Ideas for memoirs content Archives

Motherhood in Memoir

May 11, 2026 by Rosanne Ullman

Rosanne Ullman with her mom at college graduation

You’ll probably mention it if you’ve ever been or had a mom.

Writing this on Mother’s Day (although posting the day after), I’m thinking of moms and motherhood and of course I’m always thinking about memoir. There’s a pretty significant intersection of these topics.

If you’re writing a memoir, your mother will make an appearance—a cameo at the very least. Even if your theme has nothing to do with your mom, if you’re marketing your book as a memoir you pretty much owe the reader some information on your background.

However, if your mother is truly a minor player in your life or not associated with your memoir theme, you can introduce her to readers in a chapter about your childhood and be done with it. You don’t have to devote multiple chapters to your early life or even mention when your parents died if it doesn’t really fit into your narrative. If you never knew your mother, be transparent about how that happened.

Starring Your Mom

But what if you want to focus on the mother-child relationship? That is a valid memoir theme. Sally Field’s memoir In Pieces tells a lot about Field’s own life but always comes back around to her role as daughter and the impact of her mom’s strengths and weaknesses. And, of course, the title of the bestseller I’m Glad My Mom Died indicates Jennette McCurdy’s complicated relationship with her mother.

Cher is another celebrity whose memoir supplies a lot of her perspective of her mother. It serves to demonstrate why second-generation talent has a better shot at success/stardom. Sometimes the most talented person in the family is the parent, but that parent has to focus on paying the bills. You often hear comedians say that their father was the funny one in their family. Never having had the support from their own parents, these parents of celebrities pour themselves into the promise of their children’s future.

So if you want to write a book as a tribute to your mom, go ahead. Still, write it as a memoir. Don’t write a biography of your unknown mother. Write it as your memories and reactions surrounding your relationship with her.

Many people use their memoir as a statement of their own truth about their upbringing, and sometimes that truth comes across harshly in recalling parents. Maybe you’re still in therapy decades after leaving home because of the harm your mother did to you. Is it okay to write about all of that? Yes. But if you’re aiming for a broad readership, your story will have to involve more than a long list of complaints.

When You’re the Mother

The other side of a motherhood memoir is written by the mother, not the child. Some people write memoirs to document their children’s illnesses or learning difficulties. That’s fine but, again, write it as a memoir, not as a biography of your child.

Now back to a twist on the original question—what if your memoir theme has nothing to do with your role as a mother? Should you still include the topic of motherhood? Whereas your childhood and the parenting you received shaped you as a person, that’s not true of the way you parent. So I would say this aspect of your life is not essential when the theme doesn’t touch on it, especially if your memoir largely takes place before you had children.

There’s a big “but” here, and that’s because you probably were emotionally affected by becoming a parent. When chronologically in your story you get to the year of having a child, I think it would be awkward not to mention it. Or at some point, refer to the family you raised. It’s nice to answer readers’ obvious questions and not leave them hanging.

These thoughts come around on Mother’s Day. And if you’ve lost a mom, as I long ago lost my mom pictured above with me, I hope you have good times to remember—and write about.

Writing a Memoir with Life Lessons to Help Others?

February 6, 2026February 6, 2026 by Rosanne Ullman

Older woman showing book to younger woman

Choose How to Structure Those Advice Components.

Many memoir authors include life lessons to help others who face challenges similar to their own. From illness and injury to abuse, learning issues and difficult relationships, our hurdles are never ours alone. Often, memoir authors believe that other people can benefit from reading how to manage or overcome hardship from someone who’s been through it.

But how do you structure a memoir that has both narrative and lessons? As always with memoir, there’s no single way to craft this, but there are some obvious options.

Deftly throughout the book

Readers are smart and will pick up on the lessons just from your narrative. Even if you want to mention resources or offer advice more obviously, you can weave that information throughout the book. Really, most memoirs have lessons inherent in the story. People get that.

At the end

One way to make it easy on yourself is to save the direct advice for one or more final chapters. By then readers know you, understand that you’ve overcome the same challenges they now face, and may be looking to you as a type of mentor. This structure gives readers the option to read these life lessons or not bother. You may not like that, but you can’t force lessons on someone anyway.

At the beginning

For some authors, the whole point is helping the next person avoid or deal with unwelcome developments in life. If you’re thinking of your book as more “how to fix yourself” than as a traditional memoir, it makes sense to start out by framing the issue you’re addressing. You can use the second person “you” and liberally sprinkle in “command verbs” so that it reads something like: “Make sure you follow your doctor’s orders,” or “Know that you’re strong enough to leave someone.” Then you can pivot to your personal story and come back to the advice later in the book.

Make each chapter a specific lesson

Perhaps your healing/recovery/triumph took place over a lot of steps. If you have enough, you can craft each of those parts as its own chapter with its own lessons. The title of each chapter will reflect that. Then you still have the choice of either weaving the advice into the narrative or separating it from the story.

At the beginning or end of each chapter

I just read a very good memoir, Heart of a Stranger by Angela Buchdahl. The author tacks onto each chapter a little aside that is related to the chapter’s topic. Buchdahl is a rabbi, and these sections are kind of mini-sermons. Either she quotes scripture, discusses the chapter’s topic in a broader context, or in some other way passes along the wisdom she’s gained in her life. It did work in this book. As with saving all of your advice for a final chapter, putting it at the beginning or end of every chapter signals to the reader that this is a part they can just skip. And, again, you may not like that, but readers who are there for the story and not the lecture will thank you.

Use essays rather than narrative

Instead of writing your story out with all the tools of fiction writing, you can write a series of essays. Taken as a whole, the essays may tell enough about your life to be considered a memoir. But chapter by chapter, you’re writing exactly what you want readers to take away from your book.

