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.

Attracting a Publisher: Advice from a Memoir Author Who Did It

February 24, 2021March 13, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

Linda Strader was getting nothing but rejections when she pitched her memoir to agents and publishers. But a couple of rejection letters became her saving grace when she took their advice:

“Memoirs need to be universal—they need to resonate with the reader.”
“A memoir must read like a novel.”

After a total rewrite based on that information, Strader’s memoir, Summers of Fire, is now on bookstore shelves, thanks to an acceptance from publisher Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company. At editingpen.net, Strader shares tips for making it happen:

Give the publishers what they want. They know what sells. Go to publishers’ websites and read best-selling memoirs by people who are not famous.
Make your memoir a story. It’s not an essay. You need a beginning, middle and end. And, of course, show, don’t tell. You’ve heard this before, but Strader provides the contrast. Telling, she writes, sounds like: “I walked into the hospital to see my sick mother. She lay in bed, unable to speak. I never did like hospitals, so it was hard for me to be there.” But showing lights up all the senses: “The minute I walked into the hospital, the smell of disinfectant about knocked me over. That odor always made me remember the day my dad died, and now it looked like my mom would follow. When I entered her room, I detected the odor of urine and medicine. Her face was gray, her eyelids closed, but her hair had been carefully combed into her favorite style. A heart monitor bleeped steadily; the oxygen tank whooshed. My mom was leaving me and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it—and I was angry.”
Specify what was at stake, the choices you made and how they changed you. Everyone makes decisions, and facing those forks in the road are what can make readers relate to your experiences.
Be yourself. Write from your heart, reveal your true self, show your vulnerability, expose your fears.

If you do all of that, Strader concludes, “readers will relate.” And when readers can relate to your book, publishers will want to get your book out there.

Easy Writing: From Blog to Book

February 24, 2021February 27, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

Do you write a personal or professional blog? If so, you probably have a lot of really good material, already written and illustrated, that’s just sitting there. Adapt some of your best blog work to a book format, and now you have something to hand out and even sell. And it’s so easy.

Every Christmas, I exchange gifts with a longtime friend. This past Christmas I was trying to figure out a nice gift for her when I had a thought: what if I took one aspect of her personal blog and “stole” the text and photos to make her a little paperback book with her own name as the author? Would that work? Would it be cool?

I knew that her blog addressed many sides of her life—travels, family, home decor, food and quite a bit about her pets. When I went to her blog, I saw that both of her dogs had died earlier in the year. At each passing, she wrote a beautiful tribute and posted lots of images covering the dog’s entire life and all of the people who spent time with that dog. She also had posts about the dogs while they were alive. I did a copy-and-paste on each of those entries and downloaded all of the images. I organized the material, devoting a chapter to each dog sandwiched between end pages of quotes that my friend posted about her pets. It turned out to be mostly a picture book, with just enough text to provide some color and clarity. I didn’t write a word; every bit of text was lifted from the blog.

To publish the book, I used the normal format we offer our Write My Memoirs authors: a perfect-bound paperback. Since it was largely a picture book, I made the width greater than the height/length. I created a PDF for our regular Write My Memoirs printer, and everything went smoothly. I was very happy with the result and had the book in my hands in plenty of time to ship some copies off to my friend.

As you might guess, this little 40-page book was a huge hit. She tells me it was the best gift her family received and was passed around multiple times as everyone was opening gifts on Christmas night. We would love to do the same thing for you—turn your blog into a book or help you present this type of gift to a friend who writes a blog. You can gather the essentials, or just provide a link to the blog and we’ll be the “curator” for you. Email us at su*****@************rs.com, or go to our Publishing page and get started! Books bring joy!

My “Strongly-Expressed” Mandate: No Hyphens After Adverbs!

February 24, 2021February 20, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

Sometimes a grammar error seems to catch on as if it’s contagious. I suppose people see something in writing, think they’ve been doing it wrong and obliviously copy the error. This is how these epidemics spread. I’ll begin to notice the error more often and in more respectable places, and then finally just about everywhere. We all have our grammar pet peeves, and mine intensify when the error starts to blanket the universe. This is currently happening with hyphens following adverbs.

