For many memoir authors, their life story isn’t their first stab at creating some form of art. When those authors decide to write a memoir, it’s natural for them to want to include their other artform. So let’s say you’ve written poetry all your life, or you have a file of newspaper clippings of your
We all want to own our legacies, but we’re not fully in control of that. The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would not consider 102-year-old “Gone With the Wind” actress Olivia de Havilland’s claim that a TV show needed her permission to present her likeness and character. The FX miniseries “Feud: Bette and Joan,”
Write My Memoirs is popping up all over social media. Find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @writemymemoirs! In addition to the Write My Memoirs page on Facebook, there’s the brand new Write My Memoirs Group. Let’s get together in this group to share our hopes and dreams, challenges and frustrations, laughter and tears—everything that’s part
You believe in God or you don’t. You belong to an organized religious sect or your don’t. You are very observant, somewhat observant or not observant. How much of that do you put in your memoir? So many elements make up the person you are, and religion is one of them. So it’s understandable that
On the first day of Memoir, my memoir coach gave to me…. Here’s a checklist for writing your memoir that just happens to count to 12. It’s from Mary Karr, author of The Art of Memoir. Paint a physical reality that uses all the senses and exists in the time you’re writing about—a singular, fascinating
A year or so ago I was editing a memoir for one of our Write My Memoirs authors who had requested our editing services, and I realized that something was different. The language and sentence structure sounded natural, as if a native English speaker were telling you his life story. But the many misspellings were
I hope you’re enjoying the fresh, modern look of the Write My Memoirs website, the updated Timeline feature and the ease of adding and managing your book’s chapters. Along with our relaunch we created a little video to motivate anyone who’s ever wanted to write a memoir to take the first step and join Write
The Publishing Services available at Write My Memoirs were designed to make it easy for Write My Memoirs authors to bring their vision to life in a book. We value our role in making this happen for our authors, and we take a lot of care with the layout of the text and photographs. But
The founder of Write My Memoirs was in his 60s when he figured out that people about his age needed a good website to anchor their memoir writing. In more recent years, we’ve noticed a trend—people much younger than their 60s also are joining and engaging with Write My Memoirs. It seemed odd at first.
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!