Write two books

If your traditionally written memoir becomes popular and you sell a lot of copies, you will become a sought-after author. At that point, you need a next book! You could fashion that second book as more of a how-to and round it out by reviewing the latest research on the challenge you overcame.

Ask a lot of people to read your book. No matter how you’ve structured it, if they feel that the advice comes across in too heavy-handed a manner, believe them. But if you do have distinct lessons to teach, don’t shy away from that. Add a layer of subtlety and a dash of humility, and readers may very well accept and appreciate your cautionary tale.

A Perfect Memoir Reveals an Imperfect You

January 15, 2026 by Rosanne Ullman

This Is Not a Brag Book.

I’ve read a lot of highly regarded celebrity memoirs, and it’s a rare one that focuses on the obvious success. Instead, they’re filled with tough childhoods and squalid conditions, pitfalls and insecurities, bouts of depression and failed relationships. You may be trying to write the perfect memoir, but to begin with nothing is perfect, and for sure no honest account of a life portrays a perfect person. Readers are drawn to vulnerability. Only a memoir that reveals an imperfect you is likely to keep readers engaged. Then they can root for you.

Challenges are built into many memoirs. As I mentioned in my last post, the inspiration for writing a memoir often comes from a tragedy, traumatic event or tough period in life. Abuse, addiction, disease and mental illness are common themes. But outside forces are one thing, and I’m not talking about those. Whether you’re writing about a hard life or a relatively easy one, the tale of how you dealt with each episode conveys elements of your humanity. Readers identify with that common thread that even with our unique gifts and limitations, we’re all so quintessentially human.

And yet the differences are what matter. You’re quirky, you have your own way of doing things, you like certain foods and dress the way you like to dress, and you have a few unusual hobbies or predilections. Your smile or gait or voice may be identical to your grandmother’s, but it’s unlike that of anyone else. I know all of this about you because this describes all of us. And this is what should stand out in your memoir.

Character development (yours)

A memoir’s narrative can read like the plot of a novel—suspenseful or funny or sad—and that’s probably been consuming the majority of your writing energy. Of course, you have to give readers a story, with pivots and crises, a beginning and ending. But a memoir highlights character development as well. What is your character, your essence? Where are the cracks? What scars are left but helped you become who you are, so familiar and unexpected all at the same time?

Along the way, it’s fine to share your achievements and times that make you proud of yourself. Be careful not to describe that in a boastful way. Maybe a successful outcome surprised even you! Or you expected to fail but somehow prevailed. Most of all, in your rise to the top, certainly you made mistakes. Write about those swings that missed. Recognize that luck may have played a role in your success.

If your memoir is about a singular, major life challenge, then part of the theme is that you overcame this hurdle. You probably are telling your story partly to reassure others that they, too, can overcome a similar situation. You may feel that you want to emphasize what worked for you, not all the goofs. But you’ll lose them that way. They have to identify with a winner to become one, and they can’t identify with a perfect score. So explain how you triumphed despite human frailties, not because of all your strengths.

Remember as you write to give a nod to any advantages you had, not only the barriers in your way. That shows humility. Describe your fear and doubts. Look at yourself from others’ points of view and think about what they’re seeing. Ultimately, a memoir is introspective. When you reveal your shortcomings, you prove you’ve done the work in your own mind before trying to explain yourself or help the next person.

Photo by Jacob Owens for Unsplash

A Welcome 2026 Toast to You, Memoir Writers

December 31, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

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 regrets, your hardships and your blessings. So here’s a welcome 2026 toast to you, memoir writers, hoping for a new year that delivers everything you want in life and all the benefits you’re seeking through sharing your memories and your unique story. There is no other you.

Above, there I am with the best thing for me about 2025: the birth of a grandchild. So here’s also to new babies and the lives that they’re just beginning. May those lives be worthy of a memoir in their ordinariness or their greatness, but not in their despair.

And here’s to YOU who are getting past the hurdle of reliving trauma as you diligently write about….

Your terrible parents and miserable childhood.
Your childhood with just one parent—or with no parents.
A childhood plagued by bullying.
A life of homelessness.
A life of extreme poverty.
An unspeakable childhood or adolescence on the receiving end of sexual abuse, a childhood that no child should have and no adult should be remembering. Your courage astonishes me.
Seeking education despite your learning disability.
Learning despite limited access to education.
Life in a country where freedom is withheld, and perhaps a risky escape.
A life of religious persecution.
Life in a brainwashing cult.
A life of substance abuse.
The life of an alcoholic.
Your gambling or shopping addiction.
A life of pain and illness for a memoir set in hospital wards and closed-curtained bedrooms.
Life as an accident victim who fought back to live as fully as possible.
Your experiences with mental illness.
A life of embarrassment about who you are in a society that doesn’t readily accept you.
A life filled with challenges of various sorts.
A life primarily characterized by others’ hatred.
A marriage or other partnership defined by abuse, whether verbal and emotional or physical and sexual. Or all of it.
Your difficult pregnancy.
Your experiences parenting a child with physical, developmental or emotional issues.
Horrific memories from your brutal military service.
Your desperate search for a meaningful life, or a savior, or simply peace.
Your life involving sadness, no matter what the cause.

I salute every single one of you and wish you the best in writing about your challenging life. I apologize if I neglected to mention your journey. Typically, if you’re at the point of memoir, you feel you’ve overcome your major challenge. My hat’s off to you for never giving up, with an extra tip to those of you who are writing in order to help the next person under circumstances similar to the ones you battled.

