Confusion grows over word usage. I used to think the growing list of words writers mix up meant they were having a homophone issue—there/their/they’re, affect/effect, complimentary/complementary and that sort of thing. When terms sound alike, it’s easy to forget which meaning is spelled which way. Just remember that something may pique your interest, but you’re
What we can learn from canned writing. Artificial Intelligence’s quality of writing keeps getting more impressive, and I want to be open to examining memoir content written by AI. Even if the writing style is kind of dry, maybe we can learn something from canned writing. An AI Memoir Writing Sample Take a look at
Does the master’s advice hold up in this century and for our genre? Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises was the first novel I couldn’t put down. I was in high school. I stealthily turned pages during class and continued reading as I walked through the halls between classes, bumping into anything in my way.
It has nothing to do with being lazy or busy or distracted. It’s common to put off your goal of writing a memoir either before or after you’ve started writing it. We beat ourselves up for this, annoyed that we can’t just sit down and write. But it’s not that we’re lazy. And, yes, we’re
Fuzzy facts provide one more reason to write your story from the first-person perspective. I was reading a recent book review of a biography—not a memoir—of Dr. Mary Putnam, a pioneering doctor in women’s medicine, when a single criticism struck me. Writing in The New York Times Book Review section, the reviewer noted that the
An analysis of the iconic, quintessential example of bad writing. You’re told to give readers visual images—“show, don’t tell.” In his 1830 novel Paul Clifford, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton did just that. Yet the first seven words of his opening sentence have become the quintessential example of bad writing. Is there anything wrong with beginning a
The year 2024 in my life To start off 2025, I thought I’d give you a memoir writing sample of my own work. This doesn’t really work as a chapter, because I tweaked and adapted it from my annual holiday letter. But it might give you some ideas about infusing humor and weaving a theme
Religion and spirituality are big topics for self-reflection. One of the first books I helped someone self-publish through Write My Memoirs falls into a category of a faith or spiritual memoir. Titled “My Journey With God,” it was more of an autobiography than a memoir, covering the author’s full, not terribly unusual, life. When I
John Walker Pattison speaks with Write My Memoirs Always up for an interview with a memoir author, over Zoom recently I met with John Walker Pattison, author of Me and My Shadow: Memoirs of a Cancer Survivor. You can watch our exchange on my YouTube channel. John wrote about beating his own cancer when he
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!