We are experiencing issues with our Contact form.
Please Email Us Directly at: Su*****@************rs.com.

Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

PLEASE NOTE:

oUR CONTACT US Form HAD A MALFUNCTION.
IF YOU HAVEN’T RECEIVED A REPLY, PLEASE FILL IT OUT AGAIN OR WRITE US DIRECTLY.

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.

Religion in Memoirs

by

You believe in God or you don’t. You belong to an organized religious sect or your don’t. You are very observant, somewhat observant or not observant. How much of that do you put in your memoir? So many elements make up the person you are, and religion is one of them. So it’s understandable that religion has a role in many a memoir, but the reasons are all over the place:

  • A chapter on your childhood may include your experience with religious education.
  • Authors who write about difficulty, illness or trauma often explain how faith helped them through it.
  • Your parents may be of two different religions, or you may have married someone of a different faith.
  • If you rejected your family’s religion, then that, too, impacted your life and the choices you made.
  • Anyone with a career in a religious field will have a lot of religious topics to write about.

Yet probably the most common reason to mention religion in a memoir is that so many memories revolve around religious traditions. Christmastime, for example, can remind you of anything from the magic of opening presents under the tree while still in your pajamas to the stress of all the expectations to the loneliness of being far from home during the holidays. A simple activity like stringing lights around a front door can launch a whole chapter that reveals much about your family life.

At this time of year, here at Write My Memoirs we’re thinking of you, our authors and perhaps future authors, making new memories and living new stories to fill in the text of your lives. We hope all of yours are happy and funny and touching.

The 12 Days of Memoir

by

On the first day of Memoir, my memoir coach gave to me….

Here’s a checklist for writing your memoir that just happens to count to 12. It’s from Mary Karr, author of The Art of Memoir.

  1. Paint a physical reality that uses all the senses and exists in the time you’re writing about—a singular, fascinating place peopled with objects and characters we believe in. Should include the speaker’s body or some kinesthetic elements.
  2. Tell a story that gives the reader some idea of your milieu and exploits your talent. We remember in stories, and for a writer, story is where you start.
  3. Package information about your present self or backstory so it has emotional conflict or scene. All the rest of these are interior:
  4. Set emotional stakes—why is the writer passionate about or desperate to deal with the past—the hint of an inner enemy?
  5. Think, figure, wonder, guess. Show yourself weighing what’s true, your fantasies, values, schemes, and failures.
  6. Change times back and forth—early on, establish the “looking back” voice, and the “being in it” voice.
  7. Collude with the reader about your relationship with the truth and memory.
  8. Show not so much how you suffer in long passages, but how you survive. Use humor or an interjecting adult voice to help a reader over the dark places.
  9. Don’t exaggerate. Trust that what you felt deeply is valid.
  10. Watch your blind spots—in revision, if not before, search for reversals. Beware of what you avoid and what you cling to.
  11. (Related to all of the above) Love your characters. Ask yourself what underlay their acts and versions of the past. Sometimes I pray to see people I’m angry at or resentful of as God sees them, which heals both page and heart.
  12. And one big fat caveat: lead with your own talent, which may cause you to ignore all I’ve recommended.

Voice to Text: 5 Reasons to “Speak” Your Life Story

by

A year or so ago I was editing a memoir for one of our Write My Memoirs authors who had requested our editing services, and I realized that something was different. The language and sentence structure sounded natural, as if a native English speaker were telling you his life story. But the many misspellings were odd, not the typical spelling errors that people make. I came to the conclusion that this was a “voice-to-text” manuscript. The software didn’t get everything correct, but it was close enough for me to figure out the words.

I never asked whether my hunch was right and, if so, why the author chose to speak his life rather than to write it. But this got me thinking about all the reasons someone might use the increasingly sophisticated voice-to-text software on the market today. Here’s what I came up with:

  1. It’s quick. You almost certainly can speak faster than you can type, even if you’re taking the time to enunciate clearly or specify punctuation.
  2. Look, no hands! The advantage to this is obvious if you have a condition such as carpal tunnel syndrome or anything that makes typing difficult or awkward.
  3. Sitting not required. Even if you don’t have physical limitations with your hands, other body parts—your back, for instance—may ache after you’ve been sitting for long periods. When you use voice recognition software, you can walk around speaking into a laptop or phone, killing two birds with one stone—getting in your walking steps while writing your memoir.
  4. No keyboard. With voice-to-text software, you don’t need a desktop or laptop. You can use a tablet.
  5. Accuracy. A skilled speller and typist will, at best, break even on this, but someone who isn’t that great at spelling and typing will find a big relief from letting the words write themselves.

