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Ideas for memoirs content

The Fireworks of an American Memoir

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This week Americans across the country will flock to beaches, rivers, open fields and even the seat in front of their TV and computer screens—to watch Independence Day fireworks. If you’re an American, how many times have you done that? It’s a ritual, and it’s the kind of memory that might find its way into an American’s memoir.

Maybe you watched the fireworks display with a bunch of neighborhood kids, or perhaps your whole family carried lawn chairs to an appointed spot. You might have ridden your bike or taken a bus provided free for the community. Perhaps one year you were sick and couldn’t attend; another year maybe your town didn’t have the funds to put on the expected show. Maybe some of you first set eyes on your future spouse at a July 4 event!

An annual fireworks display may seem minor when you’re listing your life’s major milestones. But the way Americans share this tradition is etched into all of our minds. When you describe where the event was held when you were a child, how you got there and what all you dragged with you—everything from your dog and binoculars to the picnic basket and your favorite blanket—it resonates with your children and grandchildren who share the same type of event but under circumstances that reflect a more modern era.

Don’t take these moments for granted. They illustrate the culture that defined you as you grew up. They show how those times are different from today as well as all the aspects that are surprisingly similar. Every country and culture share traditions. In the U.S., the July 4 week is one of our strongest times of unity and affection—a summertime break with hot dogs, beer, music and those colorful lights in the sky that go “boom.” Somehow both nostalgic and current, it’s the kind of story you can tuck into a memoir to reveal something about your past, pipe up with a little about your attitudes and lay out a snapshot of everyday American life.

Chronology vs. Topic Grouping

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You make lots of decisions as you’re writing your memoir about when and how to introduce the topics you want to cover. You may choose to present a chronological account of your life, from birth to present day, because it seems logical and probably the easiest option. But you’re likely to find that it’s not as straightforward as you anticipated.

Let’s say that you’re writing about a favorite aunt and uncle. Perhaps as a child you spent a week with them every summer or have special memories of welcoming them to your home at Christmastime. They were a significant presence during your childhood, but then maybe they moved far away or you just grew up and didn’t see them very much. Or maybe you continued seeing them at holidays, but you’re not chronicling every holiday in your memoir. Really, the next mention you want to make is to note their death and honor their memory by saying you miss them. Where should you say that?

You can wait until you write a chapter that occurs around the time your aunt and uncle died, assuming they died within a few years of each other. You can mention various things affecting you at that time and include your trip to attend a funeral or just your sadness at their passing. Or you can just finish out their story in the earlier passages that focus on them. After explaining their importance in your life, you can write something such as: “I saw my aunt and uncle less frequently as I got older, but I’ll always have fond memories of both of them. They died in the 1990s after living long, happy lives.” Even if you write your life story in chronological order, be flexible enough in respecting the chronology to allow yourself the creative license to keep a topic together if that seems to be easier for the reader to follow.

Here are some questions to ask yourself that will help you recall people and events in your life.