The key term in this blog’s headline, Strongly-Expressed, provides the example of the erroneously inserted hyphen. Strongly is an adverb, and an adverb’s entire job is to modify. That’s what adverbs do. They modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. Sometimes they modify an entire clause. They don’t need a hyphen to do their job. Let’s stuff a sentence with adverbs and see what we have:

Luckily, a genuinely nice person found Lola’s wildly colorful jacket and very kindly immediately returned it to her before Lola had a chance to miss it too desperately or to sob uncontrollably at discovering it inexplicably gone.

Luckily: modifies the clause that follows
Genuinely: modifies the adjective nice. How nice? Genuinely nice.
Wildly: modifies the adjective colorful. How colorful? Wildly colorful.
Very: modifies the adverb kindly. How kindly? Very kindly.
Kindly: modifies the verb returned. How was it returned? Kindly.
Immediately: modifies the verb returned. How else was it returned? Immediately.
Too: modifies the adverb desperately. How desperately? Too desperately.
Desperately: modifies the verb miss. Miss in what way? Desperately.
Uncontrollably: modifies the verb sob. Sob in what way? Uncontrollably.
Inexplicably: modifies the verb missing. In what way was it gone? Inexplicably.

The error of my obsession occurs when the adverb modifies an adjective. In the sample sentence, the error would be to write “a genuinely-nice person” and “her wildly-colorful jacket.” That hyphen is not just unnecessary; it’s wrong. My guess is that it grew from the correct construction of hyphenating a two-word thought with an adjective or noun as the first word. I just did that—two-word. Here’s a sentence full of word duos with correct hyphens:

We typically arrive at each data-driven decision after a late-night, full-team, anxiety-filled session that leaves all of us mentally exhausted and emotionally drained but more closely knit within our committee as well as able to forge close-knit ties to the greater community.

In that example, the first word of the hyphenated pairs is either an adjective or a noun, whereas there is no hyphenation in mentally exhausted and emotionally drained, because in both cases an adverb is modifying a verb. I used both closely knit and close-knit to further illustrate the distinction.

If you go around hyphenating adverb-starting word pairs, I’m begging you to please stop. If you’re wondering whether the hyphen is correct and you should start using it, the answers are no and no. If I’m telling you something you already know and you would never insert a hyphen after an adverb, thank you so much and keep up the good work!

The Valentine Memoir

February 24, 2021February 13, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

What’s the best valentine you’ve ever received? Maybe your partner wrote you a heartfelt note about how much you are cherished, or a child drew hearts on a card to present to you. Perhaps someone wrote a song for you or created a little video of your relationship. You know what else makes a really nice valentine? A love memoir. It’s just taking the card, the video or the song up a notch to create a whole book.

Relationships are complex, but happy relationships have love at the core. Write about that love. You can start anywhere, but the obvious place to begin is to talk about how you met. Did you “meet cute”? Were you fixed up? Was it love at first sight? A memoir like this can chronicle some of the rougher times, too, but that will shift the focus. A valentine memoir probably should stick to the positive.

Gather photos of the two of you and really look at them. Can you see love in the eyes? Can you tell that you each feel safe with the other? Choose pics that show playfulness and intimacy, and place them throughout your love memoir. Watch the years go by in those photographs. If you have children together, you can include some pics of the kids—or pets you’ve nurtured together.

A love memoir doesn’t need to have a lot of pages, just enough for a printer to bind it. You can create it as either a paperback or a hard-cover book. A hard cover makes it more durable, and then the book can go large like a coffee table book or you still can keep it small. Imagine handing that to your favorite person in the world as something to treasure forever. Now that’s a thoughtful valentine!

Please consider our publishing services at Write My Memoirs when you’re ready to publish any book!

Staying Healthy While Writing a Memoir

February 24, 2021February 6, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

You know that roll around your middle that won’t go away? It’s from sitting. You say you get out of breath if you try to bound up the stairs? It’s from sitting. The back pain? That’s from sitting, too, but probably in a bad chair or with poor posture. We all sit too much. That little instrument you use for writing is called a “laptop” for a reason: we seem to always have a lap to put it in. As we’re hearing lately, “sitting is the new smoking.”

Now that you’ve committed to writing your memoir, you have many long hours of sitting ahead of you. You can invest in a standing or walking desk, but you’re probably not going to do that. Or you can just stand all day at your kitchen counter and type away, but even standing doesn’t solve the problem. In addition to taking mental breaks from the task of writing, you should take regular physical breaks.

