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Memoir writing process

Never Written a Book? Your Memoir Can Be a Great First Try

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Never Written a Book? Your Memoir Can Be a Great First Try
Continuing to share with you an essay I found helpful called, appropriately, “How to Write a Memoir,” here’s what author William Zinsser says about his dad’s only attempt at writing:
“Not being a writer, my father never worried about finding his ‘style.’ He just wrote the way he talked, and now, when I read his sentences, I hear his personality and his humor, his idioms and his usages, many of them an echo of his college years in the early 1900s. I also hear his honesty. He wasn’t sentimental about blood ties, and I smile at his terse appraisals of Uncle X, ‘a second-rater,’ or Cousin Y, who ‘never amounted to much.’”
An accomplished writer and the author of On Writing Well, Zinsser realizes that it’s that very amateurish “voice” that brings all of the charm to his father’s work: “It now occurs to me that my father, who didn’t try to be a writer, was a more natural writer than I am, with my constant fiddling and fussing. Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and your readers will jump overboard to get away. Your product is you. The crucial transaction in memoir and personal history is the transaction between you and your remembered experiences and emotions.”
That, WriteMyMemoir members, is great advice!

Continuing to share with you an essay I found helpful called, appropriately, “How to Write a Memoir,” here’s what author William Zinsser says about his dad’s only attempt at writing:

“Not being a writer, my father never worried about finding his ‘style.’ He just wrote the way he talked, and now, when I read his sentences, I hear his personality and his humor, his idioms and his usages, many of them an echo of his college years in the early 1900s. I also hear his honesty. He wasn’t sentimental about blood ties, and I smile at his terse appraisals of Uncle X, ‘a second-rater,’ or Cousin Y, who ‘never amounted to much.’”

An accomplished writer and the author of On Writing Well, Zinsser realizes that it’s that very amateurish “voice” that brings all of the charm to his father’s work: “It now occurs to me that my father, who didn’t try to be a writer, was a more natural writer than I am, with my constant fiddling and fussing. Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and your readers will jump overboard to get away. Your product is you. The crucial transaction in memoir and personal history is the transaction between you and your remembered experiences and emotions.”

That, WriteMyMemoir members, is great advice!

Memoir Writing for the Non-Writer

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Memoir Writing for the Non-Writer
A lot of people would like to write a memoir but feel intimidated or overwhelmed by the task, because neither are they writers by profession nor do they write as a hobby. In fact, may people who would like to have a memoir don’t enjoy writing at all. Can someone like that still be the author of an autobiography? Absolutely. If you can talk, you can write!
Picking up from the past two blog posts, we’re spending a few weeks here discussing an essay by William Zinsser on memoir writing. In this passage from his essay, Zinsser tells how his father wrote a memoir:
“My father, a businessman with no literary pretensions, wrote two family histories in his old age. It was the perfect task for a man with few gifts for self-amusement. Sitting in his favorite green leather armchair in an apartment high above Park Avenue in New York, he wrote a history of his side of the family—the Zinssers and the Scharmanns—going back to 19th century Germany. Then he wrote a history of the family shellac business on West 59th Street, William Zinsser & Co., that his grandfather founded in 1849. He wrote with a pencil on a yellow legal pad, never pausing—then or ever again—to rewrite. He had no patience with any enterprise that obliged him to reexamine or slow down. On the golf course, walking toward his ball, he would assess the situation, pick a club out of the bag, and swing at the ball as he approached it, hardly breaking stride.”
It’s all about telling little stories that, together, provide a window into a life. The writing doesn’t have to be perfect. Next time, we’ll go more into why your memoir might actually benefit from your “amateur” writing.
http://theamericanscholar.org/how-to-write-a-memoir/#.UaTLItKsjTo

A lot of people would like to write a memoir but feel intimidated or overwhelmed by the task, because neither are they writers by profession nor do they write as a hobby. In fact, may people who would like to have a memoir don’t enjoy writing at all. Can someone like that still be the author of an autobiography? Absolutely. If you can talk, you can write!

Picking up from the past two blog posts, we’re spending a few weeks here discussing an essay by William Zinsser on memoir writing. In this passage from his essay, Zinsser tells how his father wrote a memoir:

“My father, a businessman with no literary pretensions, wrote two family histories in his old age. It was the perfect task for a man with few gifts for self-amusement. Sitting in his favorite green leather armchair in an apartment high above Park Avenue in New York, he wrote a history of his side of the family—the Zinssers and the Scharmanns—going back to 19th century Germany. Then he wrote a history of the family shellac business on West 59th Street, William Zinsser & Co., that his grandfather founded in 1849. He wrote with a pencil on a yellow legal pad, never pausing—then or ever again—to rewrite. He had no patience with any enterprise that obliged him to reexamine or slow down. On the golf course, walking toward his ball, he would assess the situation, pick a club out of the bag, and swing at the ball as he approached it, hardly breaking stride.”

