Rosanne Ullman We don’t hide our hope that you’ll come to Write My Memoirs if you want an editor to help you professionalize your writing. Of course we want to work with you! But we’re truthful about it—not everyone needs to hire an editor. We designed this “decision tree” to help you determine whether your memoir would benefit from hiring a professional editor. If you do decide to work with an editor, we would love to step into that role for you.
We hear a lot about how to make time for writing but not as much about how to take time from writing. Whether writing is your profession or your hobby, it’s not your whole life. Stick to a schedule that builds in time for various other activities.
Among the good reasons to take a break:
So many things make up a well-rounded and well-purposed life. The tasks alone—childcare, cleaning, shopping, cooking, tending to your car, preparing taxes, answering personal email—obviously need time and attention. Then you also benefit from activities such as reading, traveling, visiting friends, listening to music, going out to dinner, seeing a movie, watching a little TV, local sightseeing—the list really is endless, and let’s not forget that we all should be getting roughly eight hours of sleep each night.
You can limit your daily hours, the days of the week or both. Perhaps ban writing on weekends or set a policy of no-writing-Wednesdays. If you are writing on the side and have a full-time job, this whole situation is more difficult, but it’s still a good idea not to wear yourself out. Maybe you’re getting up an hour earlier every day to write or writing every night after dinner. Still establish limits. One morning you sleep that hour, one night you binge a favorite TV show or you always stop writing by midnight.
Coming back to your computer refreshed after a short break helps you stay sharp. Remember that it’s just a little time away; it’s not a new pattern of not writing at all. Still stay engaged and on track!
Some people have diaries to source, but many memoir authors rely on their memories to tell the stories of their lives. You could be trying to remember details of events that took place decades ago. How much time and effort should you put into making sure you get your facts straight?
There’s no perfect answer to this, but here are some guidelines:
It’s impossible to remember every moment of your life, even the important ones. You’ll remember how you felt, and aim to make the reader feel the same way. But you can describe the surroundings without worrying about getting everything 100 percent accurate. Confirm any facts you can, ask others for input and write your story from your heart, because it’s your story to tell.
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:
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:
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.
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!
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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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!