Here’s to You and Your Unique Story I had a whole obligatory New Year’s resolutions piece to post, but I’ll save it for January. Today I’m feeling you. I’m thinking about you non-celebrity memoir writers. I’m feeling your pain of living and your catharsis from writing about your life. I’m feeling your triumphs and your
Family Gatherings Can Further Your Project A lot of memoir authors don’t look forward to the holiday season because of all the family gatherings. Through your memoir, you may hold family members responsible for challenges you’ve had in your life. But as long as attending a holiday gathering does not endanger your mental health, use
No one knows this structure. You may not remember learning this rule about using the possessive with a gerund, but I assure you it was in an English grammar book you had at some point. It goes like this: some words ending in “ing” should be introduced with a possessive rather than an object pronoun.
Can you end a sentence with a preposition? Continuing from my last post, here’s another controversial grammar point. Ending with a Preposition Grammar-type people love to haggle over this one, and the meme above shows one of the several versions of a quote widely, but probably erroneously, attributed to Winston Churchill. No matter who really
Breaking Some Rules You Learned in School Can Enhance Your Writing. You might think of grammar as black and white—correct grammar and incorrect grammar and nothing in between. But some grammatical structures fall into a gray area. Maybe the thinking on them has changed over time, or there might be examples of great writing taking
She’s a master of writing and marketing. I’m not the biggest Swiftie out there, but I did take the above jumbotron photo when I saw her in concert during the Eras Tour, and now I’m doing a heavy listen of the new album, “Life of a Showgirl.” Mulling over the lyrics, the storytelling, the marketing
Maybe it belongs in another section of the bookstore or library. Today it’s not easy to sell any book, but memoir is a particularly challenging and competitive category. So ask yourself: Is memoir really your book’s genre? Authors can start out thinking they’re writing about their life, but sometimes a book has a mind of
(Not That One) In light of my last piece, I was thinking about the different topics and themes that frame people’s stories, and it occurred to me that a lot of memoir subject matter begins with the letter F. I’m not referring to the one-time unmentioned but now ubiquitous F word, although I’m not judging
Really, there are only two categories with multiple versions of each. If you want to write a memoir rather than a full autobiography, what might you focus on that will resonate with readers? When you get down to it, there are really only two categories of common memoir themes. Category 1: Triumph Feeling you’ve overcome
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!