memoir writing Archives - Write My Memoirs

Identifying Your Ideal Reader

March 22, 2026 by Rosanne Ullman

Man writing on a keyboard while picturing a young woman

It Helps Keep You Focused as You Write

As you start your memoir, identifying your ideal reader will help you determine what to include and what tone to use. As the writing process continues, picturing that reader will keep reminding you of both aspects. But how do you figure out who your reader is, this wonderful person lapping up every word you write about yourself?

Younger You

The most obvious people who will want to read your book are those who might learn something that will help them. This applies primarily to memoirs about overcoming trauma, illness, abuse or other major life hurdle. But a memoir focused on achievement or simply the life you led also can teach and inspire people who are finding themselves with similar goals or in comparable situations. Who is this reader? A younger you.

Picture yourself at the time you were dealing with the trauma, challenges or successes you describe in the book. What will you write that will guide Younger You to navigate through the inevitable roadblock or take advantage of an open door? That doesn’t mean write it as an advice column, but describe your stories and experiences clearly enough for readers facing the same thing to have positive outcomes.

People Who Know You

Your friends and family, along with anyone you mention in the book, will be interested in what you write—but mostly what you say about them. So, really, these are the readers you should not write for. Picturing your late mother in heaven as you praise the way she raised you is fine. Picturing your living mother scowling as you criticize the way she raised you will only keep you from writing your truth.

Still, it’s valuable to stay accountable to these readers in terms of making sure you’re accurate. Was it windy on that day, or are you throwing in a strong wind just as a device to create a mental image? Take the time to google what the weather actually was that day, because your friend may remember, or google, and catch you in the minor fabrication. When readers see that you’re making up the little things, you start to lose them on the big things. Will that conversation with your boss sound at least plausible all these years later to a coworker who was there at the time?

The danger is worrying about hurting the feelings of people you know. And the concern so many memoir authors have—that someone will sue them for writing negatively about the person—influences authors, often unnecessarily, to hold back. These people have already harmed you; one reason you’re publishing your memoir is to speak up for yourself. So don’t let them now stop you from authentic, possibly cathartic, writing.

People Familiar with Your Time/Place

Even if people don’t know you, if they’ve lived in the small town you’re describing or if they’re roughly your age and remember the way things were just as you recount them, they’re potential readers for your book. So, again, take the time to get the details right. Be both accurate and comprehensive. Don’t rush through; it’s okay to take a paragraph or a page to create a full mental picture of a train station or teacher or riverfront or fashion craze.

Someone Particularly Interested in Your Theme

Let’s say you triumphed over a rare disease. Maybe you were cured, or perhaps you are doing very well living with it. The reader may not be a younger you with early symptoms, but an interested reader can be an academic researcher into the disease, could have a relative with the condition, may be curious about the disease after having seen a movie or TV show about it, or may be living with a similarly serious health issue. Or there could be any number of other reasons for a reader looking to learn how you overcame the worst of the disease.

For this reader, you’ll want to provide details that other readers may skim through. This is a tough judgment call. You don’t really want readers skipping whole chapters. But documentation can be a critical part of your theme. You have to show evidence for your point of view, you need the play-by-play for surgeries or a recovery, or you may want to include resources for people facing the same plight. If you can make these details a compelling part of the story, readers will get through them. So the goal here, as throughout your book, is to write in a way that keeps readers with you.

Story Lovers

If you’re a natural storyteller, or if you can become one, you’re on the path to writing a good or great memoir. As I often do, I’ll use the example of Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated. I don’t personally relate to Mormons or survivalists or bad parenting (despite what my kids say LOL), but I love a captivating story, and Educated delivered, so I enjoyed it.

Picture your reader as someone who feasts on great novels. Keep writing with that critical reader having the choice with each chapter to continue going or put down your book and not bother to pick it up again. Make your stories fresh and surprising, frightening or funny or enlightening. End some chapters with a cliffhanger, or skillfully allude to something in the future that explains what you’re saying now. Keep hooking the storytelling fan over and over.

