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.

Author Shares Memoir Journey of Reliving Trauma

August 21, 2025August 21, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

Writing Through the Wreckage: The Unbearable Weight of Telling My Story

by our guest contributor Adriene Caldwell

Writing Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines has been the most harrowing journey of my life—more painful, more vulnerable, and more exhausting than I could have ever imagined. And that is saying something, considering the life I’ve lived.

Brutally Honest Overview

This book is not a story. It is a reckoning. It is a coffin I’ve had to reopen again and again, not to bury what happened but to breathe through it—to make space for the wounds that never stopped bleeding and the girl inside me who never stopped screaming.

Writing this memoir meant returning to the scenes of the most unthinkable traumas: witnessing the sexual assault of my young friend, seeing a child drown, surviving foster care so abusive it bordered on sadistic, growing up in extreme poverty and mental illness, battling addiction and bulimia, and being raised in the aftermath of a home ruled by violence and untreated psychosis.

These weren’t chapters to be revised. They were ghosts I had to confront to stay alive.

Memory as a Battlefield

There’s a particular cruelty in trauma that lives in your nervous system rather than your memory. You forget what happened, but your body remembers. Your breath shortens. Your hands shake. You cry and don’t know why. Writing each chapter felt like plunging into freezing water with no guarantee I’d come back up.

I didn’t just survive trauma—I bore witness to it. I saw my young friend sexually assaulted. I didn’t have the power to stop it. I didn’t even understand what I was seeing until years later, when the guilt caught up to my understanding. That memory alone could have unraveled me. But it was only the beginning. I watched a little girl drown. I remember the chaos, the silence that followed, the disbelief.

It wasn’t a movie moment; it was slow, confusing, and then over. But it stayed in my body. And writing about it meant sitting with the realization that I would never unknow what it looked like to watch life slip away.

The Shame that Shadows the Page

Of all the emotions I expected to encounter while writing this memoir, shame was the most persistent and the most venomous. The drug use, the desperation, the people I gave myself to in hopes of feeling something other than emptiness—it all painted a version of me I had spent years trying to erase.

But that’s the lie trauma teaches you: if you admit what happened to you, you become what happened to you. And I believed that lie for far too long. Every page I wrote, I felt shame whispering: Who are you to share this? Who will love you when they know? Yet I kept writing. Not to silence the shame, but to exhaust it. To give it a voice until it had nothing left to say.

Grieving in Real Time

Some traumas are decades old. Others still burn like fresh wounds. Writing about the deaths of people I loved, as well as my own suicide attempts, meant confronting a different kind of violence: the one we do to ourselves when we believe we are unworthy of life. I didn’t write about suicide from the sidelines. I wrote it as someone who attempted it. More than once. I had to revisit the scenes: the overdoses, the razors, the gun, the stillness, the moments I hoped would be the last. I had to write about the part of me that didn’t want to be here. And then I had to write about why I stayed.

I also wrote about being homeless—when my mother, brother, and I lived at the Salvation Army shelter in downtown Houston. Each morning, the shelter would evict its occupants onto the blazing hot Houston streets. The pavement scorched the soles of my shoes. The sun was merciless. I carried my childhood in a plastic bag and my shame in my throat. Writing those scenes meant remembering the sting of invisibility, the constant fight to simply endure the day.

And always, in the background, there was my mother. She was schizophrenic. Unmedicated. And she was physically abusive. Her rage was untethered, and her mind was often lost in a world I couldn’t access. But her beatings were all too real. The last one came with a wooden dowel rod—the kind you hang clothes on in a closet. Thick. Heavy. Unforgiving. A makeshift bat in her hands. I remember her swinging it with precision. I remember the bruises that didn’t fade and the realization that I had to leave or I would not survive.

Telling the Truth When It Could Ruin You

Some truths are not just difficult—they’re dangerous. Writing about pedophilia, abusive foster homes and family secrets meant risking everything. I worried about legal fallout. I worried about people I once loved reading their own reflections in the mirror of my pain. I worried about being disbelieved—again.

But writing this memoir wasn’t about revenge. It was about reclamation. And I had to ask myself every day: Am I willing to be free even if it costs me everything? The answer, eventually, became yes.

The Loneliness of Writing What No One Wants to Hear

Writing a trauma memoir is a solitary act. It’s not a trending genre. There is no applause for this kind of vulnerability. People will say it’s “too much,” “too graphic,” “too hard to read.” And to that, I say: Imagine how hard it was to live.

I didn’t write Unbroken to entertain. I wrote it because the silence was killing me. I wrote it because too many people are still living what I survived. And someone needs to go first.

The Unexpected Grace

Despite all the pain, there have been moments of light. Writing has allowed me to meet the girl I was, the one no one protected, and offer her what she never had: truth. I’ve written prayers into paragraphs. I’ve stitched together sentences that somehow made my brokenness feel sacred.

When I wrote about choosing not to die—when I reached for life even in the depths of despair—it didn’t feel like writing. It felt like remembering. Remembering that I am not just what happened to me. I am what I survived. I am who I became.

A Memoir as a Mirror

Unbroken: Life Outside the Lines is not just a book. It’s a mirror. It reflects back the parts of me I tried to hide—the rage, the grief, the shame—and it allows me to say: I am still here. I am not clean. I am not healed. But I am whole, in the way a tree is whole after a lightning strike—scarred, yes, but alive.

This book cost me everything: my comfort, my certainty, my illusion of safety. But it gave me back my voice. And maybe, if even one person reads it and feels seen, it will have given something to them, too.