Now to the rest of you memoir authors—those who are writing in gratitude for a good life or are writing to just leave behind a record for grandchildren to understand your choices and to learn how things were in your life and times. I toast to you as well. A life may be for living as they say, but it’s also a great gift for the people in your life, and strangers, too, to pause and write about who you were, who you are, and why this all matters.

To all of you: love, peace and joy in 2026. And a solid writing habit :).

Rosanne

Memoir Authors: Use the Holidays!

December 18, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

Cover of Meat for Tea literary journal issue

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 the holidays to your advantage! They hold a lot of promise for a memoir author. Bring a laptop, notebook or recording device!

Memories. You know what your older relatives love doing? Reminiscing. You may think they keep everything close to the vest, protecting secrets and hiding background circumstances, but the older they get the less they care, or maybe they don’t quite remember which information they’re not supposed to disclose. And typically there’s alcohol to loosen those lips. Most holiday celebrations last hours and include casual sitting around, so focus on that and consider the advantages of being able to reach everyone at once:
-Bring old photos. Family members will enjoy going through them, and you won’t have to say a word because the photos will generate comments and conversation all by themselves.
-Approach relatives one by one to ask a few questions. You get a face-to-face interview without having to make a separate appointment with each person.
-Walk up to a group and throw out a question that might provide a big-picture view for you when different people respond with different recollections. It can be anything from “Why don’t I know much about the years Mom’s family lived in California” to “What do you recall about me as a little kid?”
-Talk to the family members you know the least. What insight can they give you into your own life?
New memories. Even if your memoir’s timeline ends long before current day, hanging with your family can influence your memoir. Perhaps because you’re writing a memoir, you’ll be paying attention to the dynamics of relationships and traditions, and that will guide you in the tone of your writing. Maybe something dramatic will take place—a reconciliation, wedding announcement, memorable or clever remark, or empty chair due to a recent death. This can give you an idea for a good ending for your book.
Test the publishing waters. If your family isn’t aware that you’re writing a memoir, this could be a convenient time to give them a heads-up that they may see their name in your upcoming book. You can even bring printed passages if you feel that you need someone’s permission to publish a detail, you want to check the accuracy, or you’d like to just let the person know how you’re presenting an aspect of your life. This may give your relatives comfort rather than having them fear the worst. Of course, you may get blowback as well, so don’t spoil the party with a preview if you’re determined to write an unforgiving tell-all. If you’re finished or close to finishing your book, you can ask whether anyone knows a literary agent or has connections to a publishing house. Again, this is easier with everyone in the room than making a series of phone calls or relying on word-of-mouth methods to spread the information.
Trigger your writing habit. So much happens at the holidays, especially if you have house guests or you’re the one traveling and staying with relatives. Let the pile-on of experiences inspire you to write something unrelated to your memoir, just for practice. Call it a writing exercise, and I’ll give you the assignment: Write a short story or poem about your 2025 Thanksgiving or winter holiday. Some years ago, I found myself writing fiction, which I never do, based on our family’s Thanksgiving. I knew I could report in a narrative way, but I have no imagination and didn’t realize I could write fiction if I sat down and just did it. A lot of the story I crafted was truly made up, and I wrote in first person but from my daughter’s point of view, not my own. And guess what! A little literary journal, Meat for Tea, accepted it for publication after I reworked the story according to the issue’s parameters—the story had to revolve around “mugwort.”

While Meat for Tea sells its books and I encourage you to read the stories because they demonstrate good writing, my story is from 2022 so I think it’s okay if I just let you read it here. I hope you write something in 2025 yet that will give you confidence to work on your memoir in 2026. And Happy Holidays to you all.

Categories of Common Memoir Themes

September 4, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

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 some adversity can be so life-changing that you want to not only share it with others but use your experience to help the next person facing the same problem. You may even help people avoid falling into the trap of whatever tripped you up.

Within this broad category, there are subsets:

Illness. A rare illness introduces readers to something new, which always makes for good reading. On the other hand, more people will relate to a common illness. This means that no matter what health challenge you faced, including mental illness and depression, you can write a memoir about it.
Trauma. From living with an abusive parent or spouse or experiencing extreme bullying to growing up in a country at war, trauma is a frequently explored misery. Escape tends to be the resolution, but there are many directions this can take, and not all tales of trauma are alike.
Addictions and vices. With all the groups available to help people quit drugs, alcohol, gambling, shopping, compulsive sex and more, it’s no wonder that former addicts want to write memoirs after believing they’ve kicked the habit. Matthew Perry is a sad example of how difficult this is to achieve, even if at the time you write your memoir you think you’ve gotten there.
Identity and insecurity. The path to figuring out who you truly are can obviously fill a book. Gender confusion, body shape issues, learning challenges, cultural blurriness, even career indecision—people spend many years on choices and self-acceptance. Once you’ve come to terms with your authentic self, it’s understandable that you want to provide a path of information and encouragement to people just beginning the journey.
Spiritual awakening. The outcome of any of these challenges can come through a new spiritual awareness, but the awareness itself also can be the main topic of a memoir. Perhaps you just didn’t feel whole until you let God in your life. It’s a common theme, but everyone’s discovery is unique.