It’s all about telling little stories that, together, provide a window into a life. The writing doesn’t have to be perfect. Next time, we’ll go more into why your memoir might actually benefit from your “amateur” writing.

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.

The Memoir Poem: Another Format Choice

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The Memoir Poem: Another Format Choice
Perhaps you’d like to write a mini-autobiography—either a brief overview of your entire life with only the essential details, or a full account of a single event in your life—but you do not feel confident at writing prose. Is poetry an option? It sure is. There’s even a name for it: “confessional poetry.”
Walt Whitman is widely considered to be the first confessional poet, with his Song of Myself and Leaves of Grass infusing first-person narrative into poetry. Before Whitman’s time, it was considered indulgent for poets to insert themselves into their verses. But Whitman seems to have opened the barn door. “For good or ill, we live in the age of the memoir,” write David Graham and Kate Sontag in their anthology, After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography.
Perhaps you’ve always written poetry and you’re comfortable with it; then you’re a perfect candidate to express the episodes of your life in verse. If you haven’t written much poetry before but the memoir poem appeals to you, take a course in poetry writing. And, of course, read lots of contemporary “confessional poetry” to get into the rhythm of this genre. Here are a few lines from For My Lover, Returning to His Wife, by 20th century poet Anne Sexton:
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.
http://www.amazon.com/After-Confession-Poetry-as-Autobiography/dp/1555973558/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370379070&sr=8-1&keywords=After+Confession%3A+Poetry+as+Autobiography
http://www.valpo.edu/vpr/byrneessayconfession.html
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-my-lover-returning-to-his-wife/

Perhaps you’d like to write a mini-autobiography—either a brief overview of your entire life with only the essential details, or a full account of a single event in your life—but you do not feel confident at writing prose. Is poetry an option? It sure is. There’s even a name for it: “confessional poetry.”

Walt Whitman is widely considered to be the first confessional poet, with his Song of Myself and Leaves of Grass infusing first-person narrative into poetry. Before Whitman’s time, it was considered indulgent for poets to insert themselves into their verses. But Whitman seems to have opened the barn door. “For good or ill, we live in the age of the memoir,” write David Graham and Kate Sontag in their anthology, After Confession: Poetry as Autobiography.

Perhaps you’ve always written poetry and you’re comfortable with it; then you’re a perfect candidate to express the episodes of your life in verse. If you haven’t written much poetry before but the memoir poem appeals to you, take a course in poetry writing. And, of course, read lots of contemporary “confessional poetry” to get into the rhythm of this genre. Here are a few lines from For My Lover, Returning to His Wife, by 20th century poet Anne Sexton:

She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.

A Memorial Day Message

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A Memorial Day Message
Earlier this year, I blogged about veterans’ memoirs. War—and even peacetime service—can be such a disturbing, fascinating experience that writing about it can be therapeutic. Classes, support groups and funded projects have emerged to encourage vets to put their thoughts and memories down on paper. But if you’re on your own and want to write a war memoir, what are the guidelines?
Many of the members here at WriteMyMemoirs found our site because they want to write about their time on the front lines. Let’s go to the obvious—Yahoo.com—to help you out. Among Yahoo’s 10 Tips to Writing a True War Memoir is this valuable suggestion:
“Do not leave anything out. Living through a war is no easy task, and…having to relive…everything that you’ve already been through…can be a morose and daunting experience. However, a writer cannot let emotions get in the way of telling a true story….It’s our duty as veterans to give a full and accurate depiction.”
This piece also cautions against revealing your political views regarding the war, but I disagree. It’s your memoir! While it’s important to accurately describe the action and the details, it’s also informative and interesting for the reader to know your impressions. A war experience can influence your political outlook and, in some cases, change the direction of your life, so that chapter in your memoir can be critical. Be as courageous in writing about your military experience as you were in living it. At WriteMyMemoirs, we all thank you for your service.
http://voices.yahoo.com/10-tips-writing-true-war-memoir-7736548.html

Earlier this year, I blogged about veterans’ memoirs. War—and even peacetime service—can be such a disturbing, fascinating experience that writing about it can be therapeutic. Classes, support groups and funded projects have emerged to encourage vets to put their thoughts and memories down on paper. But if you’re on your own and want to write a war memoir, what are the guidelines?

