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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.

Before You Write Your Memoir: Exercises to Prepare

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Before You Write Your Memoir: Exercises to Help You
As part of her own memoir writing process, author Shirley Hershey Showalter has been keeping a blog. For one entry, Shirley had received permission from her friend, Professor Melanie Springer Mock, to post the syllabus for a university-level memoir-writing class that Mock was teaching at George Fox University in Oregon. I think you’ll find some of the assignments from this course relevant in helping an amateur writer craft a heartfelt memoir.
The first assignment Mock gives her students is to keep a journal. We’ve talked about that here at Write My Memoirs before. Mock calls journaling “the most democratic literary form,” because everyone has a life story from which to draw, and we all own our stories. Adding that journaling also is “perhaps the most fundamental form of life writing,” Mock expresses the hope that her students will enjoy the journaling process enough to continue with it after the course ends. To guide the students in productive journaling, the syllabus advises:
“A fruitful journal will include more than a summarization of weather and what you had for lunch, although you may write about that as well. Consider using your journal to record daily events, conversations and feelings; to examine your beliefs and thoughts, as well as your reaction to certain daily experiences; to experiment with different writing styles and ideas; and to draft pieces you are working on.” I think those are good suggestions. More assignments next time—check back here next week!

As part of her own memoir writing process, author Shirley Hershey Showalter has been keeping a blog. For one entry, Shirley received permission from her friend, Professor Melanie Springer Mock, to post the syllabus for a university-level memoir-writing class that Mock was teaching at George Fox University in Oregon. I think you’ll find some of the assignments from this course relevant in helping an amateur writer craft a heartfelt memoir.

The first assignment Mock gives her students is to keep a journal. We’ve talked about that here at Write My Memoirs before. Mock calls journaling “the most democratic literary form,” because everyone has a life story from which to draw, and we all own our stories. Adding that journaling also is “perhaps the most fundamental form of life writing,” Mock expresses the hope that her students will enjoy the journaling process enough to continue with it after the course ends. To guide the students in productive journaling, the syllabus advises:

“A fruitful journal will include more than a summarization of weather and what you had for lunch, although you may write about that as well. Consider using your journal to record daily events, conversations and feelings; to examine your beliefs and thoughts, as well as your reaction to certain daily experiences; to experiment with different writing styles and ideas; and to draft pieces you are working on.” I think those are good suggestions. More assignments next time—check back here next week!

All Hail the Presidential Memoir

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Hail to the Presidential Memoir
Since newly reelected Barack Obama already is a best-selling author, we can probably expect him to pen a presidential memoir when he finishes this next term. Most modern presidents do and there’s certainly a market for the first-hand presidential account. Bill Clinton’s memoir, the 900-page, unoriginally titled My Life, has sold in the neighborhood of 2.25 million copies, and sales of George W. Bush’s Decision Points are rivaling that record.
But the champion of presidential memoirs in terms of critical acclaim, you may be surprised to learn, is Ulysses S. Grant. His autobiography focuses more on the war than on his presidential years and had the advantage of Mark Twain as an editor or, some suspect, a ghostwriter. The book stands out for its humility; Grant readily admits to errors and lets hindsight guide him toward an objective evaluation of his actions. Pretty much every other president uses the memoir as a means to justify decisions, self-promote or spin the facts. An apt example is James Buchanan, who was our country’s first president to publish a memoir. And “Silent Cal”? Calvin Coolidge lived up to his nickname, penning the shortest presidential memoir at just under 250 pages. But perhaps the most “silent” was Richard Nixon, who wasn’t one to self-reflect and glossed over the Watergate scandal in his memoir.
Not to be left out, we may see Michelle Obama write her own account of White House life. Both Nancy Reagan and Betty Ford published autobiographies that outsold their husbands’ memoirs, while Hilary Clinton’s Living History has topped $10 million in sales. Time will tell.