Readers Who Instantly Get You—and Those Who Don’t

And this is the catch. Typically, you want to get readers on your side. You’re probably not writing a memoir to convince readers what a despicable person you used to be, but even in that case you’ll be trying to get them to agree. Usually, though, you want them rooting for you.

Readers who connect right away will stick with you. The problem with picturing only those people is that you may gloss over explanations that will help other readers understand your motives, mindset and circumstances. The trick is to toggle between these two opposing readers and give each enough without alienating the other.

You Can Do It!

I mean, I hope you can do it. I like to give affirmation! A lot of “writing for the reader” can be done on the first edit. Your initial draft is to identify the stories you want to tell and just get yourself on a regular schedule of focusing on your memoir. But as you reread and edit, try to get into the head of the reader. You do eventually want people other than you to love your book.

A Perfect Memoir Reveals an Imperfect You

January 15, 2026 by Rosanne Ullman

This Is Not a Brag Book.

I’ve read a lot of highly regarded celebrity memoirs, and it’s a rare one that focuses on the obvious success. Instead, they’re filled with tough childhoods and squalid conditions, pitfalls and insecurities, bouts of depression and failed relationships. You may be trying to write the perfect memoir, but to begin with nothing is perfect, and for sure no honest account of a life portrays a perfect person. Readers are drawn to vulnerability. Only a memoir that reveals an imperfect you is likely to keep readers engaged. Then they can root for you.

Challenges are built into many memoirs. As I mentioned in my last post, the inspiration for writing a memoir often comes from a tragedy, traumatic event or tough period in life. Abuse, addiction, disease and mental illness are common themes. But outside forces are one thing, and I’m not talking about those. Whether you’re writing about a hard life or a relatively easy one, the tale of how you dealt with each episode conveys elements of your humanity. Readers identify with that common thread that even with our unique gifts and limitations, we’re all so quintessentially human.

And yet the differences are what matter. You’re quirky, you have your own way of doing things, you like certain foods and dress the way you like to dress, and you have a few unusual hobbies or predilections. Your smile or gait or voice may be identical to your grandmother’s, but it’s unlike that of anyone else. I know all of this about you because this describes all of us. And this is what should stand out in your memoir.

Character development (yours)

A memoir’s narrative can read like the plot of a novel—suspenseful or funny or sad—and that’s probably been consuming the majority of your writing energy. Of course, you have to give readers a story, with pivots and crises, a beginning and ending. But a memoir highlights character development as well. What is your character, your essence? Where are the cracks? What scars are left but helped you become who you are, so familiar and unexpected all at the same time?

Along the way, it’s fine to share your achievements and times that make you proud of yourself. Be careful not to describe that in a boastful way. Maybe a successful outcome surprised even you! Or you expected to fail but somehow prevailed. Most of all, in your rise to the top, certainly you made mistakes. Write about those swings that missed. Recognize that luck may have played a role in your success.

If your memoir is about a singular, major life challenge, then part of the theme is that you overcame this hurdle. You probably are telling your story partly to reassure others that they, too, can overcome a similar situation. You may feel that you want to emphasize what worked for you, not all the goofs. But you’ll lose them that way. They have to identify with a winner to become one, and they can’t identify with a perfect score. So explain how you triumphed despite human frailties, not because of all your strengths.

Remember as you write to give a nod to any advantages you had, not only the barriers in your way. That shows humility. Describe your fear and doubts. Look at yourself from others’ points of view and think about what they’re seeing. Ultimately, a memoir is introspective. When you reveal your shortcomings, you prove you’ve done the work in your own mind before trying to explain yourself or help the next person.

Photo by Jacob Owens for Unsplash

Memoir is All About the F’s

September 17, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

(Not That One)

In light of my last piece, I was thinking about the different topics and themes that frame people’s stories, and it occurred to me that a lot of memoir subject matter begins with the letter F. I’m not referring to the one-time unmentioned but now ubiquitous F word, although I’m not judging you if you find yourself uttering it quite a bit during your memoir journey.