Many of the members here at WriteMyMemoirs found our site because they want to write about their time on the front lines. Let’s go to the obvious—Yahoo.com—to help you out. Among Yahoo’s 10 Tips to Writing a True War Memoir is this valuable suggestion:

“Do not leave anything out. Living through a war is no easy task, and…having to relive…everything that you’ve already been through…can be a morose and daunting experience. However, a writer cannot let emotions get in the way of telling a true story….It’s our duty as veterans to give a full and accurate depiction.”

This piece also cautions against revealing your political views regarding the war, but I disagree. It’s your memoir! While it’s important to accurately describe the action and the details, it’s also informative and interesting for the reader to hear your candid impressions. A war experience can influence your political outlook and, in some cases, change the direction of your life, so that chapter in your memoir can be critical. Be as courageous in writing about your military experience as you were in living it. At WriteMyMemoirs, we all thank you for your service.

StoryCorps Project Records People’s Memoirs

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StoryCorps Project Records People’s Memoirs
“I believe if you don’t tell your family history, or document it somehow, you lose it.” That’s the sentiment of one son who interviewed his father for the ongoing StoryCorps oral history project, as quoted in a Chicago Tribune article. Certainly here at Write My Memoirs, we agree with that!
The decade-old StoryCorps project records ordinary people being interviewed by a friend or relative about their life stories. Excerpts air Friday mornings on local radio station WBEZ-FM 91.5. Funded by nonprofit groups and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the project is open to everyone and has recorded more than 45,000 life stories, which are archived at the Library of Congress.
To open the project to as many people as possible, this month the Chicago Cultural Center opened a StoryCorps booth containing a desk, a few chairs, a pair of microphones and a box of tissues that, according to the Tribune report, gets used up quickly. A StoryCorps facilitator sits in on the hour-long interview session to work the audio equipment and ask an occasional clarifying question. Participants receive a free audio recording of their interviews on a CD.
“The idea of StoryCorps is that the act of people interviewing each other could change their lives, make their lives better and tell them that they matter,” StoryCorps founder Dave Isay told the Trib reporter. If you would like to make an appointment to participate, call 800-850-4406 or go to chicago.storycorps.org.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ent-0520-story-corps-20130519,0,3676901.story
http://storycorps.org/record-your-story/locations/chicago-il

“I believe if you don’t tell your family history, or document it somehow, you lose it.” That’s the sentiment of one son who interviewed his father for the ongoing StoryCorps oral history project, as quoted in a Chicago Tribune article. Certainly here at Write My Memoirs, we agree with that!

The decade-old StoryCorps project records ordinary people being interviewed by a friend or relative about their life stories. Excerpts air Friday mornings on local radio station WBEZ-FM 91.5. Funded by nonprofit groups and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the project is open to everyone and has recorded more than 45,000 life stories, which are archived at the Library of Congress.

To open the project to as many people as possible, this month the Chicago Cultural Center set up a StoryCorps booth containing a desk, a few chairs, a pair of microphones and a box of tissues that, according to the Tribune report, gets used up quickly. A StoryCorps facilitator sits in on the hour-long interview session to work the audio equipment and ask an occasional clarifying question. Participants receive a free audio recording of their interviews on a CD.

“The idea of StoryCorps is that the act of people interviewing each other could change their lives, make their lives better and tell them that they matter,” StoryCorps founder Dave Isay told the Trib reporter. If you would like to make an appointment to participate, call 800-850-4406 or go to chicago.storycorps.org.

Write a Memoir to Ease Your Emotional Pain

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Write a Memoir to Ease Your Emotional Pain
It’s quite common in therapy for patients to be directed to write out their feelings. Putting your thoughts into words allows you to organize them, analyze them and review them later. However, writing out your thoughts is not the same as crafting your life story. The primary amazon.com review of the book Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives, by Louise DeSalvo, says: “Contrary to what most self-help books claim, just writing won’t help you; in fact, there’s abundant evidence that the wrong kind of writing can be damaging.” There’s something about story writing that is more cathartic. It has that classic form of a beginning, middle and end, even if you choose not to present your story chronologically.
Your relatives may find your memoir interesting no matter how you write it. But if you want to publish your memoir for a broader audience, keep in mind that readers are not generally intrigued by details of your therapeutic journey. In fact, one blogger maintains that readers will reject your memoir unless it contains the elements of a compelling story all on its own. Memoirists who have been widely read, blogger Agent Kristin says, have understood that “readers are interested in an inside look to a world they’ve never seen or have never imagined. A world that is unbelievable but true. A world that is unique but resonates with us. A story that captures a universal feeling and the reader senses the connection.”
I recommend a two-tier process here on Write My Memoirs. To calm your emotional turmoil, write out your feelings, your life story and your quest to find psychological peace. Keep that copy for yourself. Then if you’d like to publish your work, use that as a foundation, but craft a fascinating, nonfiction story that just happens to have you as the protagonist.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0807072435/ref=nosim/?tag=jerwaxmenheas-20
http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2007/06/writing-memoir-is-not-therapy.html