Critique of Traditional Writing Rules, Part 3: Show, Don’t Tell

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Critique of Traditional Writing Rules, Part 3: Show, Don’t Tell
Reviewing the Writer’s Digest list of 10 writing rules, we come to Rule 3—“show, don’t tell,” advice you’ve probably received from an English teacher at some point in your schooling. It’s an important rule, which author Natalie Goldberg recommends following. Goldberg provides an informative example to illustrate the difference between how a timid student might fulfill the typical “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” assignment when compared with a fearless writer. The former would tell, Goldberg says, writing something along the lines of, “I had a good time. It was very interesting and fun.” The bold describer would show, not tell. Regretting her own timidity, Goldberg wonders how much her teacher would have preferred if she’d shown instead of told and written the truth: “My mother dyed her hair red, smoked Marlboros, while my sister and I played Parcheesi on the back porch, sitting on the cool cement. My father ate an early dinner of steak and iceberg lettuce each night before he left to tend bar until 5 a.m.”
That’s the difference between telling and showing, and you can see why showing makes for a vastly more interesting memoir. But what happens when you want to reveal what’s going on in your mind? There’s no action to describe, but it’s critical to your memoir to share your thoughts about a situation. Literary agent Donald Maas address this, maintaining there is an effective way to keep the reader interested while conveying, for example, “ the intuition out of nowhere, for no solid reason, that she’s going to leave me.”
Maas’s solution? “The trick to telling is to base your passage in emotions. Less obvious emotions are good. Contrasting emotions are better. Conflicting emotions are best. If moving beneath the surface, in subtext, then you’re cooking. Fold into these feelings whatever outward details are at hand in the moment.” I agree with Goldberg that showing beats telling every time, but I also agree with Maas that when telling is your only available choice you can include a bit of candid emotional turmoil and still keep your readers engaged.
http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/writing-rules-10-experts-take-on-the-writers-rulebook

Reviewing the Writer’s Digest list of 10 writing rules, we come to Rule 3—“show, don’t tell,” advice you’ve probably received from an English teacher at some point in your schooling. It’s an important rule, which author Natalie Goldberg recommends following. Goldberg provides an informative example to illustrate the difference between how a timid student might fulfill the typical “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” assignment when compared with a fearless writer. The former would tell, Goldberg says, writing something along the lines of, “I had a good time. It was very interesting and fun.” The bold describer would show, not tell. Regretting her own timidity, Goldberg wonders how much her teacher would have preferred if she’d shown instead of told and written the truth: “My mother dyed her hair red, smoked Marlboros, while my sister and I played Parcheesi on the back porch, sitting on the cool cement. My father ate an early dinner of steak and iceberg lettuce each night before he left to tend bar until 5 a.m.”

That’s the difference between telling and showing, and you can see why showing makes for a vastly more interesting memoir. But what happens when you want to reveal what’s going on in your mind? There’s no action to describe, but it’s critical to  your memoir to share your thoughts about a situation. Literary agent Donald Maas addresses this, maintaining there is an effective way to keep the reader interested while conveying, for example, “ the intuition out of nowhere, for no solid reason, that she’s going to leave me.”

Maas’s solution? “The trick to telling is to base your passage in emotions. Less obvious emotions are good. Contrasting emotions are better. Conflicting emotions are best. If moving beneath the surface, in subtext, then you’re cooking. Fold into these feelings whatever outward details are at hand in the moment.” I agree with Goldberg that showing beats telling every time, but I also agree with Maas that, when telling is your only available choice, you can include a bit of candid emotional turmoil and still keep your readers engaged.

Critique of Traditional Writing Rules, Part 2: Hook Your Readers on Page 1

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Critique of Traditional Writing Rules, Part 2: Hook Your Readers on Page 1
On these diminishing fall days, we’re analyzing 10 writing rules, one by one, as they apply to memoir writers. The rules are listed on WritersDigest.com, and we’re up to Rule 2: Hook Your Readers on Page 1. Yay or nay?
Follow the rule, advises author Jerry B. Jenkins. As a reader, Jenkins says on the Writer’s Digest site, “I want to be engaged from the first sentence and held throughout. I recently critiqued a beginner’s manuscript that began, ‘I’m sure we’ve all heard the old adage …’ Well, if it’s an adage, it’s old, and if it’s an old adage, yes, we’ve all heard it. So why in the world would you want to start your novel with that?” Further, Jenkins asks, “Would you be more gripped by an old adage, or by something like, ‘When he kissed her goodbye and said he’d see her at dinner, Elizabeth believed only Ben’s goodbye’?”
However, author Steve Almond recommends breaking this rule—especially if you’re a new writer. He views the rule as a landmine writers fall into; in an attempt to hook the reader, writers jump into the middle of a vignette and offer the reader no backstory whatsoever. The reader becomes confused and, responding in direct opposition to the writer’s intent, gives up on the book within the first chapter.
While I solidly side with Jenkins that a first sentence should grab the reader’s interest, I agree with Almond that you can’t go too far into a random vignette before you begin giving it context. I urge memoir writers to find something more fascinating as a first sentence than “I was born in St. Louis during World War II.” Even if that’s the first fact you provide, throw in some more information to give it some oomph: “My birth came as a welcome event to my family not only because of the healthy baby boy delivered that day at a St. Louis hospital shortly after the United States entered World War II, but also because having a child come into the world excused my father from reporting for duty to the U.S. Navy for two full weeks.”
We’ll tackle rule #3 next week!
http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/writing-rules-10-experts-take-on-the-writers-rulebook

