Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Internet Makes Fact-Checking Your Memoirs Easy

Here are some website suggestions to help you get your facts straight as you write your memoirs.

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.

Like this article?

Login

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!

Schedule A Call