Category 2: Time period of your life

While the triumph category may end up covering only certain years of your life, this second category focuses specifically on a slice of time with the theme inherent in how you spent that time. Again, there are sub-categories:

A geographic location. It can be very interesting to read someone’s “my time in” an unfamiliar culture. Perhaps you lived part of your life in an area that was exotic, isolated, poverty-stricken, dangerous or even privileged. Or maybe you simply took a trip that you describe in an extensive travelogue.
A relationship. Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays With Morrie is a well-known example of chronicling time spent with a special person. Albom revealed the myriad topics of discussion during his weekly visits with his dying former professor, opening readers’ minds to life’s richness. If the movie Beaches had been based on a memoir instead of a novel, which of course is fiction, it would be another good example of a friendship memoir. Some relationships last a lifetime, but if you’re writing a memoir about it you probably had a beginning and end.
Coming of age. Somehow we have a timeless fascination in exploring the bridge between childhood and adulthood. Perhaps it’s because then we remember our own coming-of-age years, when we had our whole lives ahead of us, lots of options and endless new experiences.
Drastically changed circumstances. Perhaps there were some months or years that, for whatever reason, were completely different from the rest of your life. Joan Didion explored grief and loss in The Year of Magical Thinking. Maybe you spent a couple of years working as a firefighter or fostering dozens of children or running an unusual company. It can be worth writing about.
A project. Whether you took three years to sail around the world or you set out to visit every major league ballpark in the country, you may have a memoir there. White journalist John Howard Griffin wrote his 1961 best-seller Black Like Me to enlighten people about how race impacts everyday life after he managed to pose as a black man in the segregated South.

Once Again: Autobiography vs. Memoir

If you’re a celebrity, you can get away with writing a full autobiography, cradle to present day, and still call it a memoir, not to mention still get it published. If you’re an ordinary person, only your family will be interested in your autobiography. And that’s fine. In fact, that’s our typical customer at Write My Memoirs.

Just don’t expect, as a non-celebrity, to have high book sales without a theme. Often the theme is the catalyst for writing the memoir. But let’s say the motivation to write about your life comes first, and then you go looking for a theme that will be compelling to readers. You want to write about something, with you as the major player. That’s a memoir.

Faith in Memoir

February 19, 2025December 24, 2024 by Rosanne Ullman

Front and back covers of "My Journey with God"

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 asked the author what motivated her to write the book, she said her way of publicly thanking God for a good life was to celebrate faith in memoir form. The book’s front and back cover appear above.

Gratitude in Memoir

This was a revelation for me. Of all the reasons to write a memoir, I had not considered that one. But I get it—it’s a type of gratitude journal. Some authors chronicle their faith journeys and perhaps lead readers along a similar path. There’s a whole Christian book publishing industry built around this concept, and those publishing companies can provide publishing opportunities for authors whose manuscripts may get rejected elsewhere.

In Faith Unraveled: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask Questions, author Rachel Held Evans writes about straying from her Christian fundamentalist roots before recommitting to God with an approach that she found more adaptable to her life. In the recently released Mostly What God Does: Reflections on Seeking and Finding His Love Everywhere, Samantha Guthrie of NBC’s “Today Show” uses personal essays of questioning and searching to open readers’ hearts and minds to a life exploring faith.

God as Redeemer

It makes sense that religion pops up often in memoirs, since it plays a role in many lives. Sometimes, it’s the memoir’s main topic or shares the limelight as the solution half of a problem/solution memoir. One of the earliest and best-known accounts, from 1948, is The Seven Storey Mountain: A Journey of Faith and Transformation, Exploring Vulnerability, Forgiveness, and the Quest for Spiritual Fulfillment in the Midst of a Turbulent World by Thomas Merton, who became a Trappist monk and guided readers toward spiritual reward. More recently, both Wired for God: Adventures of a Jewish Yogi by Dani Antman and Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God by Kaitlin B. Curtice discuss the intersection between religious roots and the yearning for broader spirituality.

The author’s story of redemption is a popular theme in memoirs, and here, too, religion can enter the discussion when the author talks about overcoming illness, abuse or other adversity. Lacey Buchanan’s Through the Eyes of Hope: Love More, Worry Less, and See God in the Midst of Your Adversity, published in 2017, credits God for the strength to face her life’s challenges. Her son was born with a rare medical condition.

Religious Exposés

Religion in memoir is not always presented with gratitude. One trend in memoir is exposing abuse disguised as, or excused through, religious devotion. The best-selling memoir Educated presents author Tara Westover’s experiences with her family’s variety of Mormonism in quite an unflattering light. The truth behind the facade presented by television’s religious Duggar family is revealed in Counting the Cost by Jill Duggar, Derick Dillard and Craig Borlase.

The Inner Circle Book One: My Seventeen Years in the Cult of the American Sikhs, a 2021 memoir by Peter MacDonald Blachly, similarly traces the author’s experiences inside a cult-like religious group. In Devout: A Memoir of Doubt by Anna Gazmarian, published earlier this year, the author does not condemn her evangelical Christian upbringing, but she shows how she struggled to retain her spirituality while diagnosed with bipolar disorder and dealing with a medical community that did not easily fit within her religion’s parameters.

Part of Life

When not the memoir’s primary focus, religion still can bring a valuable dimension to the story. In her 2003 memoir, Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life, Queen Noor of Jordan writes about her life as an American who married Jordan’s King Hussein. She addresses family life, her views of historical events, and her humanitarian efforts, and she drops a lot of famous names of people she’s met. But for readers to fully understand her life, she also discusses her Muslim faith and the way she blended her American upbringing with her life as a member of a prominent Middle Eastern monarchy.

Happy Holidays to You, Readers!

If you’re incorporating faith into your memoir, this time of year gives you a good opportunity to get in close touch with your feelings. And whether or not you have faith in your memoir or in your life, I wish you the happiest of holiday seasons.

Story Example for Memoir Writers

October 16, 2024October 16, 2024 by Rosanne Ullman

Trying to glean lessons from my own tale of Hurricane Milton.

Here on Florida’s Gulf Coast we’ve had two weather crises back to back. I’m sure you’ve heard about our battles with Helene and Milton.

