Rosanne Ullman

Rosanne Ullman owns Write My Memoirs (writemymemoirs.com) to help people write and self-publish their life stories and co-owns Home Memoir (homememoir.com) to help people capture, in a coffee-table book, the love they have for their home. For 20 years, Rosanne taught grammar at a local adult education program, New Trier eXtention, and that well-received course is the basis for the Write My Memoirs Grammar and Writing Course. Rosanne has a long freelance career writing for and about various industries, particularly the professional beauty industry. Her observations about life appear frequently on various blog sites and include regular contributions to Sixty and Me (sixtyandme.com) and Boomer Cafe (boomercafe.com). Rosanne also is the author of the children’s picture book The Case of the Disappearing Kisses. She holds a Master’s degree in Journalism (MSJ) from Northwestern University’s famed Medill School of Journalism.

Build Buzz About Your Memoir by Publishing Articles and Comments Online

May 30, 2023 by Rosanne Ullman

Screen capture of author's online article

First-time memoir authors are likely to have no solid writing credentials, much less an agent or publisher. How do you get writing credentials? Write!

Bylines Validate You as a Writer

Even a handful of online articles with your byline can build credibility for you as a writer as you begin to market your memoir, which you can do before it’s ready for publication. Write about things you know, and research websites that invite people to submit essays. There are lots of advantages to doing this:

Typically, your byline will be accompanied by a short bio. Given even just two or three sentences, your bio can easily mention that you’re the author of an upcoming memoir. If you can be more specific with the memoir’s name and the exact date or just month of publication, even better.
If you want an agent to represent you, or if you send your memoir manuscript to a publisher, impress them by including links to articles that carry your byline. That shows them that some professional outlet thought your work was worthy of publication.
These links look good on your own book website or blog as well. They say: I’m a professionally published writer. You can trust that my memoir is a well-written book.
Many articles offer readers the ability to leave comments. Keep an eye on your article, and respond to comments. This establishes a conversation with the very people who are potential buyers of your memoir.
You may get a little money for your efforts. But while some online outlets will pay for your material, that shouldn’t be your main consideration.
Writers write, and they constantly get better and faster at writing. Now that you’re a memoir author, writing frequently on other projects will help your writing flow so that it’s easier to motivate yourself to sit down and work on your memoir.

What to Write About

Ideally, you’ll find a website to carry your article about something directly related to your memoir. From your memoir’s theme to anything your memoir covers—your work, specific issues in family life, the geography you describe—you can speak as an expert by virtue of the fact that you’re writing a memoir that includes information on that subject. You are an authentic voice in that community. Don’t diminish the right you’ve earned to be an authority and the contributions you can make with a good article.

To just get your name out there, you also can write about something completely unrelated to your memoir. This won’t necessarily reach the target market for your memoir, but it will provide the other benefits of giving you a byline, links to share and a bio paragraph.

Here’s an article I wrote about a hot pop-culture topic that was published on sixtyandme.com. You can see that it’s been generating comments, and it’s even popping up on searches. Am I using my own blog here to help promote it? You bet.

Comment on Other People’s Articles

Another way to establish a familiar name with potential readers is to comment on articles that address your memoir’s theme. Any knowledgeable, informative comment you post will add to the discussion and set you up as a valuable voice on that topic.

On your comments, you may be able to sneak in a plug for your memoir, especially if you say something vague such as: “I’m writing a memoir about my experience with this same type of childhood.” Or you may be able to direct people to your book’s website.

How This is Different from Social Media

It’s helpful to build an online presence through Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or whatever social media combination appeals to you. Articles are different, though, because they represent acceptance and a little bit of vetting by someone out there in the field. Anyone can tweet, but not everyone can submit an article and get it accepted for publication.

In addition, articles carry URLs that may stay there for years as you continue to send links to anyone interested in your writing. Social media is more about “follow me” and what’s coming next than what’s already out there. You don’t have to keep up with an article the way you do with a social account.

Good luck as you navigate all of this! Let us know if Write My Memoirs can help you with editing or self-publishing.

