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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.

Writing Dialogue in Your Memoir

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Two people sitting on outside steps having dialogue

You don’t have to write very far into your memoir before you realize that dialogue can be a handy tool for you to convey action, emotion, passage of time and more. But even though you’ve read lots of books that have people talking to each other, writing dialogue in your memoir may not come naturally to you.

Sample from F. Scott Fitzgerald

Let’s analyze some dialogue from a classic: The Great Gatsby:

“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”

“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly. “What do people plan?” Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

“Look!” she complained. “I hurt it”

We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.

“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a—”

“I hate that word hulking,” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”

“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.

4 Tips in Writing Dialogue

What can we learn from that passage? A lot!

1. When you insert dialogue from a new speaker, start a new paragraph. Sometimes, this applies even when it’s the same speaker. Consider this part:

“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly. “What do people plan?” Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

“Look!” she complained. “I hurt it”

Daisy is still the person speaking, but there’s a sentence from the narrator before Daisy’s next line. Also, she changes the subject. Because of those two reasons, Fitzgerald starts a new paragraph for “Look!”

2. Place the attribution either in the middle or at the end of the first sentence. Typically, you mention who’s saying the sentence at the end of it. But you can see in this sentence how you can place the attribution where you might have a comma or force a pause for effect:

“I hate that word hulking,” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”

When you split the sentence like that, keep the second part lower-case. Another way to create the same feeling is to chop off the second part so that it’s just a sentence fragment. In that case, make the first word uppercase:

“I hate that word hulking,” objected Tom crossly. “Even in kidding.”

A common error is to go on for two or three sentences before attribution. For example, this does not work:

“Look! I hurt it,” she complained.

You can do:

“Look, I hurt it!” she complained. But you can’t have two separate sentences before attribution.

3.  There are lots of synonyms for “said” as well as words that inherently carry more meaning. Fitzgerald peppers this passage with a “yawned,” a “complained,” an “insisted,” and two uses of “objected,” in addition to going with “said” twice. Here and there he adds a modifier as well—objected Daisy, frowning; she said accusingly; objected Tom crossly. Don’t be afraid to help the reader by describing the way someone says something. Just don’t overdo it. The reader figures it out.

4. You can interrupt the quote with a narrative sentence or two to provide additional facts or description. This passage has three examples—“She snapped them out with her fingers”; “She looked at us all radiantly”; and “She turned to me helplessly.”

Punctuation in Dialogue

In dialogue, all punctuation goes inside the quotation marks. When you attribute after the first sentence, you end that sentence with comma-close-quote and place the period after the attribution. If the person asks a question or says something excitedly, the question mark or exclamation point goes inside the quotes.

This is different from quoting something within a question you’re asking or an exclamatory statement you’re making. Examples:

Can you believe she said, “I don’t remember any of that”?

I can’t believe she said, “I don’t remember any of that”!

Why Include Dialogue in a Memoir

You can avoid all dialogue and convey what people said within an ordinary narrative:

Snapping out the candles, Daisy asked why we needed them when it was so close to the longest day of the year, adding that she always looked forward to the longest day of the year but typically would miss its significance when it arrived. Miss Baker suggested planning something to mark that day this year. Daisy agreed and began a discussion of what to plan when suddenly her attention shifted to her injured finger.

Do you see why that’s not as good as dialogue? It’s more tedious, less lively. You don’t develop the same understanding of the characters as you do when you start hearing their voices in your head. Your memoir isn’t that different from a novel. Use dialogue where appropriate, and know how to use it when you do.

 

Lessons for Athletes Who Want to Write Memoirs—And Vice Versa

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Far view of a track meet
This week in July 2023, the National Senior Games are taking place in Pittsburgh, and I’m competing in track and field. If you’re over 50 and enjoy athletic competition in any sport, check out Senior Games. It’s fun. But that’s another topic for another time, or here’s a link to read a piece I wrote about a previous Nationals event. But what you all want to do is write memoirs.