The Truth: It Was Never Just Writing

People ask what it’s like to write a trauma memoir. I wish I could say it was cathartic. Sometimes it was. But mostly, it was excruciating, like pulling out a knife still embedded in the wound, over and over, until I remembered that I was the one holding it now.

This book wasn’t therapy. It was survival. It wasn’t healing. It was truth. And I am not the same woman who began it.

Hobbies and Memoir

August 6, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

Woman getting ready to run a race on a track

Are your pastimes and passions worthy of inclusion?

Typically, in your memoir you’ll write about your career and family, but what about hobbies and memoir—are they compatible? If you decide that your pastimes and passions worthy of inclusion, how do you present them?

The quick answer is yes, anything about yourself that you want readers to know can be appropriate to include in a memoir. However, memoirs typically have a theme. It’s tempting to shoehorn your favorite stories about your life into that theme, but the reader may not support such indulgence, even if you successfully pull off the justification you contrive for the inclusion.

But let’s say you decide to take that chance. Then you have two choices: dedicate a separate chapter, or sprinkle the hobby throughout the book.

A Dedicated Chapter

Dedicating a chapter to your hobby is the simpler of the two options. Find a place for that chapter that feels organic and doesn’t stop the action. Let’s say you’re an avid tennis player in a memoir about surviving domestic abuse. You’re going along chronologically without mentioning sports. But there’s one tennis game you remember playing against the abuser—a parent, spouse or partner—and during the game the person criticizes your abilities or yells at you, or maybe the game itself is the trigger for intensified abuse. That’s where you can insert the chapter.

Start this chapter either by setting the scene for that game or introducing your love of tennis to the reader. I’d lean toward the former. You set the scene, and then you spend a few paragraphs or pages on your tennis experiences. You go over the background of why you started playing and also can go into the future with information about later tennis achievements. Then come back to where you are chronologically in the book, at that game with your abuser, and describe that scene.

Recently, I helped a memoir author do something like that. I’m currently coaching an author who is writing mostly about her paranormal experiences and theories but wanted to include her love of opera. We crafted a chapter that picked up where her story was chronologically and linked her attendance at an opera at about that time with a paranormal experience she had. Then we traced other operas she’d attended both earlier and later in her life, describing her travel to cities to see them and any odd occurrences that took place.

A Sprinkle Throughout the Book

If you go in the opposite direction, by the time you get to the story of playing tennis with your abuser the reader already knows about your love of the game. One advantage of this is that you can build suspense about the eventual scene of your tennis match. You can have a paragraph like this:

“He suggested a game of tennis to see whether, at my young age, I could beat him. Since I’d already made plans to play with Lily that day, I had a legitimate excuse to turn down the invitation. The last thing I needed was for him to ruin one more passion for me. But I knew that, sooner or later, the invitation would morph into a command, and I’d have to face him on the tennis court. Once he got an idea in his head, he never let it go.”

Helping the Reader to Know You

Now let’s say you love to read. A lot of your down time has found you on a sofa or in a hammock, on a beach or in your bed, with a book or Kindle in your hands. You follow certain authors and feel that for people to really know you, they have to be aware of your taste in fiction. Does that belong in a memoir?

With skillful writing, you can get away with a lot. You can tie in your favorite books with events in your life or your introversion or what you had in common with the person you married. It can be enough for the reader to accept it as a way to fully know you.

I understand. Above you see a photo of me preparing to run a race in Senior Games track and field just last week. If I wrote a book about my later years, no matter what the theme, I think I would have to include some mention of how I transformed from a never-athlete into a senior quasi-athlete.

There are lots of ways to sneak in your hobby. Just be careful not to alienate your reader!

How Much to Explain in Your Memoir

July 22, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

It’s not easy to figure out where readers need background info.

Knowing how much to explain in your memoir is one of the trickiest aspects of writing it. You may be humming along in a chapter about working at your first job when you hit a roadblock simply because you don’t know whether readers will need background information to fully set the scene.

The level of detail involves three areas: specifics about you personally; information that enriches the reader’s knowledge about a broad topic such as a period in history, a location or a famous person; and a quick reference to a phrase or pop culture tidbit that someone might google if you don’t supply it—or the opposite and get kind of insulted if you do.

Let’s take them one by one, using that example of the chapter about your first job, teaching high school history. It’s important to your story because you moved to the city to take that job, and the school is where you met your spouse, who also was teaching there. You want to talk about the courtship, but the job wasn’t very significant because after two years you moved on to a different line of work.

Personal Details

If your whole point is to include this job because it’s where you met your spouse and the city is where you decided to live, you may feel that you’re going down a rabbit hole to explain why you took the job to begin with. And is there any use in comparing your own high school with this one? Talking about the memories it brought back? Should you bother saying that the principal reminded you of your uncle because of some quirk they had in common? And if you wouldn’t otherwise mention your uncle, do you have to explain a little about him?

These decisions are a good example of the difference between a first draft and a final manuscript. Throw it all in there at the beginning. Then in subsequent drafts, surrounded by all the other chapters in your book, this first job will feel either substantial and worthy or distracting and off-topic—content a reader might just skim.

This also is an example of what “they” mean when they tell you to kill your darlings. You may get a lot of satisfaction from reminiscing about this time in your life, but if it doesn’t serve the plot or delight the reader, cut it out. You may find your memories of your uncle to be amusing, even to a stranger, but does it have anything to do with your theme? There’s no right or wrong here, but don’t waste readers’ time or risk boring them.