Four goals as verbs: move, lift, stretch, repeat.
Four corresponding goals as nouns: speed, strength, flexibility, stamina.
These are the keys to staying fit; the challenge is to find a method that you can sustain. A lot of people love yoga, which covers three of the four—strength, flexibility and, somewhat, stamina. Some yoga programs also raise your heart rate, so a cardio component is possible. I still think you need to add a walk or run. If, on the other hand, cardio is the part you like best and you also stretch before and after you jog, then don’t forget to lift. It’s great to be lean and flexible, but especially as you get older you need to maintain muscle mass as well. And then there are you dedicated lifters who can bench your body weight but can’t come close to touching your toes without bending your knees. Don’t neglect the stretch, or you’ll tighten up.

If you’re disciplined enough to be making progress on your memoir, you should be able to talk yourself into a modest fitness routine. You can join a gym or prance around your house. Climb stairs every chance you get! Buy a couple of inexpensive free weights. When you’ve finished writing for the day, take a full-body stretch lying on your back, sitting in a straddle and standing up. And that tummy roll you have? If sitting is the new smoking, then planking is the new sit-up. Keep writing, but stay fit!

Writing From a Place of Pain

February 24, 2021January 30, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

Thank you to today’s guest blogger Julie Ann Toomey, author of the memoir Failure to Thrive: My Journey to Mental Health. Julie Ann tells Write My Memoirs:

This book has been a long time coming. Even in high school I wanted to write a book about my life. I found myself writing down experiences in story form to use

later. I have always wanted to share what I went through so others might understand the struggles a person with mental illness deals with. The push finally came when a business mentor challenged me to do so. I’d been collecting stories for years—I figured it would be easy.

It wasn’t! Through tears, heartache and pain, there was realization, amazement and therapy. It was the hardest, most therapeutic thing I’ve ever done. I discovered so much about myself, but also about others in my life.

Failure to Thrive: My Journey to Mental Health is an emotional roller coaster you won’t want to put down. It’s raw. It’s honest. It’s hopeful. It’s also 100% true and accurate, as far as I could see the truth at the time. Mental illnesses cause the truth to become skewed in ways those not suffering have a hard time understanding. This book shows it. Truth is universal, but perception is everything. This shows the perception of the truth a mental illness forces you to have. Anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder are a real part of life. They need to be understood.

Read this book. Come to understand it. Use it to help others when they need it. Be the change this world needs.

It’s Okay to Write for Yourself

February 24, 2021January 22, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

I sing a lot. I sing in the typical places—my car, the shower, my kitchen. Most of the time no one hears me sing; those who do tend to be members of my family, and one of them is likely to ask me to stop singing. They are not even polite about it but, to be fair, I should add that my singing voice can be grating. Yet the reviews have not always been a disaster. Although my choir auditions bombed in both grade school and junior high, by high school somehow my voice had become minimally acceptable, and for three years I was a bonafide alto. Ever since then, it’s been back to my car, the shower, my kitchen and a trio of daughters wailing, “Mom, stop!” Fortunately, they now live in their own homes and I get to sing for the simple reason that I enjoy singing. People who enjoy singing get to sing, just as people who enjoy painting get to paint.

Do you enjoy writing? Then you get to write. Writing is something I know from the other end of the talent spectrum. I’ve always had a gift for writing, and then I added degrees and professional experience, so I’m pretty good at writing. When I read other people’s writing, it can be a little like a bad singing voice shattering my ears or a poorly painted picture assaulting my field of vision—but it rarely strikes me that way. Usually I hear passion in the words and authors’ urgency in sharing their thoughts. I can ignore the missing apostrophes, run-on sentences and weirdly used semicolons. I can overlook the favorite word that gets repeated and repeated and the paragraph that really belongs on the previous page. But it doesn’t matter what I think unless the writer asks for my input.

Have you kept a diary or journal that you’ve revealed to not a single other person? You may have written a full memoir that you have no intention of publishing, preferring to keep it in its original notebook or computer file. Or maybe you do take it out of hiding occasionally to show to a spouse or trusted friend. Perhaps you’ve broken off a chapter that stands alone and submitted it somewhere as a short story. But if all you do is reread your own work, your writing is worthwhile. If all you do is write out your thoughts and never bother reviewing them once you’ve had your say—just to yourself—that’s also fine. The writing process is cathartic and creative and endlessly revealing of who you are, and who you are is someone who enjoys writing, so you get to write.

