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
What do Jessica Simpson, Madeleine Albright, Ihlan Omar, Colin Jost and a whole lot of people you’ve never heard of have in common? They’re all authors of memoirs published this summer. Coming out of one of the strangest summers we’ve ever experienced, what’s different about these memoirs compared with previous ones? Nothing. People write about
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.
When you write your memoirs, think about songs that might remind you of incidents or periods of time that would be interesting to include.
Today’s blog is written by a guest blogger, memoir author Lani Cox. We asked Lani the question in the title. Lani writes: What’s the purpose in telling your story? If it’s to connect to your readers, then I don’t believe using real names is as important as you might think. Even if you’re writing something
So many people are not sure whether the story of their life or one episode of their life is special enough to be “memoir-worthy.” If you’d like to document your life so that your family and friends will have all the facts straight, every story is memoir-worthy. But what if you’re hoping that your book
Memoir writing will be easier if you start out by keeping a journal, which is how Louisa May Alcott prepared to write her books.
For most of us alive today, the global response to Covid-19 is something we’ve never seen before. Some older people may remember living through the fear of dying from earlier pandemics, the Great Depression’s crashing stock market, supply shortages that took place during World War II or perhaps a quarantine. But no one has lived
Many of our members here on Write My Memoirs do not live in the United States, so they do not celebrate Thanksgiving. But the Thanksgiving sentiment is something that applies to memoirs no matter what your nationality. Thanksgiving brings up all sorts of memories. For Americans who were alive in 1963, the memory of that
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!