Since newly reelected Barack Obama already is a best-selling author, we can probably expect him to pen a presidential memoir when he finishes this next term. Most modern presidents do, and there’s certainly a market for the first-hand presidential account. Bill Clinton’s memoir, the 900-page, less-than-originally titled My Life, has sold in the neighborhood of 2.25 million copies, and sales of George W. Bush’s Decision Points are rivaling that record.

But the champion of presidential memoirs in terms of critical acclaim, you may be surprised to learn, is Ulysses S. Grant. His autobiography focuses more on the war than on his presidential years and had the advantage of Mark Twain as an editor or, some suspect, a ghostwriter. The book stands out for its humility; Grant readily admits to errors and lets hindsight guide him toward an objective evaluation of his actions. Pretty much every other president uses the memoir as a means to justify decisions, self-promote or spin the facts. An apt example is James Buchanan, who was our country’s first president to publish a memoir. And “Silent Cal”? Calvin Coolidge lived up to his nickname, penning the shortest presidential memoir at just under 250 pages. But perhaps the most “silent” was Richard Nixon, who wasn’t one to self-reflect and glossed over the Watergate scandal in his memoir.

Not to be left out, we may see Michelle Obama write her own account of White House life. Both Nancy Reagan and Betty Ford published autobiographies that outsold their husbands’ memoirs, while Hilary Clinton’s Living History has topped $10 million in sales. Time will tell; it always does.

Verb Tenses, Part III

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Verb Tenses, Part III
To finish up this three-part series, we’re going to talk about the “perfect progressive” tenses. Instead of using the past participle as we did for the present perfect, past perfect and future perfect tenses, for the progressive tenses we’ll need the present participle. For example, the past participle for to sing is sung, as in, “She has sung professionally in front of thousands of people”; the present participle is singing, as in, “She has been singing professionally since her teen years.”
Present Perfect Progressive Tense
Conveys current, ongoing action that began in the past, continues in the present and may continue in the future.
Formation: has been or have been + the present participle of the verb
I have been thinking about writing my memoirs.
We have been learning about verb tenses.
Past Perfect Progressive Tense
Conveys past, ongoing action that began in the past before another action.
Formation: had been + the present participle of the verb
I had been thinking about writing a novel before I changed my mind and decided to write a memoir.
She had been reading her book for three hours before she finally broke away to have dinner.
Future Perfect Progressive Tense
Conveys future, ongoing action that will be completed before another future action.
Formation: will have been + the present participle of the verb
As of June, I will have been working on my memoir for a full year.
If he starts his homework now, he will have been studying for three hours when he finally breaks for dinner.
I hope you found these tenses useful! Write if you have questions!

To finish up this Write My Memoirs three-part series, we’re going to talk about the “perfect progressive” tenses. Instead of using the past participle as we did for the present perfect, past perfect and future perfect tenses, for the progressive tenses we’ll need the present participle. For example, the past participle for to sing is sung, as in, “She has sung professionally in front of thousands of people”; the present participle is singing, as in, “She has been singing professionally since her teen years.”

PRESENT PERFECT PROGRESSIVE TENSE
Conveys current, ongoing action that began in the past, continues in the present and may continue in the future.
Formation: has been or have been + the present participle of the verb

I have been thinking about writing my memoirs.

We have been learning about verb tenses.

PAST PERFECT PROGRESSIVE TENSE
Conveys past, ongoing action that began in the past before another action.
Formation: had been + the present participle of the verb

I had been thinking about writing a novel before I changed my mind and decided to write a memoir.

She had been reading her book for three hours before she finally broke away to have dinner.

FUTURE PERFECT PROGRESSIVE TENSE
Conveys future, ongoing action that will be completed before another future action.
Formation: will have been + the present participle of the verb

As of June, I will have been working on my memoir for a full year.

If he starts his homework now, he will have been studying for three hours when he finally breaks for dinner.

I hope you found these tenses useful! Write if you have questions!