First Line of Your Memoir is the First Hook for the Reader

May 9, 2023 by Rosanne Ullman

We’ve talked a lot about where in your life you should start your memoir to really hook the reader. Successful memoirs start anywhere and everywhere, but today I’d say they most typically begin with a compelling, pivotal incident that took place in, say, the first third of the person’s life or the period of time the memoir addresses. I think that’s a great way to get readers invested from the beginning—they will want to see what comes next as well as what came before to lead up to that episode.

One Rule: Be Compelling

But some memoir authors start right at the beginning. Richard Nixon’s memoir launches his life with the sentence: “I was born in a house my father built.” Janis Ian’s 2009 memoir, Society’s Child: My Autobiography, begins, “I was born into the crack that split America.”

The idea is that even if you want to follow the simplest format—start with your first appearance in the world and proceed chronologically—you still should begin your book with something more interesting than the simple time and place of your birth. Add a fact, offer a surprise, be sarcastic—keep in mind that the reader can always put the book down and never pick it up again, so with each sentence, give readers a reason to keep reading.

Salvador Dali starts not with action but with thought. He opens his memoir by revealing how confident he was even as a child: “At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.” So you see there are no rules. I would have said this type of passive beginning would not work as well as a moment of high action, but it does work. It sets the mood for how the book will roll out.

Writing Order: Again, No Rules

Just because the reader will read your first line before anything else doesn’t mean you have to write the first line before anything else. You don’t even have to write the first chapter first.

Many authors find the way they can most easily start writing is to write about an episode they know very well but one that does not require a lot of emotion for them to tell. Then little by little, you’ll get accustomed to writing about yourself and it won’t be so difficult. When you’re ready, you can write a great first sentence, first paragraph and first chapter even if you’ve already finished much of the rest of the text.

A Love Story as a Memoir

February 13, 2023February 13, 2023 by Rosanne Ullman

Roses around a piece of paper that someone is writing on.

When you remember that a memoir is not your entire life story but just an episode or time segment in your life, you can see why sometimes a memoir is little more than a love story. It’s that place and time, recalled through sights and sounds, food and conversation. It’s that one who got away or the romance that blossomed into a long marriage. It’s the ultimate joy of your life, or it’s loss and grief. The memoir tells one or more aspects of what that love was about.

Why Write a Love Memoir

You might write your love story memoir because you want to document:

Your happy marriage. This type of memoir honors your spouse, who’s likely the most important person in your life. It will trace your life from the time you fell in love up to the present day or, perhaps, to when your spouse died.
Your troubled marriage/relationship. Love doesn’t always bring together the most compatible people, and in some cases the relationship is explosive. Maybe you want to document that. Sometimes it’s not about compatibility but about abuse. At Write My Memoirs, we hear from people who want to explain how and why they left an abusive relationship that, at least at one time, involved being in love.
The loss of your partner. Whether the relationship was brief or long, losing someone you love is tough. One way to process the loss is to write about it, as many people do. This memoir can express your admiration for the partner, but it also can contribute to the general discussion of how we move on alone.
More than one love. You can devote a memoir to your romances without limiting it to just one. Maybe you’ve noticed a pattern in the people you’ve loved, or you just want to walk down memory lane and relive the experience of each romance.

Other Love

Your love memoir may not be a romantic story at all. Love comes in many forms, and a love memoir can reflect any of them. Let’s do this in rhyme:

The love for a child,
The love for a pet,
The love for an icon
You have never met.

People write tributes to their siblings or parents in the form of a memoir. There are memoirs about the love for a friend. Truth & Beauty: A Friendship, by Ann Patchett, recounts the friendship the author had with writer Lucy Grealy. Among the tributes to Fred “Mr.” Rogers is I’m proud of you : My Friendship with Fred Rogers, a memoir by his friend Tim Madigan. And there’s Just Kids, a memoir we love here on Write My Memoirs, about singer Patti Smith’s love for her late friend, artist Robert Mapplethorpe.