So think about it! Blogger Clifford Chi @bigreddog16 identifies eight worthy voice recognition software programs.

Check Out Our New Video!

by

I hope you’re enjoying the fresh, modern look of the Write My Memoirs website, the updated Timeline feature and the ease of adding and managing your book’s chapters. Along with our relaunch we created a little video to motivate anyone who’s ever wanted to write a memoir to take the first step and join Write My Memoirs.

The idea behind the video is the same as the concept of the website: that every life is unique and worth documenting. Everyone has had experiences that will resonate with readers, but no one has lived your exact life except you. Most people have friends and family members who will appreciate a written account of your life. Some people write a memoir that shares a story of hardship or abuse, often as a cautionary tale for others. What memoir authors all have in common is that it helps them to write out their point of view of their own life.

The video takes that into consideration—that both happy times and sad times enter our lives. Reliving experiences can be nostalgic or cathartic. Keep those memories close and read your book often, or write your book as a way to let go and move on. We hope you enjoy the video:

A New Children’s Book Broadens the Write My Memoirs Portfolio

by

The Publishing Services available at Write My Memoirs were designed to make it easy for Write My Memoirs authors to bring their vision to life in a book. We value our role in making this happen for our authors, and we take a lot of care with the layout of the text and photographs. But we all should get out of our comfort zone now and then, right?

Our latest published book is not a memoir at all, but a story for preschool children. Titled The Case of the Disappearing Kisses, the book is written by Write My Memoirs owner Rosanne Ullman. It’s available for purchase right on the writemymemoirs.com website. Preorders are being accepted now for delivery before Christmas.

If you would like to self-publish a book you have written, please consider using the Publishing Services available with Write My Memoirs. Your book does not have to be a memoir; we publish all reading categories. Our publishing rates are competitive, and we work closely with you to make sure you are happy with the product. Meanwhile, please check out this sweet children’s book! It makes a great gift for any family with small children.

The Case of the Disappearing Kisses

Why Young People Write Memoirs

by

The founder of Write My Memoirs was in his 60s when he figured out that people about his age needed a good website to anchor their memoir writing. In more recent years, we’ve noticed a trend—people much younger than their 60s also are joining and engaging with Write My Memoirs. It seemed odd at first. How much life is there to write about after only 20, 30 or even 40 years? The answer to that lies in the very heart of what a memoir is.

“Every event, and certainly every event worth writing about, will always remain tattooed on our neurons,” writes biographer Benjamin Moser in a New York Times article, “Should There Be a Minimum Age for Writing a Memoir?” Moser says it’s never too early to start writing about those events for the simple purpose of keeping a record. He calls it an “homage we pay ourselves.”

In the same article, young novelist and essayist Leslie Jamison makes a similar case for capturing the memory while it’s still fresh. “The narratives we tell about our own lives are constantly in flux,” she notes. “Our perspectives at each age are differently valuable. What age gains in remove it loses in immediacy: The younger version of a story gets told at closer proximity, with more fine-grain texture and less aerial perspective.”

In the article “Why Should You Write Your Memoir?” in Psychology Today, researcher Diana Raab reports her findings from interviews she conducted for her book, Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Plan for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life. Younger people told her pretty much the same thing we hear from older memoir authors: they felt they had a story to share and wanted to tell it in their own voice, from their own perspective. “Additional reasons to write a memoir include preserving a family’s legacy, learning more about one’s ancestors, a search for personal identity, gaining insight into the past or healing from a traumatic experience,” Raab adds.

Our experience at Write My Memoirs is that our older authors look back on their entire lives and choose stories they consider worthy of inclusion in their memoir. The driving factor is the writing—a desire to write about their life. With younger people, the story itself is what drives the idea. Something distinctive, good or bad, happens to them and they want to make sure the story gets told. It’s a subtle difference, but we notice that age does influence how you present your memoir.

You’re the Star of the Article!

by

Our Magazine-style Bio, the latest addition to our Writing Services, is very cool! This service offers a professionally written, magazine-style article about your life or any aspect of your life you choose as the focus. We can use information and stories you’ve already written up, supplemented by a phone or video-phone interview and any photos you want to include. If you have nothing in writing, we’ll craft the entire article from the phone interview.

The idea is to give you a focus piece that you can use according to your needs:

  • Include the link on your résumé to broaden potential employers’ view of your attributes.
  • Send it to your local news organizations, and they just might print it!
  • Post the link as part of a dating profile.
  • Print it out, frame each page and hang the framed pages on your office or home office wall.
  • Print out copies to place in binders and hand out to friends just for fun.
  • Incorporate the professionally written paragraphs into your own memoir.