We All Have Our Gifts

In regular life, I’m a writer, editor and memoir coach. I’m good at all three. My writing comes naturally, so that part’s a gift. I learned to edit by going to graduate school in journalism, so that’s my training. When I kind of accidentally became owner of Write My Memoirs, I taught myself little by little how to coach memoir authors, so that expertise comes from trial and error, consulting with colleagues and other types of experience.
In athletic competition, I run, jump and throw. I’m bad at all three. I was never an athlete of any sort. I can swim and I played tennis as a teen, but I was never good enough to compete in any sport. Track and field is way out of my wheelhouse. Despite that, in middle age I started running for exercise—just two miles most days. So when my husband began competing in Senior Games, I got tired of being a spectator and decided I’d enter some of the running races. Eventually I added javelin and two jump events.
The best I can say for myself is that I don’t always come in last. Sometimes I do. In this group of exceptional senior athletes, I am simply not very good. I don’t have a gift the way I do with writing, but I don’t mind. I can train and practice and teach myself.
If you’re feeling that, as a writer, you’re simply not very good, I can relate because of what I do that I feel inadequate about. But you know what we say in Senior Games? Even when you land in last place, you beat all the people sitting at home on the couch. Try thinking in those terms when you write your memoir. You’re doing something a lot of people want to do but never get past page one.
Here are a few ways I can align your desire to write with my desire to compete in track and field.

Lessons from Comparing Athletic Competition to Writing a Memoir

  1. Like my triple jump, your writing is something you can improve. I watched videos and read information to figure out the steps for the triple jump. I knew that it wasn’t a popular event, which is how I came in seventh place in my age category in this year’s Nationals! Okay, that also was last place, but I got a ribbon. I know it seems as if everyone is writing a memoir, but in terms of percentage of the population, you are a rare bird if you take your memoir the whole way to publication. Even if you don’t write the best memoir ever published, you still get a ribbon! You’ll be an author. You’ll have a book to hand out to friends and family. It’s huge.
  2. Just as I don’t enjoy running, you don’t have to enjoy writing in order to write a memoir. I run as part of my general fitness program, not because I attain a “runner’s high” or whatever dedicated runners seem to feel. You can look at your memoir as something you’re doing for yourself—not the part of yourself that wants to spend time doing something enjoyable, but the part of yourself that wants a targeted result. You want to produce your memoir. To realize that goal, you have to sit down and write it, or at least hire someone to take your information and write it for you.
  3. In competition, experts tell us all to just compete against yourself. Go at your own pace. Don’t burn out. So I run as much as I can as long as I can get myself to do it. That comes to two miles at least three times a week. If it rains or something unexpected comes up in my schedule, I wait until the next day. Writing is not that different. You don’t have to finish your memoir within one year or commit to a writing regimen of at least 30 minutes a day or set up an ideal writing environment. You know when you’re slacking, so at that point pick up the pace. Just don’t let it go completely. As with running, you keep putting one foot in front of the next, and sooner or later you get to the finish line.
  4. I’m the only “me” there is. Each of us is unique. There are so many aspects to being a person, and we differ in all of them, from the way our bodies are built to the way we think to the way our lives have progressed. My challenges in competing are different from other athletes’ challenges. Some have it easier, but many have it harder. I’m lucky to be able to run at all. Because you’re unique, your memoir will be special. If your story were already out there, you wouldn’t have to write it. Value the way you approach a project like memoir writing in your own way. Appreciate that your unique life will make an interesting narrative.

Your Memoir is Important

This isn’t a zero-sum game. I can compete alongside athletes much better than I am, with no delusion that I might win, and still be valuable as a participant in Senior Games. And you can offer a memoir that will add to the literature of what it’s like to live a particular life.

Think About the Future, Not Just the Past, When Writing Your Memoir

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Old woman reading a book

Memoir writing is so tricky because you think you’re writing about events in your past, but you really have to consider three versions of yourself: past you, present you and future you. If you’re having trouble getting started on your memoir or sticking with a writing schedule, the consideration for future you may be a factor.

