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Memoir writing process

Find Write My Memoirs on Facebook!

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Since we hope to reach everyone who needs help and motivation with the somewhat daunting task of writing a memoir, WriteMyMemoirs has just joined Facebook! We are a “fan page,??? which means you become our fans rather than our friends. In Facebook land, there’s a distinction.

What it means to our members is that you can easily talk to us and talk to each other. Post something on our wall! We will use that space to alert everyone when a new blog entry has been posted here on writemymemoirs.com, and we’ll keep up with other things relevant to writing an autobiography.

If you are not very familiar with Facebook, you might want to give it a try. Social networking sites like Facebook can be a great way to stay connected with friends and family members, particularly younger people. You can share photos, everyday thoughts and links to other Internet websites. As time goes on, perhaps our little memoir community will grow and we’ll have some good discussions going about writing, memories and life in general. See you over there!

Internet Makes Fact-Checking Your Memoirs Easy

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When you’re writing your life story, you want to avoid factual errors, but no one’s memory is reliable and comprehensive enough to fill in every detail. Dates, the exact names of places, the correct spelling of people’s names, the precise distance between cities—these are the types of specifics that you’ll want to get right.

I’m old enough to remember what research used to entail. You’d have to pretty much camp out at your local library for weeks, taking notes and photocopying, in order to research even a small book. Today, from the comfort of home, you can download or copy and paste information right into your computer. There’s just no comparison in terms of efficiency and degree of access.

While it’s usually productive to start with Google and Wikipedia, I can suggest a few other sites that also will help you to fill in the blanks as you write your memoirs:

  • Internet Public Library—it’s just like going through the library stacks except there’s no heavy lifting.
  • Google Archives—creates an automatic time line of historical events involving any topic you choose.
  • MelissaData—lists sites that help you pinpoint locations and find statistical information.
  • Gary Price’s List of Lists—helps you to identify the “top 10??? or “top 100??? of many topics.

Your memoirs are a piece of history! Give them their due by taking the time to research the time period and get your facts straight.

Forget Your Password? Ask the “Memoirs??? Gang for Help!

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From my own online experiences as well as from the email we receive here at WriteMyMemoirs, I understand how easy it is to forget your username or password—sometimes both! We all make mistakes and forget things. When we create a username and password on any website, we try to come up with something simple enough to remember—but also something complex enough that other people won’t be able to figure out. Then if we let even a few days go by without signing onto the account, when we go back to it we may not be able to follow our own trail of thought.

If that happens to you, please just let us know! Click on Contact Us at the top of the page, and ask us to email your username and password. We’re happy to help! Often, the alternative to asking us to retrieve your information is that you just stop coming to the website and give up on writing your memoirs. We certainly don’t want you to do that!

You signed up for a reason: to create a record of your life story. It’s a great goal and something that your children and grandchildren will appreciate. Does it take work? Most things worth having require a commitment and some hard work. Keep your eye on the prize, and don’t let something as simple as forgetting your password stop you from completing this worthwhile achievement. We’re here to help. Just ask us!

Avoid Regrets: Write While You’re Healthy

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Mary Schmich, a columnist for my hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, frequently writes about personal topics, and this past Sunday Mary wrote about her aging mother. Although she no longer can care for herself, Mary’s mother has taken up writing. Mary tells readers: “For a while now, she has been scribbling notes on every kind of paper. Big sheets, little sheets, lined, unlined, white, yellow, blue.??? She has the use of only one hand, which “opens just enough to let a pen slip between her fingers.??? Among the many things the older woman writes are stories from her childhood. At this stage of her life, Mary’s mother feels the need to write her memoirs.

My plea to you is not to wait that long. You have the advantage of knowing how to use a computer, and you probably have the use of both of your hands. Mary found her mother’s legal pad with the heading, “Topics to Write About.??? You don’t need a legal pad; you can keep your topics online here at WriteMyMemoirs. You won’t lose them or forget the topics you wanted to include.

But if you wait too long, like Mary’s mom, all you will have is the topic titles and not the life stories that go with them. You’re here to write your memoirs. Set up a schedule and get them done, because time goes so very quickly.

English is an Ever-Changing Language

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Since I teach grammar and writing, a lot of people email me questions about the “rules.??? They remember learning something in school about whether you can split an infinitive and when to use “who??? rather “whom,??? but they’re sketchy on the details. If you have similar issues as you write your memoirs, you might take some comfort from a new book by Jack Lynch, The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of “Proper??? English, From Shakespeare to “South Park.???

In reviewing the book for The New York Times, Neil Genzlinger calls it “an entertaining tour of the English language??? that “shows that many of the rules that editors and other grammatical zealots wave about like cudgels are arbitrary and destined to be swept aside as words and usage evolve.??? In other words, the rule that’s stumping today you will likely not even matter tomorrow.

Genzlinger quotes Lynch: “Too often, the mavens and pundits are talking through their hats. They’re guilty of turning superstitions into rules, and often their proclamations are nothing more than prejudice representing itself as principle.??? So if you’re holding yourself back by second-guessing every sentence, try not to be so hard on yourself. Write your autobiography with passion and purpose, and you’ll probably do fine.