It’s quite common in therapy for patients to be directed to write out their feelings. Putting your thoughts into words allows you to organize them, analyze them and review them later. However, writing out your thoughts is not the same as crafting your life story. The primary amazon.com review of the book Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives, by Louise DeSalvo, says: “Contrary to what most self-help books claim, just writing won’t help you; in fact, there’s abundant evidence that the wrong kind of writing can be damaging.” There’s something about story writing that is more cathartic. It has that classic form of a beginning, middle and end, even if you choose not to present your story chronologically.

Your relatives may find your memoir interesting no matter how you write it. But if you want to publish your memoir for a broader audience, keep in mind that readers are not generally intrigued by details of your therapeutic journey. In fact, one blogger maintains that readers will reject your memoir unless it contains the elements of a compelling story all on its own. Memoirists who have been widely read, blogger Agent Kristin says, have understood that “readers are interested in an inside look to a world they’ve never seen or have never imagined. A world that is unbelievable but true. A world that is unique but resonates with us. A story that captures a universal feeling and the reader senses the connection.”

I recommend a two-tier process here on Write My Memoirs. To calm your emotional turmoil, write out your feelings, your life story and your quest to find psychological peace. Keep that copy for yourself. Then if you’d like to publish your work, use that as a foundation, but craft a fascinating, nonfiction life story that just happens to be about you.

Your Memoir Should Draw From Your “Emotional Truth”

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You Memoir Should Draw From Your “Emotional Truth”
Author Diana Raab observes that writing a powerful memoir is more about connecting—and connecting the reader—with your feelings and outlook on life than it is about coming up with tantalizing stories. Reach deeply into yourself, and the power will unfold.
“The most compelling memoirists reveal a deep emotional truth about their lives,” Raab told the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs in an interview promoting a memoir-writing workshop she’s leading this summer at the first annual 2013 Summer Writing Institute of Antioch University, Santa Barbara, California. “I urge my students to ‘get down to their emotional truth.’ Sometimes this is not easy to do, but once the flow begins, it is a very gratifying experience.” The author of two published autobiographical books—Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal and Healing with Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey—Rabb told the interviewer that a memoir offers a snapshot of your life centered around a theme, which is distinguished from an autobiography, which tells the story of your entire life.
“Memoirs tend to be interesting to read,” she noted, “because our lives are the accumulation of stories—some tender and heartwarming, some frustrating, some boring, and others dark and destructive—all helping to build who we are.”
Scheduled for July 28-August 3 and limited to 10 students, Raab’s workshop will blend teaching techniques ranging from lecture and discussion to critique and writing exercises. If you’re interested, apply here by June 15. (Write My Memoirs is in no way associated with the workshop.)
http://greenheritagenews.com/the-essentials-of-memoir-writing-in-santa-barbara-summer-2013/
http://www.antiochsb.edu/swi/how-to-apply/
http://www.dianaraab.com/

Author Diana Raab observes that writing a powerful memoir is more about connecting—and connecting the reader—with your feelings and outlook on life than it is about coming up with tantalizing stories. Reach deeply into yourself, and the power will unfold.

“The most compelling memoirists reveal a deep emotional truth about their lives,” Raab told the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs in an interview promoting a memoir-writing workshop she’s leading this summer at the first annual 2013 Summer Writing Institute of Antioch University, Santa Barbara, California. “I urge my students to ‘get down to their emotional truth.’ Sometimes this is not easy to do, but once the flow begins, it is a very gratifying experience.” The author of two published autobiographical books—Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal and Healing with Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey—Rabb told the interviewer that a memoir offers a snapshot of your life centered around a theme, which is distinguished from an autobiography, which tells the story of your entire life.

“Memoirs tend to be interesting to read,” she noted, “because our lives are the accumulation of stories—some tender and heartwarming, some frustrating, some boring, and others dark and destructive—all helping to build who we are.”

Scheduled for July 28-August 3 and limited to 10 students, Raab’s workshop will blend teaching techniques ranging from lecture and discussion to critique and writing exercises. If you’re interested, apply here by June 15. (Write My Memoirs is in no way associated with the workshop.)

Aiming Your Memoir at a Young Audience?