There are lots of other words beginning with F. Here’s why memoir is all about the F’s.

Freedom. There’s a tremendous freedom involved in the process of writing about your life and perhaps even more in completing the project. Once you have your book in your hand, you’ve accomplished a life goal. That’s freedom enough. For trauma victims, the freedom comes in closure and letting go. With or without trauma, “getting it off your chest” brings freedom as well. A memoir is the gift you give yourself of sharing your perspective, in your voice, for friends, foes and strangers alike. The freedom you sense is from finally feeling heard.
Facts. Along the same lines, your truth is what matters in a memoir, and truth translates to facts. You most likely will do some research and share factual data and information, but your memory is a source for facts as well—even if other people in your life have, in your mind, twisted the facts to skew them in their own favor. This is your book, and you get to write down the facts as you see them.
Family. Many memoirs center around a relationship with a spouse, parent, child or sibling. But no matter what the main topic or time frame of your memoir, it’s likely that you’ll devote some pages to your family. Your childhood influences the choices you make throughout life, so typically your early life with your family is relevant. In your adult years, marrying or becoming a parent also plays a huge role even if it does not directly fit into your theme.
Fortune. You may be writing about an aspect of your professional life, the way you started out having very little money, or a pivot that changed your direction in life. Your fortune isn’t just about how big a bank account you’ve built. It can be the fortune of happiness or fulfillment. Certainly it can be misfortune, or you can include how luck played into your life.
Friends. This one’s a little weaker. Some memoirs focus heavily on one or more friendships, but many do not. Still, a memoir typically will mention some friends who played significant roles at some point in the author’s life. Including your friends in your memoir can give the reader a lot of insight into your personality. Also, crafting dialogue between you and a friend is a great alternative to simple description in letting the reader know what you were thinking and how you were feeling.
Fate. Did you direct your own life, or was it all fate? No one knows the answer to that age-old inquiry. Your memoir explains what happened and how you navigated the situations you encountered. No matter how you interpret the concept of free will, either fate placed you where you ended up or you chose your own fate.

Your memoir might be Fabulous and Fantastic, include sections that are Funny or Fantasy, plague you with Frustration, challenge you with necessary Formatting or eventually bring you some Fame. There’s an F left—Future—that I can’t contrive to make part of memoir. You can apply various lenses in documenting your past but, as Natasha Bedingfield sings, the rest is still unwritten.

How to Get Started on Your Memoir

May 27, 2025 by Rosanne Ullman

Four people trying to get started writing their memoir

There are so many ways to begin that you can find one you like.

Burning desire is often what drives an author to write a memoir. Let’s say you have that. What comes next? As much as you want to get your life down on paper, you may be at a loss about how to get started on your memoir. Of course, there’s no one way or right way to begin. Different people are successful with different approaches. Let’s look at four of them.

Approach 1
Set Yourself Up

People like plans. They like marking up their calendars and arranging their desks. I’ll sit in this room on this chair, and I’ll write for two hours three mornings a week. I’ll stay off social media and keep my phone on silent.

If that sort of structure and anticipation of consistency will help you to commit to working toward a goal, spend a little time getting it exactly right. Make sure you’ll be comfortable, undisturbed and focused.

And what if you prefer to skip this step? That’s fine, too. It means that you’re one of plenty of people who write—or talk to text—during their work commute or lunch hour. You can concentrate in a dark, noisy hotel room as easily as in a sunny, isolated writer’s cabin. You can get your hungry kids dinner and go right back to wherever you left off in that chapter.

Approach 2
Write an Outline

In my writing career, I have never worked from an outline. Whether I’m writing a book or an article, I don’t know exactly where I’m going when I start. And when I do have a rough idea, I don’t need to get it into outline form in order to keep it in mind.

However, what an outline does, particularly when it’s a detailed outline, is give you tangible assignments. Like this: Roman numeral III is my teenage years. Under that, letter D is the story of the night I ran away. I will write that story this week, and I know where to insert it in the book because I have my outline.