During my evacuation two days before Hurricane Milton made landfall, I tried to distract myself by writing up my experiences in real time, in diary fashion. Afterward, I thought about this episode in terms of whether it would fit into a memoir. Would this be something I would include? It would depend upon the general theme of my memoir. Either way, I think it holds lessons as a story example for memoir writers.

I wrote the piece in present tense. As I’ve mentioned in past posts, I’m not a big fan of writing an entire memoir in present tense. In this case, I did what came naturally, and there it was: present tense right in my face. So I now am better acquainted with why many memoir authors want to write in present tense. People who’ve read this account tell me they feel as if they’re right there with me, fretting about where the hurricane will make landfall and nervous about how it will impact my life. Isn’t that every memoir author’s aim? So I get it.

I still think that for a full memoir it’s easier and ultimately more effective to write in past tense. The reader grows weary of present tense. For a short piece, though, present tense can work well. I like it for the introduction to a memoir or for any chapter that takes place at the current time.

This sample story demonstrates how a narrative in present tense can accommodate some past tense when appropriate. It also illustrates ways to interlace feelings with description, manage dialogue, provide background when necessary, use active voice and action verbs, and sneak in little facts you want the reader to know without dwelling on them. You also can see from this story how, if you have a diary filled with stories, you will have to do some editing. For example, I would probably replace the last four paragraphs with an update on any actual changes I made in the ensuing years or a transition to the next story in the memoir.

Seeing Eye to Eye with Hurricane Milton

Four days in Sarasota in October 2024

Hide from wind, run from water.

It’s a new phrase for me, and I memorize it. Like “feed a cold, starve a fever”: you must keep it straight, which is which.

But what if you have both a cold and a fever? “Feed” and “starve” are mutually exclusive, not the case with “hide” and “run.” So I do both, scared of wind, frightened of water.

It’s Monday, October 7, and as I run and hide from a natural disaster, obsessively focused on my own immediate trauma, the rest of the world is marking the date as one year since the Hamas attack on an Israeli music festival. On Facebook, I see that a friend is recalling the same date more than 20 years ago as the day she lost her 15-year-old son. Tragedy takes many forms here in the human experience, and what’s happening to me is not the worst that can happen.

We were cold in Chicago, so four years ago we moved south, out of the path of snowstorms and heartland tornadoes but into the belly of tropical weather. “I could never live in Florida,” some friends have said to me, with hurricane danger mentioned among the reasons. We chose an area that historically has not been in the eye of the tiger storms, but we understand there’s still risk, that past is not necessarily prologue with nature’s inherent volatility. In exchange for paradise winter, we accept humid summer and the wildcard of hurricane season.

October 8, another long and stressful day. With distance between my body and life-threatening peril, I obsessively click around from weather map to weather map, hoping that I can mentally will Milton to defy all science and just dissolve or turn tail and head back out to sea. The TV forecasters offer me no reassurance. When one of them chokes up during a report, that becomes the news. Another one wears a fitted blue dress revealing that she is pregnant, reminding me that life goes on in one way or another. I think back to yesterday, when my own pregnant daughter and her husband sent around pink balloons to let relatives know what kind of cousin/grandchild they can expect in March.

As October 9 dawns, my anxiety is high. We’re staying in a hotel casino west of Miami that was sparsely populated when we arrived on Monday but ran out of rooms by late Tuesday. We drove two cars to keep them from flooding at home. It was a little chancy to go south in case Milton taunted forecasters with a swerve to the right, but going north to Georgia or Alabama would mean three times the mileage, much heavier traffic and worries about gas availability. Along with me are Keevan and our friend Barbara, who evacuated with us from her home in Venice, just south of us. We are lucky to have options and resources; we understand that, and we meet people from all over the state’s southern half. Some live right on the water, others more inland but in mobile or manufactured homes. Every story is different. One couple splits time between balmy winters in Venice, Florida, and mountain summers near Asheville, North Carolina, devastated by Hurricane Helene just two weeks ago. Their house in Venice is in danger from storm surge not from the Gulf itself but from the Myakka River flowing at the end of, and perpendicular to, their street. They look sad, but here they’re at least safe.

Between watching the news and continuing to plead with Milton to be gentle, I do normal things. It’s drizzly in Miami, but I take advantage of a short period of sun to go for a run in the parking lot. Then Keevan, Barbara and I drive to Walmart and Publix and somewhere for lunch. We’re tired of expensive hotel food and bring groceries and boxed leftovers back to the hotel, where we have a mini-fridge and microwave. As the wind picks up in Miami, we calculate how much worse it must be at home, so much closer to the storm. I check the phone app connected to our home alarm, and there’s no signal. That means we’ve lost power at home. I wince.

After dinner in our room, Keevan and I go down to the casino to play the slots. It’s a sensory onslaught of blinking colored lights and sounds of ding ding ding as the machines hand over winnings, but the players look more defeated than victorious. We meet a couple from Punta Gorda. “Where are you from?” they ask us. “Sarasota,” I reply. “Oh….” Sarasota gets the biggest “oh….” as it sits right in the center of all the spaghetti storm-tracking models. I feign a weak smile as I take a selfie to remember this weird juxtaposition of home-to-here scenery.

Distraction and commiserating with people keep my spirit manageable as Milton inches closer to the Gulf coast. It’s a category 5 hurricane and then cat 4 and back to 5, then 4 again but getting down to cat 3, which is some good news. It jags and wobbles, sometimes north and sometimes south, and it’s not clear which direction will most spare us. It doesn’t matter, because it feels crummy to root for it to hit other communities instead of my own. My anxiety begins to morph into acceptance, which is good, because when landfall finally happens sometime around 9pm, Milton hits Sarasota’s beach on Siesta Key, eight miles from our house.