Verb Tenses, Part II

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Please read the Write My Memoirs blog post immediately preceding this one. Now that you have a handle on what a past participle is and, I’m going to assume, you pretty much know how to use the present and past tenses, we can move on to the difficult tenses that use past participles. Let’s example three:

PRESENT PERFECT TENSE
Conveys action that either began in the past and continues today or took place at an indefinite time.
Formation: has or have + the past participle of the verb

I have cooked [present perfect tense] dinner but have not served [present perfect] it yet.

You own [present tense] many books and have passed [present perfect] down the joy of reading to your children.

I sent [past tense] an email to my friend, and I hope [present tense] that she has read [present perfect tense] it by now.

PAST PERFECT TENSE
Conveys action that took place before another action in the past.
Formation: had + the past participle of the verb

I had intended [past perfect tense] to eat [infinitive] dinner at home until I decided [past tense] to go [infinitive] out instead.

I suppose [present tense] they had notified [past perfect tense] me earlier, but I neglected [past tense] to mark [infinitive] the date on my calendar.

FUTURE PERFECT TENSE
Conveys future action that will occur before another future action.
Formation: will have + the past participle of the verb

I will have finished [future perfect tense] all of my work when I end [present tense indicating a future event] my day with my favorite TV show.

I assume [present tense] that the teacher will have corrected [future perfect tense] our essays by the time class begins [present tense indicating a future event].

If anything is not clear, contact us or post on our Facebook wall! More tenses next time.

Grammar Lesson: Verb Tenses, Part I

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Grammar Lesson: Verb Tenses, Part I
When our Write My Memoirs members hire us to edit their memoirs, we notice that verb tenses seem to be a tough grammar hurdle that trips up many writers. So let’s tackle these tricky little verbs one tense at a time. I’ll devote as many blog posts as it takes, starting with today.
When we list the forms of a verb, typically we list three tenses: present tense, past tense and past participle. The last one—the past participle—is the most problematic. To illustrate the three tenses of the regular verb to help, you would list: help (present tense); helped (past tense); and helped (past participle). In practice, this goes: today I help the customer; yesterday I helped the customer; over the past week I have helped many customers. You can see that the past participle takes a helping verb like have. For regular verbs, the past participle is the same as the past tense—in this case, both are helped.
However, there are many irregular verbs. Let’s try to take: today I take my temperature; yesterday I took my temperature; I have taken my temperature many times this week. In that irregular example, took is past tense, but taken is the past participle. To run also is irregular: today I run; yesterday I ran; I have run five times this week. That’s an unusual case, because the past participle run is the same as the present tense, first person. Keep in mind, though, that “person” presents another variable that can change the present tense, but the past participle remains the same. With to run, the past participle remains run when we change the example from first person to third person: today he runs; yesterday he ran; he has run five times this week.
Practice on other verbs until we dig into this again next time!

When our Write My Memoirs members hire us to edit their memoirs, we notice that verb tenses seem to be a tough grammar hurdle that trips up many writers. So let’s tackle these tricky little verbs one tense at a time. I’ll devote as many blog posts as it takes, starting with today.

When we list the forms of a verb, typically we list two tenses—present tense and past tense—plus the past participle, which is a component of the remaining tenses and is the most problematic.  The last one—the past participle—is the most problematic. To illustrate the three tenses of the regular verb to help, you would list: help (present tense); helped (past tense); and helped (past participle). In practice, this goes: today I help the customer; yesterday I helped the customer; over the past week I have helped many customers. You can see that the past participle takes a helping verb like have. For regular verbs, the past participle is the same as the past tense—in this case, both are helped.

However, there are many irregular verbs. Let’s try to take: today I take my temperature; yesterday I took my temperature; I have taken my temperature many times this week. In that irregular example, took is past tense, but taken is the past participle. To run also is irregular: today I run; yesterday I ran; I have run five times this week. That’s an unusual case, because the past participle run is the same as the present tense, first person. Keep in mind, though, that “person” presents another variable that can change the present tense, but the past participle remains the same. With to run, the past participle remains run when we change the example from first person (I) to third person (he/she): today he runs; yesterday he ran; he has run five times this week.

