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Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

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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.

Cold? Cozy Up to Your Memoir Writing Desk

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blog22We know that we have members on WriteMyMemoirs from all over the world, so maybe you’re in the southern hemisphere—Australia, perhaps?—enjoying summer right now. However, since most of our members live in North America or Europe, as I do, I’m guessing it’s pretty cold where you are. I know it is here in the Midwest!

January and February can be “character-building??? months. My windows are frosty, and it’s in the single digits out there. But that’s why, if you made a new year’s resolution to write your autobiography, this weather presents your best shot of honoring your promise to yourself. This is hunker-down weather, folks! Nothing is distracting you from the task at hand. The birds aren’t singing out there, flowers aren’t blooming, kids aren’t flying kites. No warm breezes beckon you to leave your writing room; if you stop to smell the roses you’ll likely end up with a frostbitten face.

So turn up the heat and be grateful that nature supplies us with a respite from all of those busy outdoor activities. Grab a cup of hot tea or cocoa and sit down for some serious memoir writing. If you ski or love to be out in the snow, you’ll have to find other motivation. But, for me, January is a very productive month!

Photo: © Lori Walter courtesy of Dreamstime

The Obvious New Year’s Resolution: “Write My Memoirs???!

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blog21Writing your memoirs is a great New Year’s resolution for 2010! If this is the first time you’ve been to our site, sign up today and get started! If you’re already a member but haven’t gotten much farther than naming your first chapter, make January 1 the first day of memoir writing. And if you have been making progress, set 2010 as your goal year for completing the work.

Goals and deadlines have been shown to be effective motivational tools for lots of things. And yet we know that New Year’s resolutions tend to fall off after the first few weeks. February often finds people back to eating too much, exercising too little and dropping whatever task they’d assigned themselves in the heat of the resolution-making moment.

The way to avoid this fate with writing your memoirs is to break down your big goal into smaller subgoals. By the end of January, have one really solid story written or, if you think you can handle it, a full chapter. Then set your February goal. Or decide that you must write one story a week, two stories a month or whatever pace fits your schedule. Then put it on your calendar, block out time in your datebook and talk about it to other people. All of those little efforts will serve to keep you motivated to continue, and by next year at this time you’ll have some memoirs to show for yourself!

Holiday Letters Chronicle a Life Story

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blog20Yup, I’m one of those holiday card senders whom people love to hate—the ones who tuck an annual holiday letter into the card. With modern technology, I even print out a family photo right onto the letter. Actually, I receive a lot of positive feedback from friends who enjoy these wrap-ups of each year’s activities. I’ve been doing this since the early 1990s, taking up to three pages to humorously summarize my children’s year of growth and the various triumphs and challenges that every family experiences.

When I occasionally go back and read some the older letters, I realize that each one is like a little chapter in my life story. These letters let me relive some great family car trips, rekindle the excitement surrounding my husband’s softball team’s winning seasons and make me laugh all over again about the unpredictable and sometimes goofy nature of, as the old Reader’s Digest section called it, “life in these United States.???

As you write your memoirs, you might want to dig up any holiday letters you’ve written. Perhaps some of your family members have kept them if you haven’t, or someone may even have the ones written by the previous generation. Somehow amid all the emailing and texting, the good old-fashioned holiday letter has never gone out of style. At least I hope that mine hasn’t!

Photo: ©Olga Drozdova courtesy of dreamstime.com

Seasonal Gifts Can Add Up to a Memoir

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blog19The older you are, the harder it is to choose an appropriate holiday gift for you. You probably already have everything you need. Another bangle, necktie or bottle of cologne? Unnecessary. Something for the house? Not when you’re trying to downsize. Your children may resort to coupons for “one garage clean-up,??? while your grandchildren will color yet another picture for you to stick on your refrigerator.

Since you’re here writing your memoirs, I have an idea for you. Ask your loved ones to write out a story they remember from their lives that involves you in some way. Maybe your son fondly recalls the first time you took him to the ballpark, or your daughter remembers details about the family vacation at the seashore. Your best friend may have a recollection of time you spent together that you’d forgotten all about! If you have parents, they can write or record tales from your childhood that may have happened when you were so young that you don’t remember.

When the holidays are over and you sit down in earnest to resume writing your autobiography, these stories will be helpful to you. Like a reporter, you can quote them directly, or you even can devote a whole chapter to them and include them exactly as they’re written. It will make your memoirs richer to get an outside perspective, and the contributors will know that they’ve given you a gift you truly appreciate and will use.

Memoirs Are Splashed Against History’s Canvas

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blog18By their very nature, your memoirs recount stories from an entire life span and, therefore, will contain a unique historical perspective that follows that time line. Perhaps you’ve lived through a dozen U.S. administrations, several wars and a host of natural catastrophes. You may remember owning an early model automobile, watching a man land on the moon and hearing “you’ve got mail??? for the first time over the Internet. The panoramic history of the times will always provide the tapestry that brings texture to your life stories.

Reading Judith Warner’s commentary in Sunday’s New York Times got me thinking about how my own autobiography would play out against the background of the women’s movement. In quoting the book Beauty Junkies—“Looks are the new feminism???—Warner expresses the opinion that the popularity of plastic surgery reflects middle aged women’s inability in the current economy to control anything other than their own appearance. “Women’s empowerment becomes a matter of a tight face and a flat belly,??? she says.

I remember when Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique topped the best-seller list. Various decisions I’ve made have reflected the many options and opportunities granted to my generation of women. My life story, particularly my career, would not have had the same developments in another era. For example, consider what you’re reading at this very moment: someday blogs will seem so 2009!

