Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Procrastination: A Writer’s Enemy

Take steps to keep writing your memoir even if you’ve got off-schedule.
Procrastination: A Writer’s Enemy
Well, look at that date! It’s Friday, and this blog normally is updated every Tuesday. What happened? I got busy!
We’re all busy, and that’s never more evident than when you’re trying to maintain a writing routine. If you’re writing your memoirs, you’ve probably experienced a lapse at some point. Maybe you wrote every day for two weeks, and then you missed a day because you had to travel, or someone came to visit, or you needed to attend to a home repair—it doesn’t take much to derail a writing habit. Plus it’s February. This is the time of year for breaking all sorts of resolutions, whether it’s to exercise, diet or write. About six weeks into the year, your determination gets tested.
So what do you do if you’ve let your writing slide? You do what I did: get back to it. Yes, today is Friday instead of Tuesday, but who really cares? I could have just skipped this week altogether, but then when next Tuesday rolled around I’d be even more out of the blog habit, maybe be busy again and then I’d let it go another week and a new habit would be forming—a habit of not writing. No, the way to rerail the derail is to go back to that last piece you wrote, read it over, add a sentence and then add another sentence. Tomorrow, do the same. It’s fine to get off schedule and skip a day or a week. Forgive yourself! But you want to write your memoir, and as long as you’re thinking about it there’s no time like the present to just write.

Well, look at that date! It’s Friday, and this blog normally is updated every Tuesday. What happened? I got busy!

We’re all busy, and that’s never more evident than when you’re trying to maintain a writing routine. If you’re writing your memoirs, you’ve probably experienced a lapse at some point. Maybe you wrote every day for two weeks, and then you missed a day because you had to travel, or someone came to visit, or you needed to attend to a home repair—it doesn’t take much to derail a writing habit. Plus it’s February. This is the time of year for breaking all sorts of resolutions, whether it’s to exercise, diet or write. About six weeks into the year, your determination gets tested.

So what do you do if you’ve let your writing slide? You do what I did: get back to it. Yes, today is Friday instead of Tuesday, but who really cares? I could have just skipped this week altogether, but then when next Tuesday rolled around I’d be even more out of the blog habit; maybe I’d be busy again and then I’d let it go another week and a new habit would be forming—a habit of not writing. No, the way to rerail the derail is to go back to that last piece you wrote, read it over, add a sentence and then add another sentence. Tomorrow, do the same. It’s fine to get off schedule and skip a day or a week. Forgive yourself! But you want to write your memoir, and as long as you’re thinking about it there’s no time like the present to just write.

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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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