Practice on other verbs until we dig into this again next time!

Be Glad You’re Not Famous

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Be Glad You’re Not Famous
Now that the Arnold Schwarzegger memoir, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, has hit bookshelves, I’ve been watching A. Schwarz on various talk shows as what the New York Times calls his “apology tour” continues. Sooner or later the interviewer asks Arnold a question that he doesn’t address in his memoir, and the “tell-all” is exposed as a “tell what you feel like telling.”
The book covers the love child who surfaced, which is the major reason Maria Shriver left their marriage. But interviewers demand more. They want him to discuss his current relationship with the son who was born from it. They ask him to expound upon rumors of other cheating instances. Citing consideration for his family’s feelings, he declines to provide those juicy bits. I don’t really have a problem with that. The success of any movie or political career—and Arnold has had both—rests upon the person’s appeal to the public. If his fan base weakens, he’ll know that people didn’t care for his approach to sharing only what suited him.
This all made me think about you, our members at Write My Memoirs. In all likelihood, your memoir is intended only for family friends. You will not be asked to go on Jay Leno’s show, and bloggers won’t berate you for omitting details or bending facts to suit yourself. With your memoir, you have free rein to fashion it however you please, and it will be received warmly. Aren’t you glad you’re not a celebrity?

Now that the Arnold Schwarzegger memoir, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, has hit bookshelves, I’ve been watching A. Schwarz on various talk shows as what the New York Times calls his “apology tour” continues. Sooner or later the interviewer asks Arnold a question that he doesn’t address in his memoir, and the “tell-all” is exposed as a “tell what you feel like telling.”

The book covers the love child who surfaced, which is the major reason Maria Shriver left their marriage. But interviewers demand more. They want him to discuss his current relationship with the son who was born from it. They ask him to expound upon rumors of other cheating instances. Citing consideration for his family’s feelings, he declines to provide those juicy bits. I don’t really have a problem with that. The success of any movie or political career—and Arnold has had both—rests upon the person’s appeal to the public. If his fan base weakens, he’ll know that people didn’t care for his approach to sharing only what suited him.

This all made me think about you, our members at Write My Memoirs. In all likelihood, your memoir is intended only for family and friends. You will not be asked to go on Jay Leno’s show, and bloggers won’t berate you for omitting details or bending facts to suit yourself. With your memoir, you have free rein to fashion it however you please, and it will be received warmly. Aren’t you glad you’re not a celebrity?

Formatting Your Memoir

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Formatting Your Memoir
For many people, writing a memoir is actually the easy part; the challenging part is publishing it in a form that looks like a real book. At Write My Memoirs, we help our members make that happen.
Formatting for publication can be especially difficult when you include old family photographs. You have to scan the photographs, upload them onto your page and lay out the page to accommodate the photograph. When you have color photos, you have to decide whether to publish them in color, which is more expensive, or convert them to black and white. If you’re not familiar with photo resizing and manipulation, fonts, page layout tricks and a few principles of design, you may have trouble with all of this. You also need patience! Visually, your book becomes a puzzle to put together. Even if you group all of your photos together instead of using them to illustrate your work throughout, you still need to make them look good. A border around each photo can add polish, and captions can help the reader figure out who’s who.
At Write My Memoirs we make it easy on you. Through email and phone calls, we listen to exactly how you want your book to appear and do all of the formatting for you. All you have to do is upload the text and images into your account on our website or email it all to us. We hope you contact us when you’re ready to publish—and we’ll do the rest!

For many people, writing a memoir is actually the easy part; the challenging part is publishing it in a form that looks like a real book. At Write My Memoirs, we help our members make that happen.