Past and Present

It’s difficult to get back into the brain of your earlier self and remember your life’s important facts, much less the colorful details that give them meaning and context. As you write, you try to feel the emotions you were feeling at the time of the incident you’re relating. As you relive an episode in order to write about it, you open up all of your senses and strain to see, hear, taste and smell everything that went on. That’s the way to share your story accurately, candidly and in a way that’s true to yourself.

You also have to contend with who you are at the time you’re writing your memoir. Perhaps some memories are so painful that you have to prepare yourself before you sit down and write about them. Now that you’re older, you have a different perspective. While you may be writing about your childhood, as an adult you know a lot more about what was happening to you. So by necessity, your current self is all over this book. The story is in the past, but the writing is in the present.

You’re the Most Important Reader

Then there’s the you of the future. You may not think much about this person, because you’re focused on the past. But don’t lose sight that “future you” is who will show up next.

We talk a lot about writing for your target audience. You want to make sure you’re describing details for your reader. You have to figure out what you can assume the reader knows and which information you need to fill in for the reader. In short, when you’re writing your memoir you’re trying to think like your ideal reader.

But you know who is probably the most important person you should want to please? You! Not the you who’s writing the memoir, because you’ll make sure you like your work before you publish it or share it in any way. But what about the way you’ll feel some years from now? Don’t forget about that person. That’s an important reader—maybe the most important reader.

Try to Have No Regrets

You can’t possibly know exactly how you’ll feel a decade from now when you pick up your own book. But you can consider this eventuality. Will you have to forgive yourself for anything that’s in your memoir? If reading an anecdote you wrote embarrasses you a little right now or makes you cringe, will that improve or be even worse years from now? Maybe now that you’ve gotten some of these stories out and on paper, they don’t have to make the final cut in the published version.

A lot of your memoir is likely to involve stories about other people. In the future, will you wish you hadn’t named someone who harmed you—or will you wish you had named everyone and not used pseudonyms? Do you think you might be kind of over your anger or hurt by then? Or are you stepping too gingerly—avoiding hurting other people when protecting their feelings will come at the sacrifice of your own?

“Future You” Can Help with Hard Decisions

As you zoom ahead and picture yourself in the years to come, rereading your own work, it may help you now to decide which way to go in terms of including certain content and the tone you use in the writing. Ultimately, you want to be glad you told your story and wrote your memoir in the fashion that you did. Think about how you’ll feel looking back not at your life, but at what you chose to tell about your life and the way you chose to tell it.

An Easy Way to Start Your Memoir Writing Habit

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Neon light saying "We are all made of stories"

If you’re having a hard time getting into a writing habit to start your memoir, you may think you have to follow the broadly accepted advice to set aside a time each day—or at least each week—to force yourself to sit down and write. Even if all you write is a sentence, the thinking goes, you’re establishing a habit and soon the writing will flow.

Or it won’t.

A Different Jumpstart for the Writing Habit

If scheduling your writing isn’t working for you, try a different approach. Really, scheduling first is the tail wagging the dog. To be motivated to write, you have to want to get a story down so it won’t be forgotten. So instead of trying to come up with ideas when you decide to sit down and write, try reversing the process and sitting down to write when you have ideas.

We muse over our own life stories all the time, especially when we’re committed to, or even just considering, writing a full memoir. Since we carry around our phones, we always have a way to text ourselves or keep a notes app for things we want to remember. The next time an episode from your life crosses your mind, just take out your phone and write a few words as a reminder of what that story is.

You may find as you continue through your day that the story keeps returning to your mind. Then when you find yourself near your computer or a legal pad or however you want to write down everything, you’ll want to get that story down. It won’t feel like you’re forcing anything.

The Writing Habit Forms on Its Own

This doesn’t mean you have to write perfectly crafted text. It’s still a rough first draft of one story. But it’s something. Later you may feel like going back over the same story and giving it more texture or improving the writing if you can, or you can leave that story and start adding to it with more episodes in the same way you did the first one.

Talk about a habit! Once you start doing it this way, you could find yourself sneaking over to a corner during a party, pushing “pause” while you’re watching TV, stopping yourself in the middle of a conversation with a friend, taking a moment during work, or doing a talk-to-text while you’re driving.