It seems not to take long before the hurricane’s eye settles over Sarasota and the TV storm reporters are talking about how eerily still and quiet it is. But soon after that, “dirty side” gusts and downpours start whipping the city. Before I go to bed, I check the alarm app again. It’s connected. I’m not sure whether that means we have power or, more likely, that the connection is picking up the backup battery, but the app indicates nothing out of the ordinary.

It’s October 10, and Milton is still a hurricane but no longer over land. We text our neighbors, who had planned on riding out the storm at home because they have hurricane shutters, whereas we are still trying to figure out that part of living here. A next-door neighbor responds that there’s no power in the neighborhood, but our house seems to be intact. It feels like a miracle. I picture all the possessions I left there as I hurriedly and arbitrarily packed some objects while abandoning others. From what we can tell, the roads going northwest are passable. We drive the three hours home.

The sun is shining, and as we glide along Routes 41 and 75 we see standing water and flattened trees, but nothing significant to indicate what took place during the previous 24 hours. At home, there’s no power but there is everything else just as we left it, except for a dozen palm fronds littering the lawn and two trees that toppled and damaged our fencing. But there’s not even water blanketing our street the way there was during Hurricane Ian and some of the other storms that made landfall much farther than eight miles from our house. So what is the deal here?

A few things worked in our favor. Milton did accede to my wishes in weakening to a cat 3 storm by landfall. Although it dumped a lot of rain in some areas, it was fast-moving and didn’t build up massive rain measurements in Sarasota. The half-hour it took for Sarasota to pass through the eye provided a little break when the wind and rain stopped. Every storm is quirky and spotty, and how it meanders into the particulars of Tampa Bay’s configuration will change the impact of water levels for cities up and down the Gulf Coast. All in all, worse-case scenarios did not happen. And the people heeded warnings, evacuating where mandatory and then some. We were not required to evacuate. We live just outside the last evacuation zone, Evacuation Zone E, and the mandate came in only as far as Zone C. Unfortunately, Milton set off lots of tornadoes that twisted their way all over the state, causing casualties across the state in southeast Florida, not far from our refuge.

What you see on TV is a version of what’s happening. News reporters stand at the most dramatic visual point, right at the coast. Inland the rain and wind may be just as harsh, but often sturdy fencing and rows of trees provide some barrier to houses. Of course, then there’s the danger of the trees falling and smashing things, but mostly it’s protection. The storm surge they talk so much about affects only the neighborhoods right along the shoreline and aside rivers and lakes. People living in houseboats always should leave, and those in mobile/manufactured homes are at risk anywhere within the hurricane cone. But other houses are constructed in adherence to strict building codes meant to withstand severe weather. Resorts, restaurants, hotels and various other businesses are situated along water, so storm surge is an important factor in the economy of the community but not in most of the residential areas of a city like Sarasota, although high rise condos offering enviable waterfront views often have to rehab their lobbies after a major storm surge.

I learned a lot from Hurricane Milton and feel more like a seasoned Floridian in the aftermath. I still probably will evacuate during future hurricanes, because I would have trouble getting through a night with no power or possibly even cell service while the trees are thrashing about outside. But I think I’ll be less frantic next time, and maybe we’ll have storm shutters by then.

Back to the Beginning: Your Memoir’s First Sentence, Part 3

August 21, 2024 by Rosanne Ullman

Book with blank pages waiting for your memoir's opening sentence

Aim to grab the reader from the very start, but don’t sweat this too much.

In guiding you through writing your memoir’s first sentence, in the previous post I gave examples of openings from the celebrity memoirs I’ve read. That list contained memoirs of actors, and I left musicians and comedians for this post. So let’s jump in.

Patti Smith, Just Kids
“When I was very young, my mother took me for walks in Humboldt Park, along the edge of the Prairie River. I have vague memories, like impressions on glass plates, of an old boathouse, a circular band shell and an arched stone bridge.”

Smith begins her memoir in her childhood but, wisely, doesn’t waste her first sentence on something as mundane as pinpointing her childhood’s geographic identity. Yet, in her poetic prose she does just that. If you know Chicago, you will recognize the area of Humboldt Park or possibly the Prairie River.

The artistry of her phrasing is what’s important—memories are like impressions on glass plates, and items in the rest of the description roll out like a painting in front of your eyes. She lets you know that she had a mother who was engaged with her enough to take her on walks. She sets up the reader to expect skilled writing, and she follows through on that. Smith’s memoir won a National Book Award, and I think these are good first two sentences.

Leslie Jones, Leslie F*cking Jones
“I have this recurring nightmare. I want to quantum leap back to my younger self and tell that person all the stuff she needs to hear.”

Leslie previews for the reader that her memoir will look at all the mistakes she made and maybe reassure her younger self that everything will be okay. She uses “stuff,” indicating that she’s going to write the way she speaks. And, indeed, she does.

I liked this memoir a lot. As with most of these celebrity memoirs, I didn’t want it to end and missed Leslie when I finished the book and she stopped talking to me. But I’m not a fan of this type of opening sentence. It’s a tempting way to start—saying if I only knew then what I know now—but it’s not anything different from the rest of us. So, yes, it’s a sentence we can all relate to, but I want a memoir to begin with a nugget that belongs solely to the author.

Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
“I am ten years old, and I know every crack, bone and crevice in a crumbling sidewalk running up and down Randolph Street, my street. Here on passing afternoons, I am Hannibal crossing the Alps, GIs locked in vicious mountain combat and countless cowboy heroes traversing the rocky trails of the Sierra Nevada.”

