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Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

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Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

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.

You Want to Write a Memoir, But You Don’t Know What to Write About

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If you want to write a memoir, the topic is obvious: you! But it’s not always so simple, is it?

Most people who write memoirs have a burning desire to describe a particular episode in, or time period of, their life. Typically, these are stories of redemption. The author may have triumphed over a rough childhood or rebounded after an abusive marriage. Perhaps the author was a victim of a crime and wants to document the facts as well as the emotional fallout. The episode could be pivotal in a more positive way, such as winning a lottery, or the memoir could track a time period during which the author’s life took an unusual turn, such as adopting a dozen children.

But what if your life doesn’t offer any of that? Maybe you’ve lived what seems to be a pretty ordinary life. You just want to write a memoir because, unusual or not, your life is special to you and you’d like to write it all down.

One way to approach a pretty ordinary life story is to abandon the memoir format of choosing just one aspect of your life and, instead, write a more comprehensive autobiography. Many people want to leave something in writing so that their children and grandchildren know details about their heritage. In that case, a full autobiography makes sense. It will provide your descendants with the facts about the people who came before them. It will convey your impressions of what it was like to grow up in the time and place of your early years. It will explain why you made the choices that you made.

If you prefer to write a memoir, though, even what seems like an unexceptional life contains many interesting moments. Think through your life, and write down five to ten episodes that stand out. Does one jump out more than the others as either somewhat unusual or especially meaningful to your life? Or does a pattern emerge that can serve as a theme and include more than one episode? Analyze the way you handle challenges. Is there a lesson there? Examine what you’ve done right that has delivered good results for you—maybe that’s where the lesson lies. Perhaps a long relationship with a friend or relative holds an interesting dynamic.

If you want to write a memoir, you’ll find something to write about. Give it some real thought, and get going!

5 Memoirs Released in Summer 2019

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You still have roughly a month before Labor Day to get in some summer reading! Here are five memoirs that already have been released this summer or are coming out later in August:

All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir by Erin Lee Carr. The author, a documentary filmmaker, supplies a raw, honest analysis of her relationship with her father, the late New York Times columnist David Carr, and reflects on his legacy and influence on her own work.

Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping and Risking It All with the Greatest Chef in the World by Jeff Gordinier. This memoir goes beyond a foodie look at restaurants through the eyes of Esquire food editor Gordinier, traveling with famed chef René Redzepi, and provides insight into life.

One-Way Ticket: Nine Lives on Two Wheels by Jonathan Vaughters. Cycling enthusiasts especially will appreciate this memoir from Vaughters, a leading figure on the controversial playground of world cycling and one-time teammate to Lance Armstrong.

Thank You for My Service by Mat Best, Ross Patterson and Nils Parker. Funny and surprising, this memoir by a five-tour Army Ranger and veterans’ advocate takes the reader inside the military, laughing all the way.

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom. Frequent magazine contributor Broom tells her story as the daughter of a mom who bought a long, narrow “shotgun” house in New Orleans and how race, class and Hurricane Katrina shaped the family.

What Types of Memoirs Sell?

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Getting published can feel like such a crap shoot. No wonder memoir writers doubt whether they have a story that’s compelling enough to appeal to publishers. At Write My Memoirs we believe that every life is interesting and worth documenting, and we help our writers self-publish so that they will have a book to hand out to friends and family. But getting a monetary offer from a publishing company that wants to publish your book is a whole different kettle of fish.