Be careful not to edit yourself as these stories come to you. Write every story that comes to mind without mulling over whether it belongs in your memoir. Writing it gives you practice in telling about your life whether that story makes the final cut or not.

Decide Later Whether to Include Each Story

When you reach the next step—putting these stories into chapters and connecting them with transitions—you’ll make the decision, story by story, about whether each of them is relevant to the overall narrative you’re telling.

If you want to write a memoir, it’s because your life is full of stories you want to relate around a certain theme. The events are already in your mind. All you have to do is put them into publishable words. Try letting the stories come to mind first, and then do the writing second. You may find it easier than sitting down and staring at a blank screen.

Build Buzz About Your Memoir by Publishing Articles and Comments Online

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Screen capture of author's online article

First-time memoir authors are likely to have no solid writing credentials, much less an agent or publisher. How do you get writing credentials? Write!

Bylines Validate You as a Writer

Even a handful of online articles with your byline can build credibility for you as a writer as you begin to market your memoir, which you can do before it’s ready for publication. Write about things you know, and research websites that invite people to submit essays. There are lots of advantages to doing this:

  • Typically, your byline will be accompanied by a short bio. Given even just two or three sentences, your bio can easily mention that you’re the author of an upcoming memoir. If you can be more specific with the memoir’s name and the exact date or just month of publication, even better.
  • If you want an agent to represent you, or if you send your memoir manuscript to a publisher, impress them by including links to articles that carry your byline. That shows them that some professional outlet thought your work was worthy of publication.
  • These links look good on your own book website or blog as well. They say: I’m a professionally published writer. You can trust that my memoir is a well-written book.
  • Many articles offer readers the ability to leave comments. Keep an eye on your article, and respond to comments. This establishes a conversation with the very people who are potential buyers of your memoir.
  • You may get a little money for your efforts. But while some online outlets will pay for your material, that shouldn’t be your main consideration.
  • Writers write, and they constantly get better and faster at writing. Now that you’re a memoir author, writing frequently on other projects will help your writing flow so that it’s easier to motivate yourself to sit down and work on your memoir.

What to Write About

Ideally, you’ll find a website to carry your article about something directly related to your memoir. From your memoir’s theme to anything your memoir covers—your work, specific issues in family life, the geography you describe—you can speak as an expert by virtue of the fact that you’re writing a memoir that includes information on that subject. You are an authentic voice in that community. Don’t diminish the right you’ve earned to be an authority and the contributions you can make with a good article.

To just get your name out there, you also can write about something completely unrelated to your memoir. This won’t necessarily reach the target market for your memoir, but it will provide the other benefits of giving you a byline, links to share and a bio paragraph.

Here’s an article I wrote about a hot pop-culture topic that was published on sixtyandme.com. You can see that it’s been generating comments, and it’s even popping up on searches. Am I using my own blog here to help promote it? You bet.

Comment on Other People’s Articles

Another way to establish a familiar name with potential readers is to comment on articles that address your memoir’s theme. Any knowledgeable, informative comment you post will add to the discussion and set you up as a valuable voice on that topic.

On your comments, you may be able to sneak in a plug for your memoir, especially if you say something vague such as: “I’m writing a memoir about my experience with this same type of childhood.” Or you may be able to direct people to your book’s website.

How This is Different from Social Media

It’s helpful to build an online presence through Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or whatever social media combination appeals to you. Articles are different, though, because they represent acceptance and a little bit of vetting by someone out there in the field. Anyone can tweet, but not everyone can submit an article and get it accepted for publication.

In addition, articles carry URLs that may stay there for years as you continue to send links to anyone interested in your writing. Social media is more about “follow me” and what’s coming next than what’s already out there. You don’t have to keep up with an article the way you do with a social account.

Good luck as you navigate all of this! Let us know if Write My Memoirs can help you with editing or self-publishing.