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Aiming Your Memoir at a Young Audience?
“Brutally attacked by rebel soldiers who cut off both her hands….” That’s the beginning of a synopsis of The Bite of the Mango by Miratu Kamara, a book included on About.com’s list of biographies, autobiographies and memoirs for teens. Apparently teens are a tough bunch these days. Other books on the list relate the lives of a drug smuggling gone horribly wrong, teenagers on death row, a “boy soldier” in Sierre Leone and, perhaps most famous, a young surfer whose arm was chewed off by a shark.
If you believe that your memoir has something to offer young people, there’s no need to sugar-coat your life’s experiences. Write your story in words a 14-year-old can understand. Try to keep it under 300 pages. Don’t overplay the graphic detail involving violence or sex. Present it in a way that there’s a lesson they can take away—that’s probably the hardest requirement. School libraries and the young people’s sections of public libraries will carry your book if it strikes the librarians as “powerful” in painting the picture of a series of events and in delivering a message.
Without a message, the story of your life is a narrative that will resonate only with the people who know you. If you think you have something of value to teach to young people who will be inspired to follow in your footsteps, or the opposite—will be able to avoid making the same mistakes you made—write with those teens in mind.
http://childrensbooks.about.com/od/5youngadultbooks/tp/contemporary-biographies-autobiographies-memoirs-for-teens.htm

“Brutally attacked by rebel soldiers who cut off both her hands….” That’s the beginning of a synopsis of The Bite of the Mango by Miratu Kamara, a book included on About.com’s list of biographies, autobiographies and memoirs for teens. Apparently teens are a tough bunch these days. Other books on the list relate the lives of a drug smuggling gone horribly wrong, teenagers on death row, a “boy soldier” in Sierre Leone and, perhaps most famous, a young surfer whose arm was chewed off by a shark.

If you believe that your memoir has something to offer young people, there’s no need to sugar-coat your life’s experiences. Write your story in words a 14-year-old can understand. Try to keep it under 300 pages. Don’t overplay the graphic detail involving violence or sex. Present it in a way that there’s a lesson they can take away—that’s probably the hardest requirement. School libraries and the young people’s sections of public libraries will carry your book if it strikes the librarians as “powerful” in painting the picture of a series of events and in delivering a message.

Without a message, the story of your life is a narrative that will resonate only with the people who know you. If you think you have something of value to teach to young people who will be inspired to follow in your footsteps, or the opposite—will be able to avoid making the same mistakes you made—write with those teens in mind.

Keep a “Quotes Journal” as a Memoir Resource

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Keep a “Quotes Journal” as a Memoir Resource
A lot of people like to include dialogue in their memoirs. It breaks up the copy visually and makes the reading more interesting by really bringing a situation to life. But dialogue can be difficult to write, and that’s not the only problem.
When you relate a conversation, you’re putting quotes around not just your own words, but someone else’s words. You can rely on your memory to paraphrase what happened in a scene you write about, and in a memoir you do the best you can. But there seems to be a higher standard of accuracy in quoting directly, and you can’t possibly remember a conversation word for word even when you are one of the participants or you witness the discussion; you can’t possibly know exactly what was said if you weren’t even present.
If you’re still some years away from writing your memoir, begin now to keep what I call a “quotes journal” of things people say to you that you want to remember precisely. Perhaps it’s the “wise sayings” your mother likes to repeat as advice to you. Maybe it’s a particularly poignant conversation you had with someone. Or, when you experience a traumatic event, it’s interesting to write down all of the comments people make about that occurrence. Their words provide insight into their character as well as into your relationship with them. When you go to write your memoir, you’ll find your quotes journal very helpful.

A lot of people like to include dialogue in their memoirs. It breaks up the copy visually and makes the reading more interesting by really bringing a situation to life. But dialogue can be difficult to write, and that’s not the only problem.

When you relate a conversation, you’re putting quotes around not just your own words, but someone else’s words. You can rely on your memory to paraphrase what happened in a scene you write about, and in a memoir you do the best you can. But there seems to be a higher standard of accuracy in quoting directly, and you can’t possibly remember a conversation word for word even when you are one of the participants or you witness the discussion, much less if you weren’t even present.

If you’re still some years away from writing your memoir, begin now to keep what I call a “quotes journal” of things people say to you that you want to remember precisely. Perhaps it’s the “wise sayings” your mother likes to repeat as advice to you. Maybe it’s a particularly poignant conversation you had with someone. Or, when you experience a traumatic event, it’s interesting to write down all of the comments people make about that occurrence. Their words provide insight into their character as well as into your relationship with them. When you do begin to write your memoir, you’ll find your quotes journal very helpful.

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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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