Start Today!

But today is Valentine’s Day, and romantic love is always fascinating, always a unique story. So if you want to reminisce about a romance you experienced that may or may not still be in bloom, today is a great day to write that first word. You can practically smell the flowers.

Take This Quiz to Find Out Whether You’re Writing a Memoir or an Autobiography

September 11, 2020 by Rosanne Ullman

A common question authors have about memoir is whether they’re writing a true memoir or an autobiography. At Write My Memoirs, we don’t make much of a distinction. If you’re writing about your life, you’re writing about your life. Call it a memoir, autobiography, life history—we don’t think it matters much.

But authors continue to want to know how to label their book, so here’s a little quiz for you to take to reveal whether, according to conventional thinking, you’re writing a memoir or an autobiography.

Answer TRUE or FALSE:

My story begins with my birth and continues to present day.
My primary goal in writing my book is to provide information for my children and grandchildren to “know where they come from.”
I would like generations in the future to have a reliable record of what life was like growing up when and where I grew up, as well as what adulthood was like during my lifetime.
Even though my life hasn’t been that unusual, I want to get all the facts down.
I want to tell all about my life in my own voice.
The hurdles I overcame in my life holds lessons for other people.
Even though I am not yet 50 years old, I want to write my book now.
I will devote much of my book to one part of my life that was very unusual.
Something happened to me that I feel compelled to write about.
Everyone asks me about one episode in my life, so I decided to write about that.

As you may have figured out, this list of 10 questions starts heavy on autobiography and progresses incrementally to memoir.

Give yourself 1 point for each time you answered TRUE to questions 1 through 4.
Give yourself 2 points for each time you answered TRUE to questions 5 and 6.
Give yourself 3 points for each time you answered TRUE to questions 7 through 10.

Scores

1-8: Your book is an autobiography.

9-16: Your book is more of a memoir.

17-20: Your book may not have enough of a theme. Rethink whether you want to focus on one part of your life or write a comprehensive book that gives relatively equal treatment to all parts of your life.

Hope this helps! At Write My Memoirs, we want to help you write and publish the best book you can have to represent your perspective of your life.

New Look, New Grammar Course!

August 11, 2020July 28, 2020 by Rosanne Ullman

Info on Write My Memoirs Grammar and Writing Course

You may have noticed that our home page has been updated not only in graphic design but also in featuring our brand new Write My Memoirs Grammar and Writing Course. This digital, eight-lesson course offers a free Intro Lesson you can take to get a foundation in parts of speech and parts of a sentence. It starts out with a tongue-in-cheek “What Not To Do” letter from me to you that demonstrates a lot of very bad grammar.

If that’s your kind of fun, you will enjoy the whole course! We examine some grammar errors in classic rock lyrics, too. Most of the examples throughout the course model memoir elements, since they describe my own life. As I crafted these examples, I had fun remembering events from my childhood, which I’m lucky to say was a happy one.

I based the principles and practice exercises presented in the course on an in-person, classroom course I taught for 20 years to adults in a continuing education program. Whether you’re writing a memoir or you need to write for work or school, I feel sure you’ll get your money’s worth with this $39 course!

Music Triggers Memoir Stories

July 30, 2020July 14, 2020 by Rosanne Ullman

Every now and then when you hear a song, does it take you back to a particular memory? I think we all have that experience. One of the biggest summer songs some years back was Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long,” which recounts the singer’s fun summer years ago when he met a girl and blasted songs on a Michigan lake beach. At the end, it includes this lyric: “Sometimes I’ll hear that song, and I’ll start to sing along, and think man I’d love to see that girl again.” It’s hearing the music that revives the emotion.

As we write our memoirs, we pay a lot of attention to the sense of sight, making sure to convey a scene just as we witnessed it. In some scenes, we also remember other senses. How did the meal taste? What were the aromas in the house at the time? Don’t forget the sense of hearing! As you write about an era of your life, listen to the music you were hearing at the time. This may trigger unique memories, and you can include some references in your memoir if you think it will help the reader to connect.