An outline lets you build a book in that sort of piecemeal fashion. You can write according to your mood—some days you might feel ready to tackle the memory of trauma, and other days you just want to write about an inspiring teacher at school or the first time you fell in love. Eventually, the outline gets filled in.

Even if you write it in the order the outline dictates, and even if your book rolls out in generally chronological order, an outline can save you some anxiety. You won’t have to think, “What should come next?” And an outline can serve as a valuable guide in letting you know whether you’re pacing yourself accurately in terms of how many pages you want in the total manuscript.

Approach 3
Write One Story

This is the most common advice for new memoir writers. Just write out that one story that is crystal clear in your memory, and you’ll be on your way. Story by story, your theme will begin to take shape and you’ll be in the habit of writing.

I find that whatever I write first is what I edit the most. Typically, that’s an article’s lede or a book’s introduction or first chapter. I go over it and over it. So the first story you write may not immediately set you out on the big adventure of writing your memoir. But even if you’re like me and rewrite that first story many times, you’re nailing down your voice while perfecting a singular piece of your puzzle. That counts as working—still good use of your time.

Approach 4
Start with Research

Who would do the most tedious part first? Who would put off writing, which is the cathartic part of crafting a memoir, just to dig up some facts? Well, that nutty writer would be me.

I’m not sure whether I’ve ever mentioned that I have not written my own memoir. I’ve ghostwritten or heavily edited other people’s memoirs, and I’ve written about episodes in my life, but I haven’t written my own entire memoir. So maybe on a memoir I would write at least an introduction before diving into the research.

But I’m mostly a reporter, so the facts are what speak to me. Let’s say you want first to tackle the chapter on your ancestry. You want to tell readers about your people, about where you come from. It may not be the first chapter in your book, but it’s your chronological beginning, the seeds that planted your life. In that case, I would interview people who knew my parents before I was born. I’d look through photo albums and read any old letters I had. I’d learn about whatever it was I wanted to share with readers—the areas where my parents grew up or their military service or their own hardships. When I had all of the information, that’s when I’d start writing the chapter on my early life. For me, that’s so much easier than having to pause a lot while I gather the facts, or having to go back and rewrite sections after I find one more person to interview. I like to have it all together and then start.

Always Remember: Your Book, Your Process

I hope this shows you that there’s no one way to kick off the task of writing a memoir. You know yourself. Choose the right way for you. Or try them one at a time and see what sticks. As always, I wish you good luck on this journey.

Back to the Beginning: Your Memoir’s First Sentence, Part 1

July 24, 2024July 24, 2024 by Rosanne Ullman

Neon lighting with text: "What is your story?"

Your opening introduces your readers to your world.

You’re in good company if you’re stuck on how to craft your memoir’s first sentence. Understandably, the opening line and paragraph of a memoir are important to every memoir author who wants to capture the reader’s interest right away.

You Don’t Have to Write the First Sentence First

Start writing your memoir anywhere you like, with any story from your life you think you’re going to want to tell. You may not end up including that story, but it will get you writing.

Then think it through a little. What happened in your life that will get readers to want to read the rest? Many memoirs today start at a pivotal moment or with the part of the author’s life most central to the memoir’s theme. Still, a lot simply begin in childhood, because there we find the seeds of who we are. Once you decide which moment of your life will launch your memoir, you’re ready to think about the words that will best express it.

So write something. The best sentence you’ve ever read may come to you immediately, or you may change your first sentence multiple times. When you have it, I think you’ll know.

What’s Trending in First Sentences of Memoir?

Good writing will always be good writing, but like everything else, memoir trends change. Readers are more sophisticated than ever, wise to a contrived opening line that’s trying too hard or designed to be clever above all else.

