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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

Outline Your Goals to Grow a Better Memoir Business

By on March 25, 2020

In order to grow your memoir business, you will need to outline your goals. It’s likely that there are some skills (teaching, business, or writing) you would like to improve, so you can be more successful. Organizing your plans to build your skills will help you attain them more quickly. (more…)

Becoming a Memoir Professional – Be Very Adept at the Memoir Genre

By on February 26, 2020

To create a successful business of helping people to write their memoir, you must be familiar with the memoir genre itself. Being a good fiction writer or a poet or an essayist is not enough. You must have read many memoirs and have written in the genre. Your clients will rightfully expect no less from you than you be expert at both memoir writing and the theory behind memoir writing. (more…)

Tips to Grow Your Memoir or Writing-Based Business

By on February 12, 2020

Writing and memoir professionals too often have little sense of what a memoir or writing-based business is or how it functions. Too frequently, when people think of a business they imagine a machine shop, or a dry cleaning store, or a computer repair place rather than a writer’s office. But…writing as a business? (more…)

Teaching a Memoir Workshop – Easy Is Usually Not Best

By on January 28, 2020

In teaching a memoir workshop, the teacher’s task is to help individuals to go through and beyond two kinds of barriers to their writing: the technical and the psychological blocks that keep them from success. Our job is to facilitate our participants’ arrival at a point where they are able to “own” their stories, to acknowledge their life stories as they are and to accept themselves as they are.

(more…)

Memoir Writing – Five Tips For Jazzing Up a Life Writing Group

By on January 15, 2020

A good writing group can give you invaluable support and see you through to the end of your project. Regular meetings essentially become writing deadlines to complete portions of your project. Group deadlines can be very stimulating (after all, who wants to show up at a meeting and be the deadbeat who hasn’t brought any writing to share!) (more…)

Making a Success of a Memoir Business – Get Over Back-of-the-Room Sales Phobia

By on October 2, 2019

“Selling? I just can’t do it!” says the sales phobic. Why is it that some people cannot ask for a sale, cannot sell products from the back of the room, when promoting their memoir business, etc.? Perhaps it’s a struggle between values and rules!

Does this sound familiar: “I just can’t ask my work-shoppers or people who attend a presentation to buy books and tapes from me. It feels too… too-” (Screw up your face here and think nasty.) (more…)

Make a Business Plan for Your Memoir Writing Business—Basic Elements

By on September 18, 2019

What do you want your memoir writing business to accomplish in the next 12 months? Take some time right now and make a business plan.

You don’t have time, you say. Planning is an indulgence? Think of this parable:

A person is sawing a tree and is obviously harried. A second person approaches and asks, “How long have you been sawing?”

“Oh, all day and I’m exhausted. Look at how much I have left to do!”

The second person suggests, “Your saw is dull. You need to sharpen it.”

The first retorts wearily, “That might be a good idea for some other people, but I just don’t have the time to do that. Don’t you see how much tree I have left to cut! Get real.”

Take the time to sharpen the “saw” of your business life. Make a business plan. (more…)