Formatting for publication can be especially difficult when you include old family photographs. You have to scan the photographs, upload them onto your page and lay out the page to accommodate the photograph. When you have color photos, you have to decide whether to publish them in color, which is more expensive, or convert them to black and white. If you’re not familiar with photo resizing and manipulation, fonts, page layout tricks and a few principles of design, you may have trouble with all of this. You also need patience! Visually, your book becomes a puzzle to assemble. Even if you group all of your photos together instead of using them to illustrate your work throughout, you still need to make them look good. A border around each photo can add polish, and captions can help the reader figure out who’s who.

At Write My Memoirs we make it easy on you. Through email and phone calls, we listen to exactly how you want your book to appear and do all of the formatting for you. All you have to do is upload the text and images into your account on our website or email it all to us. We hope you contact us when you’re ready to publish—and we’ll do the rest!

Memoir Teacher for Hire

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Memoir Teacher for Hire
If you can get a group together and want to hold a memoir workshop, there’s a teacher who will come to you. His name is Thomas Larson; go to thomaslarson.com for details about him. Write My Memoirs has nothing to do with Thomas or his workshops. We neither vouch for him nor receive any type of commission from him. However, he’s a member of the faculty at Ashland University in Ohio and the author of The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative; he seems like the real deal to me. Perhaps you can ask your local library or high school to contact him at to********@*******al.net for pricing information.
He begins his workshop by exploring the differences between traditional autobiography and contemporary memoir. Then he gets to the nitty-gritty of helping participants figure out how to begin, where to focus, which episodes of your life will make interesting topics, how to “discover the emotional truth” of your story and the various literary elements that come into play. By the end of the workshop, you should have a draft of a chapter or section of your story.
“Many of us have lived fascinating lives whether inwardly or outwardly, during childhood long ago or as adults in the last decade,” Thomas writes on his website. He sums up the definition of a modern memoir as “a story that focuses on the meaning and intensity of a singular relationship in the author’s life—unresolved feelings for a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend; coming to terms with a loss, an illness, a death; remembering a significant phase like childhood or adolescence or a period like college in which the writer was challenged or changed.”

If you can get a group together and want to hold a memoir workshop, there’s a teacher who will come to you. His name is Thomas Larson; go to thomaslarson.com for details about him. Write My Memoirs has nothing to do with Thomas or his workshops. We neither vouch for him nor receive any type of commission from him. However, he’s a member of the faculty at Ashland University in Ohio and the author of The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative; he seems like the real deal to me. Perhaps you can ask your local library or high school to contact him at to********@*******al.net for pricing information.

He begins his workshop by exploring the differences between traditional autobiography and contemporary memoir. Then he gets to the nitty-gritty of helping participants figure out how to begin, where to focus, which episodes of your life will make interesting topics, how to “discover the emotional truth” of your story and the various literary elements that come into play. By the end of the workshop, you should have a draft of a chapter or section of your story.

“Many of us have lived fascinating lives whether inwardly or outwardly, during childhood long ago or as adults in the last decade,” Thomas writes on his website. He sums up the definition of a modern memoir as “a story that focuses on the meaning and intensity of a singular relationship in the author’s life—unresolved feelings for a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend; coming to terms with a loss, an illness, a death; remembering a significant phase like childhood or adolescence or a period like college in which the writer was challenged or changed.”

Are You Writing a Memoir or a Self-Help?

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Are You Writing a Memoir or a Self-Help?
Last week’s post about the relationship between a memoir and a self-help guide inspired me to look further into the differences between the two. I found a listing of “do’s and don’ts” for each genre at nonfictionbookeditor.com, although keep in mind that the advice addresses authors who would like to publish their work for mass distribution, whereas here at Write My Memoirs you may want to publish just a few copies for friends and relatives.
The author of that blog contends that readers are looking for either a targeted self-help with instructions and a call to action on how to overcome one of life’s hurdles or reach the next rung of some ladder, or they want to read an entertaining and perhaps uplifting account of someone’s life that may have lessons regarding a common personal struggle but will be too personal to apply broadly.
Confusion between the two genres occurs when the book focuses mainly on how a single problem has been overcome by the author. That is effective as neither a memoir nor a self-help, according to the NonfictionBookEditor blog. If you’re writing a self-help, you should research it beyond what you’ve learned from your own experience, because everyone’s situation will be a little different from yours. If you’re writing a memoir, you should not narrow your focus so much that it’s an account only of your single personal struggle without the greater context of other aspects of your life. I think that’s good advice.