Encyclopedia-level Information

Then there’s the information that isn’t really about you or your life. With the high school as the setting for dating your future spouse, what should you say about the school itself? You might describe walking through the halls just as you remember. Readers have been to high school and will be able to picture it without any description, so I wouldn’t go overboard. But when you walked into your future spouse’s classroom, what was on the wall? Or in your own classroom, was there a map? A screen of any sort? It’s helpful to supply some of that detail

You spent only two years in teaching. Should you educate the reader on the history of the teaching profession and what it means to people? No. What if your whole career was in teaching? Still no, not unless your book’s theme is you as a teacher.

But you moved to the city in which the school was located, and that became your permanent home. Talking about the city, from its geography and history to the climate, business community and people, could be germane to your topic.

Common Knowledge—or Not

There was a time when we all read newspapers and watched the same three television channels. Common knowledge was universally common knowledge. With that no longer true, it’s hard to know what references in history or pop culture will go over readers’ heads. How much explanation do you owe your readers? When does it become condescending?

I was reading a book review in The New York Times that mentioned Andy Warhol and then said the book’s prose style was “unlikely to be anyone’s cup of soup.” To smile at that, you have to be familiar with Andy Warhol’s painting, “Campbell’s Soup Cans,” you have to know the phrase, “Not my cup of tea,” and you have to pick up on the way the writer conflated the two. You can’t get away with explaining a joke, so the reviewer here did not offer the reader any help. You either got it or you didn’t. Readers of NYT’s Sunday book review section probably need no backup on this one, but it’s still an assumption on the reviewer’s part to include the reference at all. For readers who get it, though, it’s fun.

Conversely, I just finished the audiobook memoir All About Me! by Mel Brooks, and when he talks about being served Limoncello in a restaurant, he explains what Limoncello is—a lemony liqueur—because when he drank it someone had to identify it for him. He doesn’t mention that Limoncello is generally served between courses to clear the palate, which is the only important thing about Limoncello. So I’m not sure his explanation served any purpose at all. Since Brooks was 95 when he wrote his memoir, I’m not going to pick on him for this.

Customize for YOUR Books

From these examples, you can see that you must have a reader in mind to take an educated guess about how much explanation readers will need about the common knowledge part and somewhat about the encyclopedia-type of information.

But also think about how your narrative is flowing. Does the reader need a little break from the drama? That might be a good time to describe the city in detail. Are you writing your memoir partially in the hope that you’ll educate readers? Then you need background on that illness or country, the science or history, a building or method. But if you’re writing to show off how great you are at descriptions, it’s better not to indulge in that sort of thing.

Another 10 Writing Tips from Stephen King

July 10, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

Someone reading notes while sitting at the computer

What memoir authors can learn from the master of horror narratives.

Following up on the previous post, as promised here are the second 10 of the 20 writing tips from Stephen King.

11. There are two secrets to success. “I stayed physically healthy, and I stayed married.”
Assuming King means success in writing and not in life, I think this boils down to: don’t forget to take breaks. Don’t neglect exercise. Go shoot baskets or walk with your friends. If you eat dinner with your spouse at 6 p.m., continue to eat dinner with your spouse at 6 p.m. Don’t let writing your book serve as an excuse that you’re too busy to pick your socks off the floor or attend your workout classes. I think this is great advice, but it will be hard for you if the way you reach a goal is to become obsessed with the process. Balance is important.

12. Write one word at a time. “Whether it’s a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ the work is always accomplished one word at a time.”
This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder whether King had 19 tips and a deadline, and he just threw anything in here to round up to 20. I don’t see the profundity in this tip. And in some ways, it’s not even true. Phrases tend to work because of the whole, not because of each word, one at a time. So you can just skip Tip #12.

13. Eliminate distraction. “There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with.”
Sigh. I’m not sure there’s anyone left who’s old school enough to be in this old of a school. I don’t watch TV when I write, but I pause to do Wordle or check Facebook. I keep my telephone right at my side. I could see turning off the sound even though I don’t do that, but I do not believe it’s necessary to eliminate all distraction. When I get into heavy writing, I’m really in the zone. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be notified of an emergency. We just don’t live in these little isolated pockets anymore, and it’s ok. You’ll still get your book done. Also, this is another sort of cheat on the number of tips, because #9 was “Turn off the TV.”

14. Stick to your own style.
If you’re like me, you arrive home from a visit to London with a decent British accent. Imitation comes easily in writing, too. You may naturally start writing in a voice sounding a lot like that of your favorite author. Stephen King recommends fighting that temptation and, instead, figuring out your own style. The thing is that no one has your voice except you. It’s as big a draw as your plot, so develop your individual voice and treasure it.

15. Dig. “Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground as intact as possible.”
This is a complex instruction. How do you know when you’ve written enough about that one story? It’s not always obvious or intuitive. Even though he’s talking about fiction, I think keeping this in mind will help you with your memoir. Don’t skimp on the details or get lazy with descriptions.

16. Take a break. “You’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience.”
I don’t know about this. If you have the time to write, take advantage of that. Life has a way of throwing in those layoffs without our help. But then I agree—after you haven’t read it for a while, if you like the way you write you’ll find it satisfying to go through it.

17. Leave out the boring parts and kill your darlings.
Obviously, don’t write boring content or write in a boring manner. But the second part of this statement is said so often that “kill your darlings” is now a cliché. I’m not a big fan of this advice. It would be hypocritical of me to suggest it, since I rarely kill my own darlings. I don’t understand why the parts I love most should be the first on the chopping block. Makes no sense. But don’t be self-indulgent. If you love a story from your life but it really has no place in this book because it’s out of the time frame or off-theme, then kill it. Otherwise, let friends read your book and ask them specifically about stories that you’re unsure whether to include. Or wait until you have an agent or publisher, who will tell you which darlings to murder.