On these diminishing fall days, we’re analyzing 10 writing rules, one by one, as they apply to memoir writers. The rules are listed on WritersDigest.com, and we’re up to:

Rule 2: Hook Your Readers on Page 1. Yay or nay?

Follow the rule, advises author Jerry B. Jenkins. As a reader, Jenkins says on the Writer’s Digest site, “I want to be engaged from the first sentence and held throughout. I recently critiqued a beginner’s manuscript that began, ‘I’m sure we’ve all heard the old adage …’ Well, if it’s an adage, it’s old, and if it’s an old adage, yes, we’ve all heard it. So why in the world would you want to start your novel with that?” Further, Jenkins asks, “Would you be more gripped by an old adage, or by something like, ‘When he kissed her goodbye and said he’d see her at dinner, Elizabeth believed only Ben’s goodbye’?”

However, author Steve Almond recommends breaking this rule—especially if you’re a new writer. He views the rule as a landmine writers fall into; in an attempt to hook the reader, writers jump into the middle of a vignette and offer the reader no backstory whatsoever. The reader becomes confused and, responding in direct opposition to the writer’s intent, gives up on the book within the first chapter.

While I solidly side with Jenkins that a first sentence should grab the reader’s interest, I agree with Almond that you can’t go too far into a random vignette before you begin giving it context. I urge memoir writers to find something more fascinating as a first sentence than “I was born in St. Louis during World War II.” Even if that’s the first fact you provide, throw in some more information to give it some oomph: “My birth came as a welcome event to my family not only because of the healthy baby boy delivered that day at a St. Louis hospital shortly after the United States entered World War II, but also because having a child come into the world excused my father from reporting for duty to the U.S. Navy for two full weeks.”

We’ll tackle rule #3 next week!

Critique of Traditional Writing Rules, Part 1: Write What You Know

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Critique of Traditional Writing Rules, Part 1: Write What You Know
From now until about Christmastime, I’m going to be exploring 10 conventional rules of writing, one rule each week. I’m taking these rules from an interesting Writer’s Digest request of some highly respected writers and writing observers to share their opinions of the rules. For each rule, a “follow it” and a “break it” is expressed, and I will put those insights into context for all of your writing memoirs here on the Write My Memoirs site.
Rule 1: Write What You Know.
Literary agent Donald Maass and author Natalie Goldberg square off on this one. Maass goes for the “follow it” recommendation, saying, “Writing what you know means finding what is extraordinary in that which is ordinary and, conversely, discovering what is universal, meaningful and human in that which is uncommon.” Maas notes that it is not necessary to have lived an extraordinary life or have a unique subject. “You need only an original outlook and a fresh purpose for writing,” he says. “Hey, you can always research what you don’t know. But you can’t fake what’s in your heart. Say what matters. That’s writing what you know.”
Goldberg begs to differ, claiming that we all know only a small amount of what there is to know in the world and, further, your imagination enriches your writing. “We should not limit ourselves,” Goldberg maintains. “We should stretch ourselves beyond our borders. You may know your neighborhood, but what lurks beyond the familiar, safe streets?”
For memoir writers, there’s not much choice here. Mostly, when it comes to the writing-what-you-know rule, you’ll want to “follow it.” I do encourage you to do some fact-checking, research your ancestry and ask a lot of questions to people close to you in order to confirm your memories. Still, when you’re documenting your own impressions of your life, by definition you’re writing what you know.
Check back next time for rule #2!