I really like the first sentence but not so much the second, which feels to me as if Springsteen is trying too hard, struggling to be a real Writer and, with that ambition, to create a visual simile from what he’s seen and prove to us that he knows about more things than music. But I do think the first sentence is relatable. As children, we all knew our streets like the back of our hand.

Ricky Lee Jones, Last Chance Texaco
“Oh, the skies were beautiful, pink and yellow and blue. Down along the end of the street was a well, a concrete circle about five feet in diameter. There you could find all manner of water-loving creatures, drawn from the desert to the shade.”

Jones had a chart-topping hit in 1979 called “Chuck E.’s in Love,” and the audio version of Jones’s memoir opens with a short song. I’m not sure how this is conveyed in print. Following the tune, the memoir’s opening line supplies an answer to the Chapter One title, “What Were the Skies Like When You Were Young?”

Jones reaches out to readers to get them to picture the skies of youth’s memory and imagination. She establishes her memoir as a detailed story, mentioning the desert right away because it influenced her art and life. Like Springsteen, she provides a description of her childhood street. So it’s not the most original beginning, but I think of the two of them, Jones wears it better.

Dave Grohl, The Storyteller
“‘Dad, I want to learn how to play the drums.’ I knew this was coming. There stood my eight-year-old daughter Harper, staring at me with her big brown eyes like Cindy Lou Who from How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

Chapter One in Grohl’s memoir is titled, “DNA Doesn’t Lie,” which gives this sentence a little context. It shows Grohl as a drummer but also a father so involved with his children that he knows who Cindy Lou Who is. He’s introducing readers to his world, in which father and drummer are equally important, and he’s showing that he doesn’t take himself too seriously. I think it’s effective.

Molly Shannon, Hello, Molly
“I went to a nun psychiatrist who asked me to draw a picture of my family. I drew a picture where my dad had really long arms, and all the women had chopped-off arms.”

I like reading comedians’ memoirs because of all the humor in them. Molly Shannon was raised by her father after her mother was killed in a car accident. The preview of her limited, literally chopped-off, experience of having women as role models along with the funny image of trying to explain her childhood drawing to a mental health professional makes this a good opening sentence, kind of funny even in a chapter that deals with her mother’s death. Molly had me at “nun psychiatrist.”

Keith Richards, Life
“Why did we stop at the Fordice Restaurant in Fordice, Arkansas, for lunch on Independence Day weekend? On any day? Despite everything I knew from ten years of driving through the bible belt.”

In his very long but well-reviewed memoir, Keith Richards goes into detail about his childhood and pretty much everything else in his life. That’s why I’m happy with this opening that starts in his young adulthood, giving us the pleasure of meeting him right before the fame kicked into superstar gear, back when we formed our own opinions of all Rolling Stones. We can predict what goes wrong in this anecdote, but we want to know exactly how it goes wrong.

With this opening, Richards displays his naivete and arrogance all at once. And then the book goes on to fulfill our expectation to be candid and thorough.

One Non-celeb Example of a Memoir Opening

Let’s look at the example of probably the most successful recent memoir by a previously unknown author. Tara Westover’s opening two sentences to Educated are:

“My strongest memory is not a memory. It’s something I imagined, then came to remember as if it had happened.”

Brilliant? Not to me. I think Educated is an excellently written memoir, but it wasn’t the opening line that kept me reading. I find it almost a throwaway, nothing new to us or particular about the author. We all experience a blur between memory and imagination sometimes, especially as children. I think Westover, like Leslie Jones, could have launched her story without that introductory explanation of what she’s about to tell us.

Is the Opening Sentence the “Make or Break”?

From that example combined with those from the celeb memoirs I’ve shared with you in this post and the one before it, I think that maybe the trend today is that your opening sentence doesn’t have to be so much of a grabber. With online reviews readily available, people may start the book with an expectation already in mind and not depend on the first sentence to reel them in.

By the way, writing up these first-sentence posts made me realize that I’ve neglected one category of celebrity memoir—the sports memoir. So right now I’m listening to Andre Agassi’s Open, which is considered to be a well-written memoir about his tennis career. My beef is that Andre has someone else reading his memoir on Audible. But I do like his opening. He takes us right to a pivotal match very late in his career, and after that chapter we go back to his childhood. That’s my favorite structure.

Ultimately, the goal of your first sentence is to get the reader to want to read the second sentence. Then you want that to lead to the whole paragraph and little by little have your memoir become a book that readers can’t put down. So you do need to hook them immediately, but you also have to follow through with a lot of great sentences, some perhaps even better than sentence number one.

Back to the Beginning: Your Memoir’s First Sentence, Part 2

August 9, 2024July 31, 2024 by Rosanne Ullman

Blank screen with hand and stylus for writing a memoir's first sentence

Let’s look at some openings from published memoirs.

Last time, I threw out a few ideas to get you started on your memoir’s first sentence or couple of sentences. The beginning of your book will provide the hook to keep readers interested in finishing Chapter One and, you hope, beyond. But how critical is that first sentence? You probably want examples.

Into My Library of Celebrity Memoirs

As I often mention, my motivation to run is that it’s the only time I allow myself to listen to celebrity memoirs. By now, quite a few celebrities have talked me through my painful track training, so in a quick review I chose some of their memoir openings to share with you, along with my comments.

I have too many for one post, so I’m going to save half for a Part 3 on this topic. Today’s half offers only actors. I want to know about the author’s youth, but I admit to being partial to memoirs that start somewhere other than in childhood. Let’s see how these sentences introduce the reader to the memoirist’s world.