The Magazine-style Bio is one of the many changes introduced with the Fall 2018 Write My Memoirs Relaunch. Find it by clicking on the Writing Services button at the top of the home page. You can be the next magazine profile star!

“I Was Here and I Mattered”

by

It’s all about money at the website moneycrashers.com, so blogger Michael Lewis included “make money” among his four reasons for writing a memoir. But his blog post was really a thank-you note to his late father for leaving a memoir for his family to read after his death. Lewis writes:

“During the last five years of my father’s life, he began a series of letters and memos to my younger brother and me about his life. Dad was not a famous man, nor a particularly accomplished man—at least, not by standard measures of success. Nevertheless, his letters chronicling a childhood during the Depression in the midst of the Dust Bowl, his experiences as an infantryman on the battlefields of Europe, and life in the 1950s were an incredible record of an extraordinary life and time in the history of America.’

This is exactly what we discover every time we publish a life story at Write My Memoirs. The personal memories documented in an ordinary person’s autobiography become fascinating from the modern-day point of view. When that ordinary person is your family member, the fascination grows even more intense. I’m not surprised that Michael Lewis organized his dad’s writings and bound them to make little books they could pass out to the rest of the family.

“Writing your autobiography is an opportunity to reach across the boundaries of time and space, set the record straight, honor the ones you love and celebrate the journey you have taken,” Lewis writes. “It is the chance to create your own time capsule; an opportunity to leave your handprints on the walls of human existence and to shout to the world, ‘I was here and I mattered!’”

Exactly. That’s what Write My Memoirs is all about: documenting that you were here and you mattered.

The Fireworks of an American Memoir

by

This week Americans across the country will flock to beaches, rivers, open fields and even the seat in front of their TV and computer screens—to watch Independence Day fireworks. If you’re an American, how many times have you done that? It’s a ritual, and it’s the kind of memory that might find its way into an American’s memoir.

Maybe you watched the fireworks display with a bunch of neighborhood kids, or perhaps your whole family carried lawn chairs to an appointed spot. You might have ridden your bike or taken a bus provided free for the community. Perhaps one year you were sick and couldn’t attend; another year maybe your town didn’t have the funds to put on the expected show. Maybe some of you first set eyes on your future spouse at a July 4 event!

An annual fireworks display may seem minor when you’re listing your life’s major milestones. But the way Americans share this tradition is etched into all of our minds. When you describe where the event was held when you were a child, how you got there and what all you dragged with you—everything from your dog and binoculars to the picnic basket and your favorite blanket—it resonates with your children and grandchildren who share the same type of event but under circumstances that reflect a more modern era.

Don’t take these moments for granted. They illustrate the culture that defined you as you grew up. They show how those times are different from today as well as all the aspects that are surprisingly similar. Every country and culture share traditions. In the U.S., the July 4 week is one of our strongest times of unity and affection—a summertime break with hot dogs, beer, music and those colorful lights in the sky that go “boom.” Somehow both nostalgic and current, it’s the kind of story you can tuck into a memoir to reveal something about your past, pipe up with a little about your attitudes and lay out a snapshot of everyday American life.

Chronology vs. Topic Grouping

by

You make lots of decisions as you’re writing your memoir about when and how to introduce the topics you want to cover. You may choose to present a chronological account of your life, from birth to present day, because it seems logical and probably the easiest option. But you’re likely to find that it’s not as straightforward as you anticipated.

Let’s say that you’re writing about a favorite aunt and uncle. Perhaps as a child you spent a week with them every summer or have special memories of welcoming them to your home at Christmastime. They were a significant presence during your childhood, but then maybe they moved far away or you just grew up and didn’t see them very much. Or maybe you continued seeing them at holidays, but you’re not chronicling every holiday in your memoir. Really, the next mention you want to make is to note their death and honor their memory by saying you miss them. Where should you say that?

You can wait until you write a chapter that occurs around the time your aunt and uncle died, assuming they died within a few years of each other. You can mention various things affecting you at that time and include your trip to attend a funeral or just your sadness at their passing. Or you can just finish out their story in the earlier passages that focus on them. After explaining their importance in your life, you can write something such as: “I saw my aunt and uncle less frequently as I got older, but I’ll always have fond memories of both of them. They died in the 1990s after living long, happy lives.” Even if you write your life story in chronological order, be flexible enough in respecting the chronology to allow yourself the creative license to keep a topic together if that seems to be easier for the reader to follow.

Here are some questions to ask yourself that will help you recall people and events in your life.

Login

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!

Schedule A Call