From now until about Christmastime, I’m going to be exploring 10 conventional rules of writing, one rule each week. I’m taking these rules from an interesting Writer’s Digest request of some highly respected writers and writing observers to share their opinions of the rules. For each rule, a “follow it” and a “break it” is expressed, and I will put those insights into context for all of you writing memoirs here on the Write My Memoirs site.

Rule 1: Write What You Know.

Literary agent Donald Maass and author Natalie Goldberg square off on this one. Maass goes for the “follow it” recommendation, saying, “Writing what you know means finding what is extraordinary in that which is ordinary and, conversely, discovering what is universal, meaningful and human in that which is uncommon.” Maas notes that it is not necessary to have lived an extraordinary life or have a unique subject. “You need only an original outlook and a fresh purpose for writing,” he says. “Hey, you can always research what you don’t know. But you can’t fake what’s in your heart. Say what matters. That’s writing what you know.”

Goldberg begs to differ, claiming that we all know only a small amount of what there is to know in the world and, further, your imagination enriches your writing. “We should not limit ourselves,” Goldberg maintains. “We should stretch ourselves beyond our borders. You may know your neighborhood, but what lurks beyond the familiar, safe streets?”

For memoir writers, there’s not much choice here. Mostly, when it comes to the writing-what-you-know rule, you’ll want to “follow it.” I do encourage you to do some fact-checking, research your ancestry and ask a lot of questions to people close to you in order to confirm your memories. Still, when you’re documenting your own impressions of your life, by definition you’re writing what you know.

Check back next time for rule #2!

Think You’re Funny? Write a Memoir

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Think You’re Funny? Write a Memoir
Everybody’s a comedian, right? If you’re witty and thinking about writing a funny book, you might want to start with a memoir. New writers are always advised to write about “something you know.” What do you know better than your own life? And if you’re naturally funny, you’ve no doubt been picking up comedy material for decades about your relatives, your pets, school, your workplace, colleagues, friends and the typical, yet absurd, situations in which we all find ourselves. Write out all of those stories, one by one, and soon you will have the chapters to your humorous memoir.
Coming from the opposite direction, you may start out to write an ordinary memoir and discover that through your writer’s eye everything comes out funny. Even though you document your life’s dry facts and chronicle some unpleasant milestones such as parents’ deaths, you may find that what you recall best are the amusing, often heartwarming anecdotes that accompany even the saddest occasions in your life. In developing your voice as a writer, you should embrace that approach not only because it’s your natural voice, but also because humor keeps the reader engaged.
As part of your research, read some funny memoirs! There are plenty available; catch these links on Bookish.com and more on Flavorwire.com. From The Lottery author Shirley Jackson’s 1953 autobiography, Life Among the Savages, to recent memoirs of comedy icons like I Hate Everyone…Starting With Me by Joan Rivers and Seriously…I’m Kidding by Ellen Degeneres, you will be laughing as you pick up tips for the construction and flow of a funny memoir.
http://www.bookish.com/articles/can-we-talk-recent-hilarious-memoirs-by-women?=edit1
http://flavorwire.com/281223/10-of-the-most-hilarious-memoirs-youll-ever-read

Everybody’s a comedian, right? If you’re witty and thinking about writing a funny book, you might want to start with a memoir. New writers are always advised to write about “something you know.” What do you know better than your own life? And if you’re naturally funny, you’ve no doubt been picking up comedy material for decades about your relatives, your pets, school, your workplace, colleagues, friends and the typical, yet absurd, situations in which we all find ourselves. Write out all of those stories, one by one, and soon you will have the chapters to your humorous memoir.