Jennette McCurdy, I’m Glad My Mom Died
“The present in front of me is wrapped in Christmas paper even though it’s the end of June. We have so much paper left over from the holidays because Grandpa got the dozen-roll set from Sam’s Club even though Mom told him a million times that it wasn’t even that good of a deal.”

You wouldn’t want a shocking beginning when you already have that irreverent title, so a somewhat banal first sentence provides balance. This bestseller lets you know you’re in for a story, not just a lengthy whine.

The sentence mentions her mom, so we stay on topic, but it doesn’t hint at why the author might be glad her mom died. If anything, she implies that she’s on the same page with her mother about the wisdom of her grandfather’s purchase. She gets you wondering what will happen with her mother. As my last post mentioned, it’s good to get readers to ask questions, because they’ll keep reading to find the answers.

This is a very young author, so starting in childhood isn’t going that far back. Still, note the choice.

Harvey Fierstein, I Was Better Last Night
“Philamina got the role of the evil witch, and I was cast as the king. The king? Who wants to be the king? Sure, he gets a crown and a cape, but the witch gets green skin, red lips and long, black fingernails. I wanted green skin, red lips and long, black fingernails. Second grade was not working out the way I’d hoped.”

The memoir of Harvey Fierstein, whom I hope no one confuses with Harvey Weinstein, focuses mostly on Fierstein’s professional life as an actor and personal life as a gay man. His opening sentences weave in both topics and then end with a surprise punchline that made me laugh out loud. Even if you read this memoir rather than listen to it, you can hear Fierstein’s distinctive, raspy voice in that last sentence.

I loved the book, and the first paragraph is probably my favorite of this group because it’s funny. But, again, here we are in childhood. And not every memoir can start with humor, so you may not be able to copy this style.

Viola Davis, Finding Me
“‘Cocksucker motherfucker’ was my favorite expression, and at eight years old I used it defiantly. I was a spunky, sassy mess, and when I spewed that expression, one hand would be on my hip, my middle finger in vast display, and maybe my tongue would be sticking out.”

Having Viola Davis read to you for hours is a treat, but I’m not sure about this opening sentence. Her description of her little self paints a clear mental picture, and the reader needs that because in her masterpiece of a memoir Davis spends a lot of time on her childhood.

I think my problem with this opening is that it feels like an early draft. I can see an author sitting and thinking about how to start her story and coming up with this, as if she’s looking at herself from an outside vantage point. It’s almost too cutesy or self-conscious or something. I’m a little torn on this one.

Rob Lowe, Stories I Only Tell My Friends
“I had always had an affinity for him, an admiration for his easy grace, his natural charisma, despite the fact that for the better part of a decade, my then-girlfriend kept a picture of him running shirtless through Central Park on her refrigerator door.”

The “him,” the target of Lowe’s affection as well as his girlfriend’s admiration, is John F. Kennedy, Jr. The two men were friends, and even though JFK Jr. doesn’t play a large role in Lowe’s memoir, he pops up later in the book in a pivotal way.

This opening, then, deftly previews for the reader that this friend will have something to do with Lowe’s life, but it’s so subtle that you might not see it coming when JFK Jr. shows up years down the road. The first sentence also gives you a feel for the way Rob Lowe saw people and hints at the role handsomeness will play in the book. I think it’s a good opening, and it’s nice to start somewhere other than childhood.

Minka Kelly, Tell Me Everything
“’Oh baby, I have something special in store for you,’ Mom gushed. She hugged her arms close to her chest as if she needed to keep the joy from bursting through her entire body, like it was a current of energy that pulsed through her, not always under the influence of her control.”

I feel as if I’m always going overboard in being transparent, and on this one my full disclosure is that I included Minka Kelly’s memoir because I really enjoyed it and hope to give it a little more exposure so more people read it. But then I’m a big fan of TV’s “Friday Night Lights,” in which Kelly had a lead acting role.

Like so many others, Kelly chose to begin her memoir in childhood and tell readers about her mother, the primary figure in her life. Bringing us into the heart of an anecdote, she leads with dialogue. I’m fine with using dialogue to open other chapters, but for Chapter One of the memoir I think it’s a bit of an easy way out. Don’t let that discourage you from reading the memoir. It’s good.

Henry Winkler, Being Henry
“It was the biggest audition of my life, and the sweat stains under my arms weren’t just clearly visible; they were a cry for help.”

I’m surprised this type of sentence doesn’t open more celebrity memoirs to immediately place us at the most pivotal point of the career. Maybe authors want to build anticipation so we keep reading until we get to the part of the celebrity’s life that most interests us.

We can make an educated guess about what the biggest audition of his life is—probably for the breakout role of Fonzie in “Happy Days”—but Winkler stops short of giving us the full story here. Readers don’t find out how that audition played out until much later in the book. I like the tease, and I also like the acknowledgment right away that the author knows why we bought his memoir.

Sally Field, In Pieces
“I wait for my mother to haunt me, as she promised she would, long to wake in the night with the familiar sight of her sitting at the end of my bed, to talk to her one more time, to feel that all the pieces have been put into place, the puzzle is solved, and I can rest.”

Field wants to quickly tell us what her title is about. I’m not sure that’s necessary; it’s not hard for readers figure out on their own. But the opening sentence is effective in letting us know that an Oscar winner now in her 70s is, if not still fixated on her relationship with her mother, at least writing her book in part to explore that relationship. I don’t think it’s the most original beginning, the most personal or even the strongest she could have come up with, but I think it’s not bad.

Is “Not Bad” Good Enough?

You can see that I’m not falling all over myself about how great these openings are. Some are very good; others are just adequate. But not one is a failure. I’ll let you know in Part 3 whether “not bad” is good enough.