18. The research shouldn’t overshadow the story.
Typically, memoir authors do not face this problem. If anything, they should do more research, not less. Everyone is eager to tell the story and not always so willing to provide background information. But if you do find that you’re writing more of a term paper than a memoir, you’re emphasizing the research over the story and should correct that.

19. You become a writer simply by reading and writing.
I would change this to say you become a better writer by reading and writing. So yes, read and practice writing as much as you can.

20. Writing is about getting happy.
Oh, I hope so. Once you’ve written your book, you should be pleased with yourself. But that’s not what King means. Especially with memoir, writing your book will lift a burden, work out a lot of psychological issues and let you tell your own story in your own voice. King says this shouldn’t be about the money you hope to earn from the work. I agree with that. You have no guarantee about sales, so write your memoir as a way to get happier with your life.

A Look at Stephen King’s 20 Tips for Writers: The First 10

June 25, 2025June 25, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

Even though you’re probably kidding when you refer to the “horror story” that is your memoir, it’s worth checking out this advice.

When I came across Stephen King’s 20 tips for writers, I thought they’d probably be apt for memoir authors, not just writers of horror and other fiction. Many do apply, although some are just obvious suggestions you’ve heard over and over, which kind of surprised me. Let’s look at them one by one, ten this time and ten the next time. My comments follow each tip.

First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience.
There’s really no other way to write. Only when you have something tangible can you try to view it as a reader who’s coming to your story for the first time. On a first draft, if you’re not pleasing yourself, or if you don’t feel accomplished after writing it, you’ll never finish this book. Stephen King is right: please yourself first.
Don’t use passive voice.
Never? That’s an extreme position. There’s plenty of room in your book for a bit of passive voice. Think of ’Twas the night before Christmas….The stockings were hung by the chimney with care. Could you improve the poem by saying The children hung their stockings by the chimney with care? No. Sometimes passive voice is the better voice, even if not all that often.
Avoid adverbs. “The adverb is not your friend.”
Well, right, more or less. It’s not that you can’t describe the how or when, but using an adverb is kind of lazy and, worse, the adverb reflects your own impression of the action rather than leaving that to the reader to decide. Here’s an example: She graciously offered me some tea. That’s easy! You tell the reader how the gesture was made—graciously—so you’re finished with that image. That’s what I mean when I say it’s lazy. Instead, let the reader get the feel of that gracious gesture: As she offered me some tea, she touched me lightly on my arm. I knew it was long past tea time and appreciated that she would go to the trouble of making me a cup so late in the day. All of that says “gracious.” And I know what you’re thinking—while eliminating “graciously” I added “lightly,” just another unwanted adverb. This is the problem with taking an extreme position and then refusing to break the “rule.” Still, be careful when you do.
Avoid adverbs, especially after “he said” and “she said.”
Nothing sounds more like high school writing than: “I wish you still lived here,” he said wistfully. Again, instead of giving into the urge to describe how he said it, supply the reader with more information—more show, less tell. “I wish you still lived here,” he said, looking out toward the setting sun. The reader understands the “wistful” aspect.
Don’t obsess over perfect grammar.
Um, you don’t have to obsess over perfect grammar as long as, eventually, some editor does. We don’t speak with perfect grammar, so it’s not easy to develop your authentic writer’s voice that has, I’ll call it, close-to-perfect grammar. But it will make a better book if the narration—not the dialogue, where anything goes—is grammatically correct. So while I agree that you shouldn’t pay grammar so much attention that it distracts you from writing fluidly, at some point you still have to address the grammar.
The magic is in you.
About this point, Stephen King says, “I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing.” I’ve edited a lot of work by nonprofessional writers, and if the content is interesting, the writing comes from the heart, and the writer’s voice is consistent, the magic is there. Sometimes it needs digging through some weeds to find it, and it always needs editing, but it’s usually there. So yes, feel confident that the magic is in you.
Read, read, read.
This is essential. You have to get into a writing rhythm and specifically a memoir writing rhythm. So go read some memoirs! And read fiction, read narrative history, read classic literature. Other authors will influence you. You’ll learn options in structure, patterns of dialogue, and methods in describing scenes and scenery. There’s really no way around it no matter how much talent you have.
Don’t worry about making other people happy.
No rule applies to memoir authors more than this one. You have to write your truth. You can’t worry about hurting the feelings of people you name or obscurely refer to in your book. As for the general readership, you want readers to recommend your book, but that doesn’t mean you want your book to make them happy. You just want them to enjoy the experience of reading about your life even if “happy” is nowhere in the process.
Turn off the TV.
I guess so? Who tries to write a memoir while watching TV? If you’re following a football game while writing chapter five, you are not disciplined enough to write a serious book. I think we all know this.
You have three months.
This is astonishing! We are not all Stephen-King-level writers. Just about no one is. Maybe three months for a rough first draft of fiction is possible for a full-time, professional writer spending at least 40 hours a week on it. But for you? There’s no time limit, really. You may not be watching football while you’re writing, but you probably have a job and maybe a family and other obligations. This is your memoir. Take the time you need to get it right.

Check back in two weeks for the next ten Stephen King tips!

How Technology Can Help—Or Hurt—Your Memoir Writing Process

June 11, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

A look at today’s apps, aids and methods.

I’m currently coaching a memoir author who is writing her story with talk-to-text software. Editing her work has me thinking about how many options writers have today compared with not that long ago when the only choices were to type your words on a typewriter or sit with a pen and legal pad and write out your stories longhand. Even though I don’t use a lot of the latest bells and whistles, I find it useful to explore how technology can help—or hurt—your memoir writing process.