As I look over the 2019 “best memoirs” lists, I’m finding several common themes among the books that get published and then land on these lists. The books from 2019 tend to break down into four categories:

  1. Celebrity. Being famous is the obvious way to get a memoir published. Unfortunately, that route is not open to all of us. But you can be barely famous if you’re around celebrities all the time and will dish on things you know about them—or if you’re related to, or a good friend of, someone very famous. This summer saw the release of Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs, the daughter of Apple founder Steve Jobs. So her memoir sort of doubles as a biography of her famous dad, who’s the one readers are more interested in.
  2. Highly unusual life event. This seems to be the dominant category for the non-famous writer. If any segment of your life—job, childhood, illness—is way off the typical path, people will be interested in reading about it. Tara Westover’s Educated and Karen Keilt’s The Parrot’s Perch: A Memoir are good examples of this. And, as with celebrity, you can write from your own perspective if the person with the unusual life event is a close friend or relative, as Tom Weidlinger does about his father in The Restless Hungarian: Modernism, Madness, and The American Dream.
  3. Moderately unusual life event. Lots of people have had cancer, but writers keep finding new ways to share the experience. You can perhaps focus on the aspect that was the most unusual or talk about your very individual way of processing it. In No Happy Endings: A Memoir, author Nora McInerny tells what it’s like to lose a father, husband and unborn child all within a year. While that much loss all at once is not typical, it’s also not unheard of, but McInerny has a way of connecting with the reader. Another popular 2019 memoir, On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real, and Listening Hard by Jennifer Pastiloff, takes the reader through the author’s experience of triumphing over her own difficulties by helping others heal at yoga retreats. There are tons of yoga teachers out there, but Pastiloff tells a new story.
  4. Fresh twist on ordinary life. Although this strikes me as the toughest category to break through in publishing, a very gifted writer can do it. You just have to be a keen observer of life. We all are players in some story every day; it’s the way you look at it that makes it uniquely interesting. While this type of memoir can be poignant, typically it’s written with humor. With this year’s release of Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, author Trevor Noah joins a long list of comedians who put their humorous spin on their life story. Sharing life’s true experiences in some form of memoir is a regular pastime for Mindy Kaling, Chelsea Handler and many others. And although the celebrity factor plays here, their humor and writing is part of what made them famous, so the books stand on their own.

A Memoir Doesn’t Have to be a Book Format

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When you have a compelling story to tell, the most obvious route to take is to write a book about it. But that route is not the only way to get where you’re going. Between technology that provides do-it-yourself options for creative projects and established websites that accept personal essays, you can find lots of alternatives to the traditional book. So let’s look at those options.

  • Book. When you write a book, you have something in your hand. You can give it to friends and family members. You can list it on Amazon and sell it. You can convert it to digital and sell it as an e-book or get a narrator and also have it as an audio book. You put your book on your bookshelf, and it’s there forever. At Write My Memoirs, we offer writing services to help you publish.
  • Short-form written account. Maybe you want to describe just one incident in your life or a short period of your life, and really there’s not enough content for a whole book. You can write a personal essay instead. Websites like Narratively accept well-written, compelling essays. I have had personal observations published on Motherwell, BoomerCafé and SixtyAndMe. Or consider a magazine article format like the one we offer here at Write My Memoirs.
  • Video. Creating a video of your story may seem like an overwhelming undertaking, but if you take it step by step it can be manageable even for a novice. Gather the photos and video clips you’ve taken during your life, focusing on the incident or period you want to cover. Write a script that you’ll read as a voiceover, and also take some video of yourself talking to the camera about your life. To put it all together, you’ll need video editing software. There’s a learning curve for sure, but the learning can be the fun part! Here’s a powerful example of a video created by a friend of ours about his journey as a young man who lost a leg to cancer.
  • Dedicated website. It’s so easy to purchase a URL that has some form of your name—johnsmithmemoir.com kind of thing—and the website host will have page builder software that makes it pretty easy to upload text and photos and embed videos. It turns into a sort of private Facebook site just for you. The beauty of this option is that you keep updating it, so it chronicles your life in a dynamic way rather than having a beginning and an ending.

The important thing to remember is that your life is worth documenting. There are many ways to leave a legacy for your children or a record for history. Choose one—or try them all!

Grammar Help: Subjunctive/Conditional Tense

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As we get closer to offering a complete online grammar course here at Write My Memoirs, I want to give you a sneak peek at some of the topics we’ll be covering. The subjunctive tense, also called the conditional tense, is a minor grammar point in real life and conversation. But when you put your name as author on a book, you want your words to reflect current best practices in grammar and writing. So let’s go over this.