Coming from the opposite direction, you may start out to write an ordinary memoir and discover that through your writer’s eye everything comes out funny. Even though you document your life’s dry facts and chronicle some unpleasant milestones such as parents’ deaths, you may find that what you recall best are the amusing, often heartwarming anecdotes that accompany even the saddest occasions in your life. In developing your voice as a writer, you should embrace that approach not only because it’s your natural voice, but also because humor keeps the reader engaged.

As part of your research, read some funny memoirs! There are plenty available; catch these suggestions on Bookish.com and Flavorwire.com. From The Lottery author Shirley Jackson’s 1953 autobiography, Life Among the Savages, to recent memoirs of comedy icons like I Hate Everyone…Starting With Me by Joan Rivers and Seriously…I’m Kidding by Ellen Degeneres, you will be laughing as you pick up tips for the construction and flow of a funny memoir.

TV Genealogy Show Strikes a Chord

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TV Genealogy Show Strikes a Chord
As you write your memoir, you may seek information reaching back several generations. Or perhaps after writing a first memoir focusing on your life as you recall it, you will decide to develop a second, research-based book that documents your heritage.
If that topic interests you, you’re probably already a member of ancestry.com, tracing your roots and discovering fascinating information about the generations that preceded you. I suggest you also check out the TV show “Who Do You Think You Are?” This show was on NBC for three seasons, and after it was canceled it was picked up by TLC, which is now running a full season. Each episode follows the journey as a celebrity traces his or her ancestry, uncovering all sorts of interesting material. In the process, viewers learn how to go about a thorough genealogy search. The producers help the celebrities, of course, whereas you’re on your own! They do use ancestry.com to pull up documents, but they also meet with genealogists and view photos and paperwork in person. Perhaps you wouldn’t have as much access to these experts as the producers of a television show, but the professionals seem genuinely interested in enlightening descendants about relatives whose accomplishments have gone largely acknowledged. By the way, the TV show has a spinoff book of the same name.
If you do any sort of genealogical search and turn up interesting history, please email us at WriteMyMemoirs about it, and we will share here it on the blog.
http://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/who-do-you-think-you-are
http://www.amazon.com/Who-You-Think-Are-Essential/dp/0143118919s

As you write your memoir, you may seek information reaching back several generations. Or perhaps after writing a first memoir focusing on your life as you recall it, you will decide to develop a second, research-based book that documents your heritage.

If that topic interests you, you’re probably already a member of ancestry.com, tracing your roots and discovering fascinating information about the generations that preceded you. I suggest you also check out the TV show “Who Do You Think You Are?” This show was on NBC for three seasons, and after it was canceled it was picked up by TLC, which is now running a full season. Each episode follows the journey as a celebrity traces his or her ancestry, uncovering all sorts of interesting material. In the process, viewers learn how to go about a thorough genealogy search. The producers help the celebrities, of course, whereas you’re on your own! They do use ancestry.com to pull up documents, but the celebrities also meet with genealogists and view photos and paperwork in person. Perhaps you wouldn’t have as much access to these experts as the producers of a television show, but the professionals seem genuinely interested in enlightening descendants about relatives whose accomplishments have gone largely unacknowledged. By the way, the TV show has a spinoff book of the same name.

If you do any sort of genealogical search and turn up interesting history, please email us at WriteMyMemoirs about it, and we will share here it on the blog.

Your Memoir as a Collection of Short Stories

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Still focusing on the essay, “How to Write a Memoir” by William Zinsser, let’s discuss one of the essay’s central themes—gathering up all of your life’s major stories. When you think of your memoir in that way, it’s easier to structure. Tackle one story at a time just as you lived one episode at a time, and when you’re finished you will have described an entire life. It’s also more interesting to the reader than going through year by year and giving a laundry list of your schools, romances, workplaces and favorite foods.