At one extreme: AI

Although you’ll still have to supply your stories, AI can do all the writing for you. At this point no one knows whether AI will take over writing from humans, but right now publishers do not want your AI-written memoir. So let’s take that off the table.

Still, AI can do some of the lighter lifting. To learn what all AI can do, I went to the source and just asked AI. To quote ChatGPT, “When starting out, it can be difficult to know where to begin or how to structure your life story. AI tools can prompt questions, suggest themes, and help you map out key events and timelines. This guidance can make the initial stages of writing feel less overwhelming and provide a clear framework for your narrative.” I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I’m not going to bother.

Also according to ChatGPT, some AI programs can identify holes in your narrative, redundancies and inconsistencies. These slip-ups are really common when you’re writing a long, themed narrative, so this area of help is useful, too, for memoir authors—even though I rely on myself instead.

My advice is not to feel above consulting AI to see what it can offer you. There’s no shame in partnering with AI to help you with structural elements or even some rewording. Maybe you’ve written a very long sentence and want to see how it can be summarized. That’s okay. On the other hand, if you have confidence in your writing, don’t feel pressured to use AI just because it’s available.

Grammar checkers

I’ll say the same thing here: there’s nothing to be embarrassed about in using something like Grammerly or a more comprehensive writing program like Scrivener in checking your grammar, organization and more. I haven’t experimented much, but people have told me that they often don’t understand the edits and suggestions. If you don’t know how critical the “corrections” are, you can’t judge whether to accept them. Maybe you feel that the edit harms the flow, but at the same time you don’t want an actual grammar error in your book.

At this point, I’ll always recommend a human editor who can make those judgments and explain things to you. For example, in my own text, Word will always underline where I’ve eliminated the “and” at the end of a series. Here’s what I mean:

“I was hot, angry, exhausted, embarrassed. I couldn’t focus on the problem at hand.”

A grammar checker will want to change it to: “I was hot, angry, exhausted, and embarrassed.” You can omit that serial comma, but the “and” is essential in grammar. I know this. But there’s an acceptable style that in some cases omits the “and.” I like the cadence and frequently choose that grammar-fracturing style for effect.

Is a grammar checker better than nothing? You bet. There are lots of grammar rules people aren’t certain about, from “that/which” to the more difficult homophones like “complimentary/complementary.” If you feel that grammar is a weak spot for you, this technology can be very helpful.

Voice-to-Text

Even though it still can make many errors in understanding a dialect or fast speech, voice-to-text software is a godsend to people with arthritis in their hands or other disabilities that hamper keyboarding. If you’re driving and need to text someone, speak your message out loud rather than trying to text while driving. It may save your life.

However, as a fast typist who’s been at some keyboard or other since I was 11 years old, I could not begin to dictate a coherent story. It’s not natural to speak in full, perfect sentences. If I had to, I’d learn, and I’m sure some people are really good at it. But if you’re not, I think voice-to-text will give you more of an outline than a first draft.

Even if you’re an articulate speaker, that’s a skill distinct from writing. With speaking, you will consider inflection and timing. With writing, you’ll think about how the reader will see it. So you may choose different words depending on whether you want them to grab the attention of ears or jump off the page.

The greatest value of voice-to-text may be in freeing you up to think out loud and just tell your story without being focused on the screen and maybe seeing errors or having other distractions. So if voice-to-text has worked for you in dictating, say, emails, and you can commit to serious editing of the text later on, I’m certainly not going to discourage you from using this technology.

Human Skill + Tech

You’re out to dinner and suddenly a scene comes to mind from winter of fourth grade. You’d completely forgotten that bullying incident on the playground, but there it is, clearly in your head and available to fill a big hole in your memoir’s second chapter. Grab your phone! Text yourself, leave yourself a voicemail, write it out in your notes app—just make sure you have it somewhere. Don’t trust yourself to remember that scene as clearly the next time you sit down at your computer. This is what technology is for—to help you.

But taking over for you? No, at least not yet. It’s pretty easy to understand why you as a human are no longer necessary for writing straightforward, informational copy with perfect spelling and grammar. But in a memoir, not only do you need your original stories, which AI cannot find online, but you need your writer’s voice that AI or a grammar program cannot create for you. It can be subtle, the distinctiveness in the way your writer’s voice rolls out your narrative, but it’s the key to compelling copy. You’re the only you. And you’re a human, just like the readers you hope to attract.

How to Get Started on Your Memoir

May 27, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

Four people trying to get started writing their memoir

There are so many ways to begin that you can find one you like.

Burning desire is often what drives an author to write a memoir. Let’s say you have that. What comes next? As much as you want to get your life down on paper, you may be at a loss about how to get started on your memoir. Of course, there’s no one way or right way to begin. Different people are successful with different approaches. Let’s look at four of them.

Approach 1
Set Yourself Up

People like plans. They like marking up their calendars and arranging their desks. I’ll sit in this room on this chair, and I’ll write for two hours three mornings a week. I’ll stay off social media and keep my phone on silent.

If that sort of structure and anticipation of consistency will help you to commit to working toward a goal, spend a little time getting it exactly right. Make sure you’ll be comfortable, undisturbed and focused.

And what if you prefer to skip this step? That’s fine, too. It means that you’re one of plenty of people who write—or talk to text—during their work commute or lunch hour. You can concentrate in a dark, noisy hotel room as easily as in a sunny, isolated writer’s cabin. You can get your hungry kids dinner and go right back to wherever you left off in that chapter.

