We are experiencing issues with our Contact form.
Please Email Us Directly at: Su*****@************rs.com.

Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

PLEASE NOTE:

oUR CONTACT US Form HAD A MALFUNCTION.
IF YOU HAVEN’T RECEIVED A REPLY, PLEASE FILL IT OUT AGAIN OR WRITE US DIRECTLY.

Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

life story

What If You Want to Write a Non-Memoir?

by

Sometimes people ask me if it’s okay to use their WriteMyMemoirs account to write something other than a memoir. They may have in mind a short story, novel, essay, poem, biography of someone else, political commentary, history or random non-fiction book. So is it okay? Yes, it’s fine!

Our helpful hints on this site mostly address the particulars of recalling one’s life story, but some involve writing in general. For example, we mention some good habits to form in order to stay motivated to reach your writing goal. These apply to all types of writing. You want to be able to stick with a piece and see it through to the end.

You also can begin your work here by journaling—recording events that strike you in some way. I refer to a journal as a “diary for grownups.??? Having it online means you can write from wherever you are and keep it all in one place. As a collection, your journal entries may even become chapters in a type of memoir, perhaps focusing more on the current segment of your life than on tracing your entire life’s span. So please feel free to keep your writing safe here in our little writers’ haven, memoir or not. No matter what type of writing you’re doing, we’re happy to have you!

As a Second Language for Memoir Writing, English Is Challenging!

by

Many of the inquiries we receive about help writing memoirs comes from our members who did not grow up speaking English. If you want to write your life story in English but are not a native speaker, it’s not easy to get this language exactly right. You can make yourself understood when you’re speaking it, but to write it properly the level of mastery must be higher.

As an editor, I receive a lot of press releases, and it’s frequently apparent that either the writer or translator is a non-native speaker. As an example, a recent press release that came my way read, “The progressive approach to education, as well as their own down to earth personality’s make for a perfect cocktail to share excitement!??? I can tell what this means, but the choice of words is not natural-sounding, and the grammar is not entirely correct. I would rework this sentence to say, “The instructors’ progressive approach to education combines perfectly with their down-to-earth personalities to generate excitement!???

At WriteMyMemoirs, we encourage you to craft your memoirs however you please—in English or in any language you like—and we believe that you have a valuable story to tell no matter how extensive your knowledge of English grammar. If you do want help with the language, however, please email us or watch the site for our editing services coming soon.

Internet Makes Fact-Checking Your Memoirs Easy

by

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!

by

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!

Holiday Letters Chronicle a Life Story

by

blog20Yup, I’m one of those holiday card senders whom people love to hate—the ones who tuck an annual holiday letter into the card. With modern technology, I even print out a family photo right onto the letter. Actually, I receive a lot of positive feedback from friends who enjoy these wrap-ups of each year’s activities. I’ve been doing this since the early 1990s, taking up to three pages to humorously summarize my children’s year of growth and the various triumphs and challenges that every family experiences.

When I occasionally go back and read some the older letters, I realize that each one is like a little chapter in my life story. These letters let me relive some great family car trips, rekindle the excitement surrounding my husband’s softball team’s winning seasons and make me laugh all over again about the unpredictable and sometimes goofy nature of, as the old Reader’s Digest section called it, “life in these United States.???

As you write your memoirs, you might want to dig up any holiday letters you’ve written. Perhaps some of your family members have kept them if you haven’t, or someone may even have the ones written by the previous generation. Somehow amid all the emailing and texting, the good old-fashioned holiday letter has never gone out of style. At least I hope that mine hasn’t!

Photo: ©Olga Drozdova courtesy of dreamstime.com

Memoirs Are Splashed Against History’s Canvas

by

blog18By their very nature, your memoirs recount stories from an entire life span and, therefore, will contain a unique historical perspective that follows that time line. Perhaps you’ve lived through a dozen U.S. administrations, several wars and a host of natural catastrophes. You may remember owning an early model automobile, watching a man land on the moon and hearing “you’ve got mail??? for the first time over the Internet. The panoramic history of the times will always provide the tapestry that brings texture to your life stories.

Reading Judith Warner’s commentary in Sunday’s New York Times got me thinking about how my own autobiography would play out against the background of the women’s movement. In quoting the book Beauty Junkies—“Looks are the new feminism???—Warner expresses the opinion that the popularity of plastic surgery reflects middle aged women’s inability in the current economy to control anything other than their own appearance. “Women’s empowerment becomes a matter of a tight face and a flat belly,??? she says.

I remember when Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique topped the best-seller list. Various decisions I’ve made have reflected the many options and opportunities granted to my generation of women. My life story, particularly my career, would not have had the same developments in another era. For example, consider what you’re reading at this very moment: someday blogs will seem so 2009!

Photo: © Nic Neish

Never Too Early to Start on Your Memoirs

by

blog9At 17, Olympic gymnast and “Dancing With the Stars??? champ Shawn Johnson announced that she’s considering writing a sequel to her 2008 photo memoir. If you haven’t had quite the blue-ribbon-packed life that Shawn has, you probably aren’t thinking about publishing your life story once, much less twice, while still in your teens. But you might not want to wait until your golden years, either.

For some people, a memoir is the natural extension of the baby book they’ve been keeping after the birth of their children. They’ve gotten accustomed to documenting the little events that occur, the triumphs and the disappointments, and when baby outgrows the baby book they simply either continue to keep a record for the child or transfer the energy to their own journaling. If not a birth, perhaps a graduation, new career, marriage, illness, death of a loved one, move to a new city or major birthday is what triggers the desire to get the facts down or express your impressions and emotions.

I think starting early is a great idea. First of all, the memory is so unreliable! Time robs us of the details that bring texture to daily life, and sometimes we even forget the who/what/where/when essentials. Second, starting early keeps us from being overwhelmed when faced with an entire lifetime to recapture. And the process of memoir writing is so rewarding that once they get going, a lot of people wish they’d given themselves the gift of reflection sooner. No time like the present!

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