In the essay, Zinsser advises, “Your biggest stories will often have less to do with their subject than with their significance—not what you did in a certain situation, but how that situation affected you and shaped the person you became.” So consider the person you are and how you would want your great-great-grandchildren to think of you. Then think back to your life’s stories that developed that person.

We’re all a product of our time, so include colorful anecdotes that help the reader envision the setting. Perhaps you’ll describe your dad’s car or the outfit your mother wore to church or bicycling by yourself all over the countryside at a young age. If you feel that your birth order helped to shape you, write about your interactions with your siblings and parents. If the army changed your outlook, recall a couple of pivotal stories from that time rather than detailing everywhere you went. If you had to choose one influence that really helped to define you, what would it be? Keep that influence in mind as you write.

We’re all a product of our time, so include colorful anecdotes that help the reader envision the setting. Perhaps you’ll describe your dad’s car or the outfit your mother wore to church or bicycling by yourself all over the countryside at a young age. If you feel that your birth order helped to shape you, write about your interactions with your siblings and parents. If the army changed your outlook, recall a couple of pivotal stories from that time rather than detailing everywhere you went. If you had to choose one influence that really helped to define you, what would it be? Keep that influence in mind as you write.
p://theamericanscholar.org/how-to-write-a-memoir/#.UaTLItKsjTo

Make “Reducing Decisions” When You Plan Your Memoir

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Make “Reducing Decisions” When You Plan Your Memoir
This essay we’re examining all summer, “How to Write a Memoir” by William Zinsser, is so rich with good advice that it may take us well into the fall. So here’s another Zinsser pearl of wisdom: think small, not grand. You may start out to write a comprehensive, final-word story of your entire life, complete with a history of your heritage, a review of every school you attended and job you held, a roundup of your friends and details about all of the significant episodes that happened over your lifetime. But, really, that would take volumes, and it would be daunting to start. Zinsser suggests you begin with a wide lens and then narrow your focus.
“ Most people embarking on a memoir are paralyzed by the size of the task,” Zinsser observers. “The past looms over them in a thousand fragments, defying them to impose on it some kind of order. Because of that anxiety, many memoirs linger for years half written, or never get written at all.”
To point you in a direction, he continues, “you must make a series of reducing decisions….Remember that you are the protagonist in your own memoir, the tour guide. You must find a narrative trajectory for the story you want to tell and never relinquish control. This means leaving out of your memoir many people who don’t need to be there. Like siblings.” Leave out siblings! That just sounds wrong! But it’s not their story; it’s yours. You can mention them without going into a parallel story of their lives.
“Families are complex organisms, especially if you trace them back several generations,” Zinsser notes. “Decide to write about your mother’s side of the family or your father’s side, but not both. Return to the other one later and make it a separate project.” That’s something we often forget—nothing says that this has to be your first, last and only memoir. After you write about one aspect of your life, you may find it easier to start on a new, still autobiographical, book on a whole new topic—proving it does take volumes to cover your fascinating life.
http://theamericanscholar.org/how-to-write-a-memoir/#.UaTLItKsjTo

The essay we’re examining all summer, “How to Write a Memoir” by William Zinsser, is so rich with good advice that it may take us well into the fall. So here’s another Zinsser pearl of wisdom: think small, not grand. You may start out to write a comprehensive, final-word story of your entire life, complete with a history of your heritage, a review of every school you attended and job you held, a roundup of your friends and details about all of the significant episodes that happened over your lifetime. But, really, that would take volumes, and it would be daunting to start. Zinsser suggests you begin with a wide lens and then narrow your focus.

“Most people embarking on a memoir are paralyzed by the size of the task,” Zinsser observers. “The past looms over them in a thousand fragments, defying them to impose on it some kind of order. Because of that anxiety, many memoirs linger for years half written, or never get written at all.”