Ideas for Memoir Structure

February 24, 2021January 15, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

For many memoir authors, their life story isn’t their first stab at creating some form of art. When those authors decide to write a memoir, it’s natural for them to want to include their other artform. So let’s say you’ve written poetry all your life, or you have a file of newspaper clippings of your op-eds published in your local paper. Maybe you’re a painter or even a composer. Perhaps you have a file full of your essays or you’ve kept a list of favorite quotes by other people. Today, even tweets or Facebook posts could be considered a body of work. Can you incorporate your work or favorites into your memoir? Yes, of course you can.

“Most memoirs read like a book, chapter by chapter with some photos added somewhere,” writes Nancy Julien Kopp in her review of the memoir Wingin’ It Beyond the Veil by Joan Breit. “Ms Breit’s book offers a series of vignettes that give us a slice of her life at a time. Between the vignettes, she has included scripture verses, poetry (both her own and others) and photos. I found all that is included to be delightful and I thoroughly enjoyed piecing her life together via the individual vignettes.”

If you’re a photographer—professional or hobbyist—it’s obvious to picture how you can use your work in your memoir. But through photography you also can share with readers your paintings or a page of musical staff from a song. You can begin each chapter with a pertinent piece of your past writing. You can pepper your memoir with lines of your poems. Sharing yourself as a creatively multifaceted person will bring readers closer to who you feel you are, which is exactly what you want your memoir to communicate.

What You Can Learn From Olivia de Havilland

February 24, 2021January 9, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

We all want to own our legacies, but we’re not fully in control of that. The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would not consider 102-year-old “Gone With the Wind” actress Olivia de Havilland’s claim that a TV show needed her permission to present her likeness and character. The FX miniseries “Feud: Bette and Joan,” was based on the rivalry between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. In it, Catherine Zeta-Jones portrayed de Havilland as somewhat of a gossip, which the elder actress found offensive. The Supreme Court let stand a California appeals court’s decision that de Havilland had no say in how she was depicted in art. The decision read in part: “Whether a person portrayed in one of these expressive works is a world-renowned film star—‘a living legend’—or a person no one knows, she or he does not own history. Nor does she or he have the legal right to control, dictate, approve, disapprove, or veto the creator’s portrayal of actual people.”

You’re probably not famous, and you most likely will not find yourself portrayed as a character in a movie or TV show. But you still could be mentioned in someone’s memoir. Right now, someone who knows you could be writing up an account of your actions. Maybe in that person’s eyes you were the unfair boss, nerdy cousin or mean girl in high school, while you recall a completely different dynamic to the relationship between the two of you. Go to any of the memoir discussions on social media, and a common question is: Should I change the names of the people I include in my memoir? The thing is that changing the name doesn’t necessarily hide the identity. People who know the author are likely to recognize the person whether the name is real or not.

Sometimes these authors will approach the people and ask whether they mind being included in the memoir. If you’re approached, you can always plead with the author not to include you. That may work, or it may not. Sometimes all the author is doing is giving you a little advance notice, but the mention is a done deal. So what can you do? Write your own story. Own your truth. Provide the narrative of your life as you recall it. That way, you’ll at least have your version and, unlike Olivia de Havilland, won’t have to ask the Supreme Court to decide whether you’re a gossip or just a really open person.

Get Social With Write My Memoirs!

February 24, 2021January 1, 2019 by Rosanne Ullman

Write My Memoirs is popping up all over social media. Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @writemymemoirs! In addition to the Write My Memoirs page on Facebook, there’s the brand new Write My Memoirs Group. Let’s get together in this group to share our hopes and dreams, challenges and frustrations, laughter and tears—everything that’s part of the deal when you’re writing a memoir or, really, any book.

I’ll be among the people you can find hanging out in the Write My Memoirs Group. I’ve been a professional journalist for 40+ years, I taught grammar and writing for 20 years and I’m also an admin on Facebook’s Grammar Matters. You can find more of my interests by following Rosanne Ullman on Pinterest, where I’m just starting to build boards.

In the Write My Memoirs Group on Facebook, I’ll be happy to answer your grammar questions, coach you on your writing and motivate you to finish your memoir. Let’s do all of that for each other! I invite English language experts to help me inspire all authors, including those whose first language is not English. Is your New Year’s resolution to start—or finish—your memoir? The question of resolutions was brought up today in the Write My Memoirs Group, so please join and share! Get others’ feedback by posting brief excerpts or full chapters from your writing, and turn around to do the same for them. I can’t wait to see what you’re working on!

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