The subjunctive tense is a verb tense just like present, past and future. Instead of concerning a time perspective, however, the subjunctive tense applies to any hypothetical situation. Typically, you can identify a hypothetical situation by the use of a word like “if,” “suppose” or “imagine.” When you’re just imagining something might occur, or you’re wondering whether it could happen, rather than the singular “was” you should use the past tense plural “were” to construct this type of sentence, even when the subject is singular.

Probably the most easily recognized example is the phrase, “If I were you.” In any other context, you’d pair the singular pronoun “I” with the verb “was” to indicate past tense. You’d say, “I was going to ask you a question,” or “I was happy that we had a nice day for the picnic.” It’s not natural to say “I were…,” but it does sound natural in the phrase “If I were you” because it’s correct. You’re imagining “if I were you.” If it’s not hypothetical, you’d say, “I’m pretty sure that I was you in my past life.” In that case, you’re stating an assumption, not posing a hypothetical. Another recognizable example of the correct construction is the song from Fiddler on the Roof, “If I Were a Rich Man.”

So if I were going to make sure I learned the finer points of grammar, I would practice the conditional/subjunctive tense. Suppose a man were to sign up on Write My Memoirs, and imagine that a woman were intending to do the same—they both would be welcome here, where correct grammar is always appreciated!

 

A Memoir of Random Life Stories

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One of our Write My Memoirs authors recently asked for our help in figuring out how to fashion a memoir that had no obvious structure. The author did what memoir authors are often advised to do: write out the stories you want to include without worrying about how to connect them. So now he had this collection of what he called anecdotes and vignettes, which he grouped into categories such as “childhood,” “school years,” “hobbies” and “pets.” He didn’t know what to do next. His stories didn’t naturally form a theme or involve turning points in his life. He wanted to share them as experiences, not to hand down life lessons. But he wanted his book to be interesting enough that people would read it story by story.

In my reply to this author, I reminded him that memoirs don’t come with rules. It’s your book and your life story; you get to determine how to present it. If the writing is good, the reader will want to continue on to the next story. Still, I had some suggestions for him to think about that may apply to anyone collecting life stories with no particular theme in mind:

  1. Retain the disconnect. Just place the stories in random order. In this structure, the introduction will be important. You can introduce your book as a window into your memory as you look back over your life. Whether funny, touching, bittersweet, sad or frightening, these episodes together create the ensemble of experiences that define your life.
  2. Make it a diary. Date the stories, arrange them in chronological order and present each one in a chapter in that order as if you’re writing a diary. When you’ve written all of them, an implied narrative may be revealed even if you don’t see that happening until you’ve finished.
  3. Present stories as letters. For each story, identify the person in your life who would want to know about that story, and write the story as if you’re writing a letter to that person. Maybe one story would be something you would write to your mother and another would be something you’d tell a friend. Perhaps you have a great story from high school that you would send to a teacher to thank the teacher for his/her part in how it worked out. Same with a job and a boss. One story could be a letter to your child explaining something about your earlier life, before the child was born; another could be a letter to a deceased grandparent giving a peek into how your life turned out. This sounds contrived, but with skill it could be really cool.
  4. Consider the reader’s perspective. Once you’ve written out all the stories, reexamine them from the point of view of someone who doesn’t know you. Sometimes we’re just too close to the work to be objective and see it with fresh eyes, and often there’s more of a theme than first appears. You don’t need a perfect narrative or story arc to still be able to link each story to the next. For example, let’s say you write a chapter about something that happened at your brother’s wedding. Then you can start the next chapter with, “My brother was long-settled into marriage by the time I saw him again, and did I have a story to tell him! I’d just returned from a business trip to Brazil, where I met a woman who made me think about marriage for myself.”

Patterns sometimes pop out during the editing process. So if you’re having the same dilemma as this author who wrote to us, keep writing and put the question of structure aside until you get to the editing stage. And remember that we’re here to help at that point—please consider our Write My Memoirs editing services if you’d like a professional eye on your work.