Music has always played a huge role in my life, so I really relate to someone who includes special songs when writing a memoir. From some pre-Beatles tunes right through to today’s top 40, songs provide a sort of déjà vu for me. Coloring your life story with details like that will make it interesting not only to read, but to write as well.

Image: ©Vladyslav Makarov

Journaling Can Be First Step in Writing Memoirs

July 30, 2020May 26, 2020 by Rosanne Ullman

On a visit to the Boston area some years ago, I took a tour of Orchard House, which is where Louisa May Alcott wrote her memoirs in the form of Little Women and other well-loved books. In an introductory video, an actress portraying Miss Alcott talked about her home and how she became such a widely read author. She’d always kept a journal, so when she decided to write a book for girls based on her own family, she had a lot of information already in writing and did not have to rely on her memory. Thus she encouraged everyone to keep a journal.

That seems like great advice. You never know when the urge will strike to write your autobiography. If, earlier, you described important events right when they occurred, you’ll have a much more accurate account of how they unfolded and who said what. You’ll be able to capture the feelings of the day—the weather, sounds, colors and your own emotional responses.

Even if you never turn your journal entries into a full book, the process of journaling can be rewarding in itself. Alcott has been widely quoted as writing, in 1855, “I am in the garret with my papers round me, and a pile of apples to eat while I write my journal, plan stories, and enjoy the patter of rain on the roof, in peace and quiet.” You never know—maybe your memoirs will become as famous as Louisa’s!

Happy U.S. Thanksgiving from Write My Memoirs!

November 25, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

Many of our members here on Write My Memoirs do not live in the United States, so they do not celebrate Thanksgiving. But the Thanksgiving sentiment is something that applies to memoirs no matter what your nationality. Thanksgiving brings up all sorts of memories.

For Americans who were alive in 1963, the memory of that Thanksgiving can be painful, because President Kennedy was murdered six days earlier. All Americans remember where they were when JFK was shot. I was in fifth grade, and we were sent home early. Walking home in the middle of the day, I was surrounded by an eerie silence. This is something that could go into a memoir. Even if you’re not American and weren’t living in the United States at the time, I’m sure the news reached you and touched you in some way.
Thanksgiving brings to mind family traditions in general. What are yours? Do you cook Thanksgiving dinner? Attend a family get-together? Is your autumn all about football, or raking leaves or getting away from the cold? Certainly Thanksgiving or any family celebration can be a focal point of a memoir.
The end of the year signals loss for many people. Those memories are punctuated by the contrast of holiday celebration. My own mother died on this date, November 25, and we held her funeral the day before Thanksgiving. The following day, it took until afternoon for any of us to realize it was Thanksgiving. We bought some deli turkey, ate sandwiches and cried and reminisced about Mom. Perhaps you have a November story to tell in your memoir.

Starting a memoir now is a great idea, because it’s a jumpstart on the New Year. A lot of times we start some goal on January 1 only to abandon it by February. Starting now gives you that necessary six weeks to get in the habit of writing so that you don’t disappoint yourself in 2020!

Happy Thanksgiving, memoir authors!

Can You Write a Good Memoir Without Fact-Checking? No!

November 15, 2019November 14, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

Memoirs rely on the author’s memory, but we all are aware that memory tends not to improve with age. It’s well-known that witnesses to the same crime report sometimes vastly different details. When you compare notes with siblings or childhood friends, you’re likely to discover that your accounts of the same incident differ significantly.

In many cases, you can’t know for sure whether your memory is correct. That bullying incident on the playground in fourth grade—did the other kid really say the words you remember? There’s no way to know for sure. That’s ok. Whether it happened exactly the way you remember is not as important as the fact that, in your mind, it did happen as you’re describing it. The incident’s effect on you is clear even if the truth about it isn’t.

But so many small facts can be checked. Today’s technology makes writing a memoir easier than it’s ever been in so many ways, and fact-checking is high on that list. Unlike in years past, there’s no need to sit in a library all day.