Photo: © Nic Neish

Group Gathers for Memoir Writing

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©IoanaGrecu5Many goals are easier to achieve when you do them along with other people. In that way, writing memoirs is no different from writing poetry or less related goals such as losing weight, investing in stocks or quilting—you might find motivation from having a writing partner or participating in an entire group of autobiographers.

Chicago Tribune columnist Barbara Brotman reported yesterday on a suburban group of women that splintered off from a park district class on writing family histories to form a more permanent memoir writing group. According to the column, five women of varying ages meet every Monday at the home of one of the members to share their ideas, read passages from their writing and motivate each other to continue toward their own finish lines. They’ve decided to structure the process by writing one decade at a time.

“The act of writing their stories and sharing them has brought the women satisfaction, friendship and respect,??? Brotman reports. She quotes one of the group’s members as saying, “We all have kids. A lot of times your kids think your life began with them. Now my kids will look at me and say, ‘You did that?’ And I say, ‘Yes, I did that.’??? Perhaps you know a few people you could invite to join a memoir writing group. You could all bring laptops and read from your WriteMyMemoirs accounts!

Photo: © Ioana Grecu

New Book Traces the History of Memoir Writing

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blog16The urge to write memoirs has long been part of the human psyche, according to a new book, Memoir: A History, in which author Ben Yagoda connects the dots through 2,000 years of memoirs. In tackling the question of whether an autobiography must be 100 percent true and accurate, Yagoda concludes that telling your story in good faith is more important than getting every fact perfectly straight, according to the New York Times review of the book.

The aspect of memoirs that interests me more, however, is the widespread desire to write one. Why put so much energy into this task? I don’t believe that a hope to get rich from publishing their story is what drives people to write about themselves. The Times reviewer, Judith Shulevitz, theorizes that it’s a universal need to tell our side of things—to explain why we’ve done what we’ve done. Shulevitz quotes philosopher Hilary Putnam: “We are, most of us, interested in justifying at least some features of our own style of life, in the sense of giving a defense of them that would appeal to others.???

This strikes a chord with me; most of us want to be liked or, at least, understood. The latest big-deal autobiography to hit the bookstores, Going Rogue, would not have been written if author Sarah Palin hadn’t felt the need to tell her side of what went on during last year’s presidential campaign. As you write your memoirs, you may experience some of that “justification satisfaction??? yourself.

WriteMyMemoirs Publishing Services to Arrive Soon!

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blog15One question that frequently pops into our WriteMyMemoirs inbox is how to publish memoirs into a real book, either for sale or just private ownership. Many people feel they have compelling stories to tell that would enlighten, inform, amuse or inspire readers. Others would like to have a hard copy to give as a gift or keep for themselves.

Getting published through traditional channels is very difficult. Typically, you first need to find and convince a literary agent to represent your work to book publishers, and even then the odds are against you. But the good news is that self-publishing has become not only common but quite accepted. What used to be looked down on as “vanity publishing??? is now a respected method to get your book out there quickly and within your own control.

While lots of companies on the Internet will publish your work for a fee, we thought that it would be most convenient if we could offer such a fee-based service right here at WriteMyMemoirs. All you have to do is give us the green light, and we can take the autobiography chapters you’ve written right from your account without your having to create a pdf or do any of the other tasks that Internet publishers tend to require. We are in the process of putting together a very affordable package and will email our members when it’s ready. If you’re in a hurry, email us and we can get started publishing your memoirs right away!

How to Use the “Export/Publish??? Button on WriteMyMemoirs

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blog14We’re delighted that many of our members write regularly and add to the stories that will ultimately form a complete memoir. However, I’d like to caution you about something that may be confusing a few of you.

To make sure you keep safely in your account each new entry you’ve written, you know to always remember to push the big red SAVE button at the bottom left of the writing box. We offer two other options as well: to transfer your work to your computer, and to share your work with other Write My Memoirs members. To perform either function, push the EXPORT/PUBLISH button. After that, you can identify which stories you want to export or publish. When you push EXPORT, you’ll have a short wait until the story is ready for you to download to your computer. Another link will appear with instructions to click it in order to complete the download. When you push PUBLISH, your work will be eligible for administrative approval (just a formality) to become available for others to view under our VIEW PUBLISHED STORIES tab at the top of the home page.

From time to find we find stories with no content waiting for our approval to publish. Obviously the author has pushed PUBLISH in error. We certainly don’t want to discourage you from choosing to share your life story online with our full membership; we just want to make sure that you truly intended to share the work, so please be careful!

Retirement Years Too Busy for Writing Memoirs?

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blog13Last time I mentioned Moon River and Me, a new memoir by Andy Williams. This leads me to an intriguing quote that Williams gave to Parade a couple of weeks ago. He told the reporter that this is the busiest time of his life. He’s 81 years old!

Giving interviews about his autobiography is probably one reason Andy has been so busy lately. But he also performs at his theater in Branson, Missouri, makes guest appearances and perhaps is catching up on the family time he says he missed when his children were growing up. But I doubt that he’s the only 81-year-old who doesn’t sit in the rocking chair. Today’s octogenarians have plenty on their plate. Some are raising grandchildren or at least highly active in the lives of their families, many continue to work and lots of seniors make a second career out of hobbies or volunteering for causes close to their hearts.

If you’re busy doing a gazillion things, and unlike Andy Williams you don’t have a book deal deadline and an editor breathing down your neck for motivation, you might find that days and weeks pass without adding a word to your memoirs. The best way to stay on task is to set aside specific times to work on your autobiography. Otherwise, you get so busy living that you neglect to fulfill your goal of recording your life’s events!

Photo: © Rosanne Ullman

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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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