality check” from the numbers (ultimately of dollars) it generates. Your outreach is successful not because someone says you have a beautiful brochure or a great website, etc. Marketing is successful when it brings in paying clients. (more…)

Market to Pre-Qualified Prospects – Period!

By on April 8, 2020

It is important to market to pre-qualified prospects (people within your potential buying pool, people who have identified themselves as wanting your product). While some individuals in a church, a club, a benevolent association, or a school may have expressed general interest in your product, groups such as these are examples of lack of pre-qualification. You would be marketing to people the vast majority of whom are not potential buyers–nor will they ever be. (more…)