To point you in a direction, he continues, “you must make a series of reducing decisions….Remember that you are the protagonist in your own memoir, the tour guide. You must find a narrative trajectory for the story you want to tell and never relinquish control. This means leaving out of your memoir many people who don’t need to be there. Like siblings.” Leave out siblings! That just sounds wrong! But it’s not their story; it’s yours. You can mention them without going into a parallel story of their lives.

“Families are complex organisms, especially if you trace them back several generations,” Zinsser notes. “Decide to write about your mother’s side of the family or your father’s side, but not both. Return to the other one later and make it a separate project.” That’s something we often forget—nothing says that this has to be your first, last and only memoir. After you write about one aspect of your life, you may find it easier to start on another, still autobiographical, book on a whole new topic—proving it does take volumes to cover your fascinating life.

Meet William Zinsser

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Meet William Zinsser
As a memoir writer, you should know about an American author and teacher named William Zinsser. Now 90 years old and still writing, Zinsser is the author of On Writing Well. In 2006, he wrote an essay for The American Scholar that provided valuable insight into the process of writing a memoir. With its inspirationally warm temperatures and lazy-day vacationing, summertime is a great season to begin your memoir or make significant progress on it. To help you do that, let’s spend a portion of this summer discussing Zinsser’s essay, succinctly titled, “How to Write a Memoir.”
I’m going to start at the end, with the very last piece of advice in that essay: how to get started. Zinsser suggests:
“Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that’s still vivid in your memory. What you write doesn’t have to be long—three pages, five pages—but it should have a beginning and an end. Put that episode in a folder and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning, do the same thing. Tuesday’s episode doesn’t have to be related to Monday’s episode. Take whatever memory comes calling; your subconscious mind, having been put to work, will start delivering your past. Keep this up for two months, or three months, or six months. Don’t be impatient to start writing your ‘memoir,’ the one you had in mind before you began. Then, one day,…[read through your entries] and see what they tell you and what patterns emerge. They will tell you what your memoir is about and what it’s not about. They will tell you what’s primary and what’s secondary, what’s interesting and what’s not, what’s emotional, what’s important, what’s funny, what’s unusual, what’s worth pursing and expanding. You’ll begin to glimpse your story’s narrative shape and the road you want to take. Then all you have to do is put the pieces together.”
More about this essay in the coming weeks.
http://theamericanscholar.org/how-to-write-a-memoir/#.UaTLItKsjTo
http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonfiction/dp/0060891548/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370966977&sr=1-1&keywords=on+writing+well

As a memoir writer, you should know about an American author and teacher named William Zinsser. Now 90 years old and still writing, Zinsser is the author of On Writing Well. In 2006, he wrote an essay for The American Scholar that provided valuable insight into the process of writing a memoir. With its inspirationally warm temperatures and lazy-day vacationing, summertime is a great season to begin your memoir or make significant progress on it. To help you do that, let’s spend a portion of this summer discussing Zinsser’s essay, succinctly titled, “How to Write a Memoir.”

I’m going to start at the end, with the very last piece of advice in that essay: how to get started. Zinsser suggests:

“Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that’s still vivid in your memory. What you write doesn’t have to be long—three pages, five pages—but it should have a beginning and an end. Put that episode in a folder and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning, do the same thing. Tuesday’s episode doesn’t have to be related to Monday’s episode. Take whatever memory comes calling; your subconscious mind, having been put to work, will start delivering your past. Keep this up for two months, or three months, or six months. Don’t be impatient to start writing your ‘memoir,’ the one you had in mind before you began. Then, one day,…[read through your entries] and see what they tell you and what patterns emerge. They will tell you what your memoir is about and what it’s not about. They will tell you what’s primary and what’s secondary, what’s interesting and what’s not, what’s emotional, what’s important, what’s funny, what’s unusual, what’s worth pursing and expanding. You’ll begin to glimpse your story’s narrative shape and the road you want to take. Then all you have to do is put the pieces together.”

More about this essay in the coming weeks.

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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!

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