Approach 2
Write an Outline

In my writing career, I have never worked from an outline. Whether I’m writing a book or an article, I don’t know exactly where I’m going when I start. And when I do have a rough idea, I don’t need to get it into outline form in order to keep it in mind.

However, what an outline does, particularly when it’s a detailed outline, is give you tangible assignments. Like this: Roman numeral III is my teenage years. Under that, letter D is the story of the night I ran away. I will write that story this week, and I know where to insert it in the book because I have my outline.

An outline lets you build a book in that sort of piecemeal fashion. You can write according to your mood—some days you might feel ready to tackle the memory of trauma, and other days you just want to write about an inspiring teacher at school or the first time you fell in love. Eventually, the outline gets filled in.

Even if you write it in the order the outline dictates, and even if your book rolls out in generally chronological order, an outline can save you some anxiety. You won’t have to think, “What should come next?” And an outline can serve as a valuable guide in letting you know whether you’re pacing yourself accurately in terms of how many pages you want in the total manuscript.

Approach 3
Write One Story

This is the most common advice for new memoir writers. Just write out that one story that is crystal clear in your memory, and you’ll be on your way. Story by story, your theme will begin to take shape and you’ll be in the habit of writing.

I find that whatever I write first is what I edit the most. Typically, that’s an article’s lede or a book’s introduction or first chapter. I go over it and over it. So the first story you write may not immediately set you out on the big adventure of writing your memoir. But even if you’re like me and rewrite that first story many times, you’re nailing down your voice while perfecting a singular piece of your puzzle. That counts as working—still good use of your time.

Approach 4
Start with Research

Who would do the most tedious part first? Who would put off writing, which is the cathartic part of crafting a memoir, just to dig up some facts? Well, that nutty writer would be me.

I’m not sure whether I’ve ever mentioned that I have not written my own memoir. I’ve ghostwritten or heavily edited other people’s memoirs, and I’ve written about episodes in my life, but I haven’t written my own entire memoir. So maybe on a memoir I would write at least an introduction before diving into the research.

But I’m mostly a reporter, so the facts are what speak to me. Let’s say you want first to tackle the chapter on your ancestry. You want to tell readers about your people, about where you come from. It may not be the first chapter in your book, but it’s your chronological beginning, the seeds that planted your life. In that case, I would interview people who knew my parents before I was born. I’d look through photo albums and read any old letters I had. I’d learn about whatever it was I wanted to share with readers—the areas where my parents grew up or their military service or their own hardships. When I had all of the information, that’s when I’d start writing the chapter on my early life. For me, that’s so much easier than having to pause a lot while I gather the facts, or having to go back and rewrite sections after I find one more person to interview. I like to have it all together and then start.

Always Remember: Your Book, Your Process

I hope this shows you that there’s no one way to kick off the task of writing a memoir. You know yourself. Choose the right way for you. Or try them one at a time and see what sticks. As always, I wish you good luck on this journey.

Before You Start Your Memoir

May 14, 2025May 14, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

Man holding a book with the title "This is the first book I've written

This is the one thing you should do.

Authors of memoirs tend to be people who have had something interesting happen in their lives, and many are not writers by profession. If you’ve decided to write a memoir, this may be the first book you’ve written. So before you start your memoir, maybe you should do one little thing—write something else!

Even a gifted singer sounds better with practice and guidance, and writing is the same kind of art. You start out with whatever level of talent you bring to your keyboard, and from there you can improve.

I think the hardest aspects of writing a memoir are, first, just making the commitment and getting started, and then establishing a routine and consistently moving forward. I don’t want to put up a hurdle for you between the stages of commitment and consistent progress. If you feel that you’re “on a roll,” go ahead.

But if you have doubts about your writing and want your memoir to be not just informational but actually also well-written, it makes sense that your memoir should not be your first major piece of writing or the only writing you’ve done outside of school. Block out some weeks or months on your calendar for sharpening your skills.

Taking a class is a great idea, because you’ll have the teacher’s guidance, you’ll have an end date, and you’ll write enough to start feeling comfortable with the process. But you also can do some of this on your own. As you write, hand your work over to someone who could be your target memoir reader. Ask whether the writing flows and feels compelling.

Writing Practice Ideas

What should you write in these practice sessions to prepare you for writing your memoir?

Dialogue. Not every good memoir contains dialogue, but most do because life is full of conversation. When you write dialogue, you bring the reader right into the action and involve the senses of, at minimum, hearing and sight. Dialogue writing is both a skill and an art, so learn the mechanics. Don’t make the rookie mistake of writing more than one sentence before supplying the attribution. Some authors will write an entire paragraph and finish the last sentence with “he said,” as in: “Don’t force my hand. I will tell Mom your big secret if you leave me no other choice,” he said as he looked up to watch a plane flying overhead.” That is not the conventional format. This is: “Don’t force my hand,” he said as he looked up to watch a plane flying overhead. “I will tell Mom your big secret if you leave me no other choice.”
Research. You may think you’ll write your entire book from your own memory. Sure, the stories you relate will rely heavily on what you remember, but you’ll still have to do research. In some cases the research will be general fact-checking and finding out whether it was Sycamore Lane or Sycamore Road. But you may have to dig deeper. Let’s say you want to tell readers about your first job. You were hired in 1980 to sell T-shirts on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Every day, you got off a bus and walked to the shop. What did you pass? You might try to find photos of that era so you can name and describe the jewelry stores, the breakfast spots, the salt water taffy stands. You might relate a scene that takes place on the beach at 5pm. Was the tide coming in or going out? What time did the sun set on the day you’re describing? What was the weather—the temperature, humidity, wind and other conditions? All of those pieces will add color to your narrative but require you to do some research. Today, data and details are relatively easy to access. Imagine yourself working on this project before the Internet. I won’t give you a “when I was young” lecture on how we would use the library, telephone and public records to chase facts, but what took us weeks now can take minutes. So consider yourself born at the right time for that.
A throwaway story. Write about what you know—you! Choose an episode in your life that you do not plan on including in your memoir. Look, if it turns out great and you love it, maybe you can wedge it in there somehow. But the idea is to practice the craft of memoir by writing a simple and unremarkable narrative from your own experience. Choose a scene you remember vividly, but it doesn’t have to contain a lesson or represent a pivotal point in your life. It’s just a story. Can you make it come alive?