July 4 Fireworks Can Reignite Your Memoir Writing Process

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Summertime brings a change of routine. If you have children or help to take care of grandchildren, you may find yourself spending extra hours with the kids. Whether you’re still working or not, you probably are scheduling some travel. Your priorities may shift to afford you more time to enjoy the warm outdoors. In the midst of all that, sitting down to write your memoir may fade into the background. Once you lose momentum, it can be difficult to get started again.

Then comes along Independence Day. It’s not one of those Monday holidays that began replacing special dates a few decades ago; it’s always on July 4, no matter when in the week that falls. And that’s not the only way it’s the same celebration as it’s always been for people living in the United States. Just as they did when we were growing up, communities sponsor all sorts of activities, from picnics and 5K runs to fairs and music, typically capping off the day with a fireworks display immediately after dark. Attending these events now, we’re reminded of the many Independence Days that preceded this July 4. We were children along a riverfront, teens at a beach or young parents with our own kids lying on our backs on a blanket in a park, staring straight up at the bursting, colorful shapes lighting up the sky.

Take all of those memories and follow them wherever they may lead you. Perhaps the next day you went back to a fun camp, a tough summer school course or the first job you ever had. You could have been celebrating from afar as you served in the military abroad or toured some exotic city on another continent. Or maybe the memory is bittersweet—the last July 4 fireworks that you enjoyed with a now deceased parent or friend.

Memoir authors often ask us how to trigger memories and how to choose the stories from their life to include in the memoir. Using something like July 4 as a starting point, you may be able to daydream and reminisce your way back to a selection of life episodes that will guide you through a few or more chapters. Happy 4th from Write My Memoirs!

How Should Your Memoir End?

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When you (finally!) write the last chapter of your memoir, you have two decisions to make: at what point to stop writing, and what type of sentence will supply a fitting end to your story. I think the first decision is easier than the second.

If your memoir is more of a full autobiography, you’ll probably end it at the present time. If the story concerns one period of your life or just one episode of your life, you can either end it naturally when the time period or episode is complete, or you can jump ahead to present day and end with a sort of epitaph that lets the reader know how you feel about it now or how things turned out in the long run.

On her website Live Write Thrive, C.S. Lakin, author of The Memoir Workbook, writes, “You should end your story at the place where the lessons have hit home—when you’ve taken those epiphanies you’ve gleaned from your experiences and now use them to light the way forward.”

It’s tougher to settle on the one exact sentence to end your memoir that will feel satisfying to readers and, even better, stick with them a while. Last year, Buzzfeed asked people to submit great ending sentences from literature. Here are some from famous fictional works that strike me as instructive for a memoir:

After all…tomorrow is another day.—Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

“Darling,” replied Valentine, “has not the count just told us that all human wisdom is summed up in two words? — Wait and hope.”—The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Now I understand that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.—My Ántonia by Willa Cather

But now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.—Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

But I don’t think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt. Amen.—The Color Purple by Alice Walker

These aren’t just sentences; they’re poetry. They’re poignant and thoughtful. You should craft every sentence in your book with care, but the final sentence is even more special. Take time to come up with something that caps off your story just right.

Limiting the Focus of Your Memoir

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Although I think it’s fine to use the words “memoir” and “autobiography” interchangeably, traditionally a memoir traces only a segment of your life, not your entire life the way an autobiography does. As I wrap up my time at the 2019 National Senior Games, which I hope you’ve been following on Instagram @writemymemoirs (also will soon post some on the Write My Memoirs page on Facebook), I’m thinking about all of the great stories these older athletes have to tell. When you have a defining hobby like sports competition, you can craft a memoir just around that.

The facts are handy—in the case of the Senior Games, the National Senior Games Association (NSGA) keeps all of the results online. U.S. Track and Field (USTAF), another sports competition organization, does the same. At this year’s Senior Games, there also are videos posted on YouTube by ProView Networks. The athletes tend to bring family members who take lots of pictures. Put it all together, and much of the research for a memoir like this is already at the author’s fingertips. To fill in the words, you go back into your memories of each medal you won, every city in which you competed, all of the friends you made and the inspiration you felt. I think the writing comes easier and is more enjoyable than with other types of memoirs that may require recalling painful incidents and challenges to overcome.