Last week’s post about the relationship between a memoir and a self-help guide inspired me to look further into the differences between the two. I found a listing of “do’s and don’ts” for each genre at nonfictionbookeditor.com, although keep in mind that the advice addresses authors who would like to publish their work for mass distribution, whereas here at Write My Memoirs you may want to publish just a few copies for friends and relatives.

The author of that blog contends that readers are looking for either a targeted self-help with instructions and a call to action on how to overcome one of life’s hurdles or reach the next rung of some ladder, or they want to read an entertaining and perhaps uplifting account of someone’s life that may have lessons regarding a common personal struggle but will be too personal to apply broadly.

Confusion between the two genres occurs when the book focuses mainly on how a single problem has been overcome by the author. That is effective as neither a memoir nor a self-help, according to the NonfictionBookEditor blog. If you’re writing a self-help, you should research it beyond what you’ve learned from your own experience, because everyone’s situation will be a little different from yours. If you’re writing a memoir, you should not narrow your focus so much that it’s an account only of your single personal struggle without the greater context of other aspects of your life. I think that’s good advice.

Take a Scholarly Approach to Memoir Writing

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Take a Scholarly Approach to Memoir Writing
Most of our members here on WriteMyMemoirs are not professional writers and would not consider themselves serious students of writing or autobiography. But perhaps some of you do fall into the category of “writing scholar.” If you’d love learning more about biography and autobiography, I recommend looking into the International Auto/Biography Association (IABA), which meets annually for a scholarly convention that each year explores a different aspect of crafting a life story and is held in a selected fabulous global city.
On that website, you may notice an invitation to submit an abstract if you’re interested in serving on a panel at the annual convention of a different group, the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA). According to NeMLA, this panel “will address the narrative and socio-political relationships between contemporary memoir and self-help. Topics may include, but are not limited to: narrative analyses of popular self-help texts; the co-evolution of memoir and self-help; how the narrative of self-help embeds itself in memoir; revisiting trauma in a public forum.”
The NeMLA convention takes place March 21-24, 2013, but the deadline to submit an abstract is coming up on September 30. It would be great to have a WriteMyMemoirs member serve on the panel or just attend this event and report back to us. In any case, on the next blog let’s discuss the memoir/self-help connection. If NeMLA is creating an entire panel presentation on the topic, there must be a lot to talk about!

Most of our members here on WriteMyMemoirs are neither professional writers nor would consider themselves serious students of writing or autobiography. But perhaps some of you do fall into the category of “writing scholar.” If you’d love to learn more about biography and autobiography, I recommend looking into the International Auto/Biography Association (IABA), which meets annually for a scholarly convention that each year explores a different aspect of crafting a life story and is held in a selected fabulous global city.

On that website, you may notice an invitation to submit an abstract if you’re interested in serving on a panel at the annual convention of a different group, the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA). The topic is: Together after Oprah: Theorizing Contemporary Memoir via Self-Help Discourse. According to NeMLA, this panel “will address the narrative and socio-political relationships between contemporary memoir and self-help. Topics may include, but are not limited to: narrative analyses of popular self-help texts; the co-evolution of memoir and self-help; how the narrative of self-help embeds itself in memoir; revisiting trauma in a public forum.”

The NeMLA convention takes place March 21-24, 2013, but the deadline to submit an abstract is coming up on September 30. It would be great to have a WriteMyMemoirs member serve on the panel or just attend this event and report back to us. In any case, on the next blog let’s discuss the memoir/self-help connection. If NeMLA is creating an entire panel presentation on the topic, there must be a lot to talk about!

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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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