Start Your Autobiography with a Powerful First Line

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“I was born in [name your year] in [name your town].??? Sure, you can begin your autobiography with that sentence. But, really, why would you? Be creative, and make the first line of your memoirs drive the reader to want to learn more about you.

How? You can throw a little intrigue into your first sentence—make it mysterious in some way. An example comes from singer Janis Ian’s 2009 work, Society’s Child: My Autobiography, which reads, “I was born into the crack that split America.??? A sentence like that leads the reader to wonder what it means exactly and, thus, encourages further reading. Or, you can make a statement that, while deceivingly simple, also startles: “I was born in a house my father built??? is the first sentence of Richard Nixon’s memoirs. A third example, a multiple-sentence lead written by artist Salvador Dali, speaks for itself in giving the reader a good idea of the author’s personality: “At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.???

You might want to wait until you have several chapters of your memoirs written before you tackle your opening line. Or, start from the beginning and write your first line, but keep an open mind that you might want to change it as you get a feel for your own story and style of writing.

Take Your Memoirs on the Road

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If you travel, that week away from the computer can wreak havoc with your memoir writing momentum. Perhaps you sit down to write at the same time each day, or you find that you write best when you’re in your own environment. Put you in a hotel room with a schedule of sightseeing, or in the guest room of your daughter’s home with grandchildren to entertain you, and the memoir writing goes right out the window. When you do return home, you may find that you’re out of the habit. This can be so disrupting that you may not return to writing your autobiography.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The best way to ensure that you don’t derail your efforts is to take a laptop with you when you travel. I’m not here to promote any particular technology, but I will say that since I bought a 10-inch, 2.8-pound laptop that fits into a large purse, I can easily transport my Word files as well as my wi-fi internet compatibility wherever I go. It makes the decision of whether to take work with me an easy one.

Traveling can actually inspire your memoir writing. Sometimes when you’re away from home, you can more intensely tap into your creativity. Or if you’re visiting your old hometown or other familiar spot, you may remember things that happened that you’d otherwise overlook. So the next trip you take, don’t leave your memoirs at home!

Tips For Exploring Some Memoir Topics In-Depth

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Structure and organization can be the most challenging aspects of writing memoirs. Even if you do it the easiest way—start from birth and carry through chronologically until present day—you may hit topics that you want to explain more thoroughly. How do you do that?

Let’s say you want to indicate that the strongest influence on you was your father. It’s okay to take a few pages to talk about your dad even though it means mixing up the chronology. Maybe you mention the time he took you to your first major league baseball game. You talk about your experience at the ballpark, and then you can write something like, “Looking at my dad that day, I couldn’t foresee the impact he would have on my life. His love of collecting alone influenced my own dozen collections over the years.??? And you could continue with your career choice or anything else that reflected your father’s influence. It doesn’t all have to go in order.

Or maybe you had a childhood friend who was very important during your early years but not later in your life. If you want to let your readers know what happened to that friend, you can write about how the friend’s life turned out as you’re writing about your childhood together. You don’t have to wait until later in the book when it would be in context chronologically. As you write your memoirs, you’ll get more skilled at finessing the organization of the material you’re presenting.

Cold? Cozy Up to Your Memoir Writing Desk

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blog22We know that we have members on WriteMyMemoirs from all over the world, so maybe you’re in the southern hemisphere—Australia, perhaps?—enjoying summer right now. However, since most of our members live in North America or Europe, as I do, I’m guessing it’s pretty cold where you are. I know it is here in the Midwest!

January and February can be “character-building??? months. My windows are frosty, and it’s in the single digits out there. But that’s why, if you made a new year’s resolution to write your autobiography, this weather presents your best shot of honoring your promise to yourself. This is hunker-down weather, folks! Nothing is distracting you from the task at hand. The birds aren’t singing out there, flowers aren’t blooming, kids aren’t flying kites. No warm breezes beckon you to leave your writing room; if you stop to smell the roses you’ll likely end up with a frostbitten face.

So turn up the heat and be grateful that nature supplies us with a respite from all of those busy outdoor activities. Grab a cup of hot tea or cocoa and sit down for some serious memoir writing. If you ski or love to be out in the snow, you’ll have to find other motivation. But, for me, January is a very productive month!

Photo: © Lori Walter courtesy of Dreamstime

The Obvious New Year’s Resolution: “Write My Memoirs???!

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blog21Writing your memoirs is a great New Year’s resolution for 2010! If this is the first time you’ve been to our site, sign up today and get started! If you’re already a member but haven’t gotten much farther than naming your first chapter, make January 1 the first day of memoir writing. And if you have been making progress, set 2010 as your goal year for completing the work.

Goals and deadlines have been shown to be effective motivational tools for lots of things. And yet we know that New Year’s resolutions tend to fall off after the first few weeks. February often finds people back to eating too much, exercising too little and dropping whatever task they’d assigned themselves in the heat of the resolution-making moment.

The way to avoid this fate with writing your memoirs is to break down your big goal into smaller subgoals. By the end of January, have one really solid story written or, if you think you can handle it, a full chapter. Then set your February goal. Or decide that you must write one story a week, two stories a month or whatever pace fits your schedule. Then put it on your calendar, block out time in your datebook and talk about it to other people. All of those little efforts will serve to keep you motivated to continue, and by next year at this time you’ll have some memoirs to show for yourself!

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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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