First Line of Your Memoir is the First Hook for the Reader

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Woman reading with inset image of hook

We’ve talked a lot about where in your life you should start your memoir to really hook the reader. Successful memoirs start anywhere and everywhere, but today I’d say they most typically begin with a compelling, pivotal incident that took place in, say, the first third of the person’s life or the period of time the memoir addresses. I think that’s a great way to get readers invested from the beginning—they will want to see what comes next as well as what came before to lead up to that episode.

One Rule: Be Compelling

But some memoir authors start right at the beginning. Richard Nixon’s memoir launches his life with the sentence: “I was born in a house my father built.” Janis Ian’s 2009 memoir, Society’s Child: My Autobiography, begins, “I was born into the crack that split America.”

The idea is that even if you want to follow the simplest format—start with your first appearance in the world and proceed chronologically—you still should begin your book with something more interesting than the simple time and place of your birth. Add a fact, offer a surprise, be sarcastic—keep in mind that the reader can always put the book down and never pick it up again, so with each sentence, give readers a reason to keep reading.

Salvador Dali starts not with action but with thought. He opens his memoir by revealing how confident he was even as a child: “At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.” So you see there are no rules. I would have said this type of passive beginning would not work as well as a moment of high action, but it does work. It sets the mood for how the book will roll out.

Writing Order: Again, No Rules

Just because the reader will read your first line before anything else doesn’t mean you have to write the first line before anything else. You don’t even have to write the first chapter first.

Many authors find the way they can most easily start writing is to write about an episode they know very well but one that does not require a lot of emotion for them to tell. Then little by little, you’ll get accustomed to writing about yourself and it won’t be so difficult. When you’re ready, you can write a great first sentence, first paragraph and first chapter even if you’ve already finished much of the rest of the text.

 

A Love Story as a Memoir

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Roses around a piece of paper that someone is writing on.

When you remember that a memoir is not your entire life story but just an episode or time segment in your life, you can see why sometimes a memoir is little more than a love story. It’s that place and time, recalled through sights and sounds, food and conversation. It’s that one who got away or the romance that blossomed into a long marriage. It’s the ultimate joy of your life, or it’s loss and grief. The memoir tells one or more aspects of what that love was about.

Why Write a Love Memoir

You might write your love story memoir because you want to document:

  • Your happy marriage. This type of memoir honors your spouse, who’s likely the most important person in your life. It will trace your life from the time you fell in love up to the present day or, perhaps, to when your spouse died.
  • Your troubled marriage/relationship. Love doesn’t always bring together the most compatible people, and in some cases the relationship is explosive. Maybe you want to document that. Sometimes it’s not about compatibility but about abuse. At Write My Memoirs, we hear from people who want to explain how and why they left an abusive relationship that, at least at one time, involved being in love.
  • The loss of your partner. Whether the relationship was brief or long, losing someone you love is tough. One way to process the loss is to write about it, as many people do. This memoir can express your admiration for the partner, but it also can contribute to the general discussion of how we move on alone.
  • More than one love. You can devote a memoir to your romances without limiting it to just one. Maybe you’ve noticed a pattern in the people you’ve loved, or you just want to walk down memory lane and relive the experience of each romance.

Other Love

Your love memoir may not be a romantic story at all. Love comes in many forms, and a love memoir can reflect any of them. Let’s do this in rhyme:

The love for a child,
The love for a pet,
The love for an icon
You have never met.

People write tributes to their siblings or parents in the form of a memoir. There are memoirs about the love for a friend. Truth & Beauty: A Friendship, by Ann Patchett, recounts the friendship the author had with writer Lucy Grealy. Among the tributes to Fred “Mr.” Rogers is I’m proud of you : My Friendship with Fred Rogers, a memoir by his friend Tim Madigan. And there’s Just Kids, a memoir we love here on Write My Memoirs, about singer Patti Smith’s love for her late friend, artist Robert Mapplethorpe.

Start Today!

But today is Valentine’s Day, and romantic love is always fascinating, always a unique story. So if you want to reminisce about a romance you experienced that may or may not still be in bloom, today is a great day to write that first word. You can practically smell the flowers.