After you complete those three exercises, I think you’ll find that you’ll be better prepared as well as more confident to write a chapter of your memoir. If you want one more assignment before you start, though, my advice is to read some memoirs that have received good reviews. Every good memoir has the author’s voice, but what they all have in common is that they keep the reader interested. By reading those memoirs, you’ll pick up tips on how that happens. Good luck!

Tips from A Selection of Memoir-Writing Blogs

May 1, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

Top Memoir Blog badge for Write My Memoirs

With the Write My Memoirs blog ranked #4 among memoir-writing blogs, let’s look at what the rest are advising memoir authors.

When FeedSpot notified me that it had ranked the Write My Memoirs blog fourth among all online memoir-writing blogs, of course I went to FeedSpot to take a look. And there it was. I didn’t pay these people or do anything out of the ordinary, so fourth sounds pretty nice to me. Then I became curious: what are the other blogs like? If you’re equally curious about the advice other bloggers are giving memoir authors, to save you time I’ve curated tips from a selection of memoir-writing blogs on FeedSpot’s list.

Some of the memoir-writing blogs I went through mostly provide the blogger’s review of books and even movies. I’m not interested—I’ll go to Goodreads if I want reviews. But some do give advice the way I do, anticipating what memoir authors need to help them produce their books. I chose four to share some of their tips with you.

Marion Roach Smith

Seasoned writer and memoir coach Marion Roach Smith has roughly 2,500 social media followers, so I understand why Feedspot awarded her blog the top spot. Her strategy is to interview published writers to get their answers to questions such as how to keep faith in your own ideas. I think these are more or less transcripts from her podcast. But a recent blog post, “In Praise of Humility in Memoir,” departs from that pattern as Smith shares her own views.

From that blog post: “My father, a fine sportswriter, used to say that you should try to write everything like a letter home, a suggestion that’s both graceful and correct. In a letter home you rarely tell those people who raised you how very great you are, or right you are, or unique. You tend to write about the ideas you are trying on, or the things you’ve tried and failed; how scared you are, or how lonely.”

I think that’s pretty good advice, although that last sentence uses the semicolon incorrectly. In a sense, a memoir is a very long letter. Even if you view your book as part memoir and part self-help book, readers don’t want a pompous author crowing about success. As you may remember, I listen to a lot of celebrity memoirs. So the authors are, by definition, famous and usually incredibly talented and good at what they do. But the enjoyable memoirs are the ones that focus more on their insecurities, flaws and failed attempts.

Memoir Writers Network

Occupying the #2 spot is a blog that is updated only every six months or so. I have nothing against book author Jerry Waxler, owner of Memory Writers Network, but I’m not sure why a blog with such infrequent posts qualifies for that rank. Also, I noted some punctuation errors that are probably not simple typos. Still, I found some things of value.

Titled “Siblings Disagree: Family Feuds in Memoirs,” one post focuses on Waxler’s experience reading a particular memoir about a dispute within a family. He explains that as a reader, he doesn’t take sides but instead uses memoirs to inspire a thinking exercise:

“To get the most value from my memoir reading experiences, I ask myself questions. Who are these people? What makes them tick? What would I have done? How deeply did I feel, not just the emotions of the situation, but perhaps even more importantly, how did the author’s presentation lead me through moral, ethical, and emotional dilemmas toward resolution?”

This is valuable for memoir authors to hear. Wouldn’t you be happy to have readers be so affected by your book that they would want to ask themselves these questions?

Louisa Deasey

Down the list a bit is a blog written by Louisa Deasey, an Australian writer who coaches authors and helps them publish—a lot like what I do. She has a big pile of blog posts to choose form, and I looked at one called, “When You’re Feeling ‘Stuck.’” Her answer to breaking that barrier is to come back to your “why” of writing the memoir. I think that’s a great tip.

In the post, Deasey metaphorically compares writing a memoir to growing a plant, writing that “seeds need darkness and quiet time in order to grow. They require faith, vision and trust. We can’t be pulling them up every few days, demanding to see ‘evidence’ of their growth. We can’t be talking to everybody about what it looks like… because we can’t see. The most miraculous creations (in the plant kingdom and in our human lives) don’t look like anything for awhile, until suddenly…They exist!”

I like that comparison.

Write Your Memoir in Six Months

Linda Joy Myers, one of two founders of Write You Memoir in Six Months, wrote a blog post that even I could use to read: “Pushing the Fear of Being Sued to Where It Belongs—on the Backburner.” In Facebook memoir groups, this is a perennially hot topic. A lot of authors fear that the people they write negatively about will sue them, and fighting a lawsuit takes money even if you have confidence that you’ll win in court.

Myers reminds authors that there’s no point in worrying about offending people until you at least have a manuscript. She writes, “The first draft is for you—and it’s for you to sort out your story, what you need to say, and how you’ll say it. The job of the first draft is to give you space to write! You need to claim that space and time and put publication fantasies and worries aside.”