If you’re writing about the snowfall that occurred on your sixteenth birthday, take a minute to look up the weather report on that day. If you believe you attended your town’s bicentennial when you were 12 years old, some quick Googling will make sure you have the time line correct. If you describe walking down Center Street to your elementary school, make sure in your hometown it wasn’t spelled “Centre” Street, or it wasn’t Center Avenue. These are not unforgivable errors, but this is your book—why have any error that you can easily prevent?

Show your draft to family members for their input and recollections on the events you describe. Ask them to be particularly attentive to the facts you lay out. A parent, child or sibling may offer a perspective that you hadn’t considered or have some information that would add texture to your account.

Knowledge that we’ve carried with us all our lives can turn out to be our impressions rather than hard facts. Just check out everything you can.

A Teen’s Halloween Memoir Captures the Holiday’s Images

October 31, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

A few years ago, an anonymous memoir author recalled the quintessential Halloween and posted those memories on teenink.com. Write My Memoirs is happy to share this, titled “Halloween Memoir,” with our community:

In the middle of a numbing January freeze, or a deafening August heat, there will be an odd lingering sensation scratching for attention that can only be calmed by a world of pure discord. A feeling that is annually relieved by the pure bliss of hearing a tune about a man working in his lab late one night, by the aroma of pumpkin pie and glee in the air, mixed in with the smell of wet leaves from the downpour of excitement, and by the sight of children giddily gliding through the streets in sparkling and vivacious outfits as their eyes light up the engulfing night.

Bubbling cauldrons are at every door, seeping down doorsteps and into the minds of all who wander. There are doorbells that yelp at the sight of children singing happily of treats. Spells are cast in every which way and there is the distinct sound of despicable laughter ringing in the blinding moonlight. With the arrival of a glistening full moon there come werewolves howling for human flesh and yellow eyes that flicker all around you, as they begin to circle you. Frantic screams echo through the night and the wicked laughs of murderous clowns come from all around, for they are joyful in knowing that they are finally freed from the lethargic thought of serenity.

Of course, there are chocolates and candies downing throats at every given second. The delicious flavors battling to please candy-obsessed taste buds. Trapped within each and every wall are ghouls wailing, waiting to be freed. Then, there’s the pumpkin picking. The quest for the most perfectly plump, sensationally orange pumpkin in all of creation. The smell dances around in every nook and cranny, frolicking with jubilance to have finally been released to the world.

All of the smells lure children from the warm homes into the chills of an October eve with an enchanting autumn high. The satisfaction of knowing you have the best jack-o-lantern in town as you set him down to witness the complete and utter chaos that will be turning the corner at any given moment. Pumpkin fragrances ooze through the streets once again and rush and play and swing in every place they can possibly slither into. The squirmy guts and sinewy insides are transformed into brains as zombies come out, hungry, oh so hungry for the meaty, squishy taste they can’t resist.

The heavily anticipated darkness finally twirls the Earth into its beautiful black cloak with a menacing grin. The world is able to escape all the bad and all the good as the true meaning of being alive lightens the minds of all. No longer existing, no longer being, but living. Living for the candy and living for the frenzy that comes only at this special, haunting hour. Bags heavy with what only the heavens could supply, but nothing could stop the unraveling path of fate. Candy fills round tummies for ages, and the aches and hunger seem to last forever.

Arriving home and finally sitting down, but instead greeted with a flabbergasting fall into bed, perpetually falling into a bottomless rabbit hole of despair, for it is now well known that the night is over. Eyes are finally pried open the next morning and the vivid sensations of the prior eve circle around, reminding all that the night must be awaited for an agonizingly long period of time. Every glimpse of candy, the faint sound of a howl, or a terrified shriek, a mocking reminder of the thrill we long for. Now we await patiently, patiently anticipating the reveal of all evil and abnormalities within, as we free the caged monster that has been abstracted by the foolish term that goes by the name of “normalcy,” the caged monster that is crawling within us all.

Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!