Take This Quiz to Find Out Whether You’re Writing a Memoir or an Autobiography

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Woman wondering what to call her book.

A common question authors have about memoir is whether they’re writing a true memoir or an autobiography. At Write My Memoirs, we don’t make much of a distinction. If you’re writing about your life, you’re writing about your life. Call it a memoir, autobiography, life history—we don’t think it matters much.

But authors continue to want to know how to label their book, so here’s a little quiz for you to take to reveal whether, according to conventional thinking, you’re writing a memoir or an autobiography.

Answer TRUE or FALSE:

  1. My story begins with my birth and continues to present day.
  2. My primary goal in writing my book is to provide information for my children and grandchildren to “know where they come from.”
  3. I would like generations in the future to have a reliable record of what life was like growing up when and where I grew up, as well as what adulthood was like during my lifetime.
  4. Even though my life hasn’t been that unusual, I want to get all the facts down.
  5. I want to tell all about my life in my own voice.
  6. The hurdles I overcame in my life holds lessons for other people.
  7. Even though I am not yet 50 years old, I want to write my book now.
  8. I will devote much of my book to one part of my life that was very unusual.
  9. Something happened to me that I feel compelled to write about.
  10. Everyone asks me about one episode in my life, so I decided to write about that.

As you may have figured out, this list of 10 questions starts heavy on autobiography and progresses incrementally to memoir.

Give yourself 1 point for each time you answered TRUE to questions 1 through 4.
Give yourself 2 points for each time you answered TRUE to questions 5 and 6.
Give yourself 3 points for each time you answered TRUE to questions 7 through 10.

Scores

1-8: Your book is an autobiography.

9-16: Your book is more of a memoir.

17-20: Your book may not have enough of a theme. Rethink whether you want to focus on one part of your life or write a comprehensive book that gives relatively equal treatment to all parts of your life.

Hope this helps! At Write My Memoirs, we want to help you write and publish the best book you can have to represent your perspective of your life.

New Look, New Grammar Course!

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Info on Write My Memoirs Grammar and Writing Course

You may have noticed that our home page has been updated not only in graphic design but also in featuring our brand new Write My Memoirs Grammar and Writing Course. This digital, eight-lesson course offers a free Intro Lesson you can take to get a foundation in parts of speech and parts of a sentence. It starts out with a tongue-in-cheek “What Not To Do” letter from me to you that demonstrates a lot of very bad grammar.

If that’s your kind of fun, you will enjoy the whole course! We examine some grammar errors in classic rock lyrics, too. Most of the examples throughout the course model memoir elements, since they describe my own life. As I crafted these examples, I had fun remembering events from my childhood, which I’m lucky to say was a happy one.

I based the principles and practice exercises presented in the course on an in-person, classroom course I taught for 20 years to adults in a continuing education program. Whether you’re writing a memoir or you need to write for work or school, I feel sure you’ll get your money’s worth with this $39 course!

Music Triggers Memoir Stories

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piano

Every now and then when you hear a song, does it take you back to a particular memory? I think we all have that experience. One of the biggest summer songs some years back was Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long,” which recounts the singer’s fun summer years ago when he met a girl and blasted songs on a Michigan lake beach. At the end, it includes this lyric: “Sometimes I’ll hear that song, and I’ll start to sing along, and think man I’d love to see that girl again.” It’s hearing the music that revives the emotion.

As we write our memoirs, we pay a lot of attention to the sense of sight, making sure to convey a scene just as we witnessed it. In some scenes, we also remember other senses. How did the meal taste? What were the aromas in the house at the time? Don’t forget the sense of hearing! As you write about an era of your life, listen to the music you were hearing at the time. This may trigger unique memories, and you can include some references in your memoir if you think it will help the reader to connect.

Music has always played a huge role in my life, so I really relate to someone who includes special songs when writing a memoir. From some pre-Beatles tunes right through to today’s top 40, songs provide a sort of déjà vu for me. Coloring your life story with details like that will make it interesting not only to read, but to write as well.

Image: ©Vladyslav Makarov

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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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