She cautions writers from trying too early in the process to get permission from the people mentioned in the book. As you continue writing, you’ll change and delete a lot of references, so wait. Also, you may not get the answer you’re hoping for, and that could set you back in your motivation.

Myers acknowledges that once your book feels complete, you should consult a lawyer to identify which parts or language will be defamatory enough to possibly generate a lawsuit. You may want to change names and all identifying characteristics of some of the people. But all of that is for later. If you want to write your memoir, just go and write your memoir.

I agree with this advice, too. So I think FeedSpot chose some good memoir-writing blogs for authors to explore. I hope you always come back here to number four as well.

Words Writers Mix Up

April 16, 2025April 15, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

Speech bubbles indicate young woman mixing up words while speaking with judgmental older man

Confusion grows over word usage.

I used to think the growing list of words writers mix up meant they were having a homophone issue—there/their/they’re, affect/effect, complimentary/complementary and that sort of thing. When terms sound alike, it’s easy to forget which meaning is spelled which way. Just remember that something may pique your interest, but you’re not much fazed by it.

These confused words are called malaprops or malapropisms and there was a time when we could use them as puns, but today I’m afraid that too few people would get it. Check out this joke with a pun in written form. How many people would get it?
The bride walked down the isle. Must have been a destination wedding.

More Malapropisms

As confusion grew, I began to see mixups with words that are pronounced only slightly differently from each other—lose/loose and precede/proceed, for example. Another commonly confused category comprises words with similar meanings, such as allude/refer.

But in recent years, the malaprops have expanded into full phrases made of up words that, in meaning if not sound, have nothing to do with each other. If you find yourself saying, “For all intensive purposes,” today’s column is for you. This column is for you as well if you laugh when people say that.

I’m not going to go through the sound-alikes, look-alikes or close-meanings. It’s a very long list available on various websites; I found a comprehensive account published by Touro University. Instead of repeating all of that, I’ll interrupt your memoir writing by giving you a few laughs and review some malapropisms that have created a whole new category of language-nerd comedy.

Let’s Laugh at Least

About as common as “for all intensive purposes,” which by the way should be for all intents and purposes, is “doggy dog world.” We know that can’t be correct, because that would be a cute world instead of the competitive world, or dog-eat-dog world, that is our reality.

You flesh out an idea when you want to explore it. I suppose you can “flush out an idea,” but that would indicate the idea’s quick destruction. I probably don’t have to tell you writers that you can take me for granted, but you cannot “take me for granite.” These are called eggcorns, a specific term for the phenomenon of mishearing a word or phrase and repeating the nonsensical replacement, launching a comical new meaning that spreads like a virus.

I give a little leeway to “deep-seated” as the eggcorn of deep-seeded. For one thing, they sound identical in the way most people would pronounce them. And for another, I can understand rationalizing that a deep-seated bias is a bias that goes a long way down, which is close enough to the intended meaning. Plus we don’t used the word “seeded” very often in ordinary conversation.

A similar pair is “chomping at the bit” vs. champing at the bit to indicate being eager to get going on something. Not only do they sound nearly alike, but we no longer use that meaning of the verb “champ” at all. So the original meaning of “champing”—that a horse is biting at the bit—is no more appropriate than saying the horse is chewing, or “chomping” at the bit. Still, when you’re writing, use the one that is generally considered correct, which is champing.

On the other hand, while it’s easy to understand how nip it in the bud became “nip it in the butt,” that doesn’t mean the second phrase makes any sense. You might nip something in the butt—ew—but that would have nothing to do with the nip-it-in-the-bud intended meaning of stopping something before it has a chance to cause much damage.

I’ve had this does-it-make-sense discussion with my grown children, who tried to convince me that a diamond in the rough is more or less synonymous with a needle in a haystack. No. When you perceive a bit of shining genius in an inexperienced person, the person is a diamond in the rough and just needs mentoring or an opportunity. When you find a shining genius in a group of ordinary people, you’ve found a needle in a haystack. You know this is correct because the phrases don’t make sense when you use one to mean the other.

So when you write what you consider a common saying, think about the meaning. Why make even a small error—“tongue and cheek”—when you can avoid it by realizing that makes no sense? Then you’ll look it up and find tongue in cheek, put your own tongue in your cheek, look in the mirror and see that it gives you a look of kidding someone, which is what you’re doing when you say something in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

You curl up in a fetal position, not a “feeble position.” You’re telling a “bald-faced lie”? Think about that. What exactly is a bald face? It’s a bold-faced lie. If you believe someone has an “alterior” motive, that is not a word at all. You mean an ulterior motive. If you believe that’s a “mute point,” think again, because it’s a moot point. And if you call it a “moo point,” you’ve been talking to Joey Tribbiani in a funny segment on Friends.

Misheard Song Lyrics

A subgroup of eggcorn is mondegreen, referring to a misheard song lyric. This term was coined in the 1950s by writer Sylvia Wright, who confessed that as a child she’d repeated a folksong lyric, They had slain the Earl of Moray and laid him on the green, as “They had slain the Earl of Moray and Lady Mondegreen.”

My husband and I were married a year or two when I realized that he sang along with Neil Diamond’s Forever in Blue Jeans as “Reverend Blue Jeans.” Luckily I had a sense of humor back then! And when the internet came along with all of its available trivia, I discovered that my husband wasn’t alone—this was among the most commonly misheard lyrics. But my favorite mondegreen is a misheard lyric from Purple Haze. Jimi Hendrix wrote the line as Excuse me while I kiss the sky, so I’ll use the eggcorn as my sign-off today: “Excuse me while I kiss this guy.”

(AI created the generation-gap image. I apologize to young people.)