So think about some lifelong or recently discovered activity that has made a difference in your life. It might be something that you take for granted. Maybe everyone tells you what a great cook you are. You can build a memoir around food, family meals and the joy that brings you. Perhaps you have a specific hobby like photography, birdwatching or attending estate or “garage” sales. You may be in a bowling league that has met weekly for several decades, or you’ve participated in various book clubs over the years. This type of limited-topic memoir can be very interesting both to your family and to people engaged in a similar activity. It also can inspire other people to get involved with something they can love as much as you love yours. As always, we would love to help you bring your memoir to life! Email me at ro*****@************rs.com.

Putting Other People in Your Memoir

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Your story is yours to tell, and no one can take that away from you. But everyone’s story involves other people. It’s very common for memoir authors to be concerned about their rights and obligations surrounding the role other people have played in their lives, especially if the memoir depicts a negative impact. We’ve addressed this issue previously on Write My Memoirs here and here.

So we’ve talked about legal aspects, but what about the ethical ones? And how will your memoir change your relationships? Even the relatives you didn’t include may be upset with you about what you did write. Your aunt, not mentioned at all in your memoir, may never speak to you again because you wrote negatively about your mother, who was her sister. Perhaps your mother is no longer alive, and your aunt feels that you shouldn’t write about someone who cannot defend herself. Or maybe even though your memoir concerns your early life, your current adult children would prefer you to keep your story to yourself. Perhaps they’re embarrassed by something you’ve written, or they don’t want to be forced to become public figures if your book sells well.

Memoir authors and coaches have opinions all across the board on this, but I haven’t seen anyone make the point that social media has completely changed this game. You have chosen the memoir as your forum. You’ll have it in book form, or ebook only or whatever you want. But everyone who objects to what you’ve written has many opportunities to refute what’s in your book. Facebook, Twitter and the rest provide a forum for everyone. As long as you write the truth as you know it—and it’s a good idea to have some sort of disclaimer saying in your book that the information is accurate to the best of your memory—then you should present your life the way you want. Be prepared for some pushback, but this is your story. The other people can tweet about it to defend themselves.

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Then just set up a chapter and start writing your memoir. Don’t worry about rules. There are no rules to writing your memoir; there are only trends. These trends are based on techniques and features identified in current top-selling memoirs. At best, they’re the flavor of the month. If you’re capturing your life in print for your family, for your own gratification or to inspire readers, rather than aiming to set off Hollywood screenplay bidding wars, these trends don’t even apply to you. You’ll write the memoir that suits you best, and it will be timeless, not trend-driven.There are no rules, but there are four steps:

1. Theme/framework
2. Writing
3. Editing/polishing
4. Self-publishing

You’ve researched this, too, and you’ve been shocked at the price for getting help with any one of those steps, much less all four. That’s because most memoir sites promise to commercialize your work. They’ll follow a formula based on current memoir trends, because they want to convince you that they can turn your memoir into a best-seller. These sites overwhelm you with unnecessary information not to help you, the memoir author, but to address Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithms so they can sell more.

That’s not what we do at Write My Memoirs. Our small community of coaches, writers and editors are every bit as skilled as any you’ll find, and we charge appropriately for their expertise and the time they’ll spend helping you craft a compelling, enjoyable read. But you won’t pay an upcharge for other websites’ commercialization, the marketing that follows, and the pages of intimidating “advice.” You can sell your book if you like—we have ISBNs available for you—but our organic process of capturing your story takes a noncommercial path.

If you want help with any or all of the four steps above, choose from our services or save money by selecting one of our packages. If you’d like to talk about what’s right for you, schedule a call. One year from now, you can be holding your published memoir in your hand. And at that point, it will be a big deal!

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