Writers rely on collective memory, a sort of modern-day lore that we know everyone knows. The thing is, though, that today you can’t count on all of us knowing the same things. We’re long past the days of three networks broadcasting nightly news and showing a regular weekly television schedule that everyone watches. Today, we seek information and entertainment from all over the place, from apps and social media, obscure cable TV shows, podcasts and blogs.

With our collective memory shattered, the opening sentence to Woody Allen’s memoir, Apropos of Nothing, wouldn’t ring a bell to a lot of people:

“Like Holden, I don’t feel like going into all that David Copperfield kind of crap, although in my case, a little about my parents you may find more interesting than reading about me.”

Holden? Holden Caulfield is the protagonist of Catcher in the Rye, which has an opening line referencing David Copperfield. I think most of us do get the reference to David Copperfield at least.

With society’s evolving norms, I think you’ll be wise not to assume that we all agree on anything. It will probably put off some readers if you call a thought “a truth universally acknowledged,” even if you don’t mean it to be one-hundred percent accurate. This opening sentence is not from a memoir but from the iconic novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, written in the very late 1700s:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

I mean, where do we start with that? Even the commas aren’t necessary, much less the thought.

What Should Readers Get From an Opening Line?

Experts in memoir suggest that your initial sentence should open the door to your world. It should intrigue readers about whatever you’ll be tackling in your memoir. You can achieve this in a number of ways:

Introduce a character—possibly the character of you—in a notable way. Make the introduction funny, self-deprecating, mysterious, surprising or truly shocking.
Start out with something very relatable to get readers to feel as if they are in your shoes, because they recognize your experience.
Plop the reader into the middle of the action of the most dramatic story in your memoir. Get the reader’s heart racing.
Provide a tidbit of information that gets the reader asking questions. Readers who need their questions answered will keep reading.
Craft a beautifully worded sentence to inspire confidence that your book will be full of wonderful descriptions at a high literary level.

“I didn’t realize I was black until third grade.” This is often cited as a great opening sentence. It belongs to Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld. This takes you into Abdul-Jabbar’s world by both introducing you to the character of little Kareem and getting you to ask the question, “Why? Do you not have a mirror?” And it’s just plain disarming. A-plus to the big man.

GreatOpeningLines.com, which bills itself as “history’s first website devoted exclusively to the celebration of great opening lines in world literature,” mentions that line along with this other one I noticed. As I write this, the news is breaking about Joe Biden’s decision to leave the 2024 presidential race. So it’s serendipitous that I find this opening line to Biden’s 2007 memoir, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics:

“Joe Impedimenta, my classmates hung that nickname on me our first semester of high school when we were doing two periods of Latin a day. It was one of the first big words we learned. Impedimenta—the baggage that impedes one’s progress.”

Here, Biden divulges what was probably the most humiliating aspect of his life, either to get it over with, to garner some sympathy from the reader, or perhaps to offer something to which the reader can relate.

In Part 2 of this post, I’ll share a lot of first lines from celebrity memoirs and get to the bottom line of how important your first sentence is—or isn’t.

Including Travel in Your Memoir

July 10, 2024 by Rosanne Ullman

Without making it a “travel memoir.”

To be fully transparent, I’ll mention that I selected today’s topic of including travel in your memoir as a way to relive my own recent visit to Italy—I even rapped about it. Perhaps you feel the same about trips you’ve taken—that as long as you’re writing about yourself, you might as well cover your travels. But unless you’re planning a memoir along the lines of Eat, Pray, Love, try to be careful not to satisfy your wanderlust by overwriting about your trips.

How Travel Can Be a Natural Part of Your Storytelling

Your memoir is a collection of stories, and traveling certainly can be one of those stories. Think of your experience in one of two ways:

Plot driver. Does your travel story drive the plot of your life? This is easy to identify. Did you meet someone during your trip who turned out to be pivotal in your life? Or did something else happen that influenced your direction in life?
Character developer. Maybe nothing unusual happened during your trip, but the experience still changed you. Leaving your comfort zone, facing your fears, having the “lightbulb moment” of realizing that the world is a big place with lots of opportunities, connecting with art, gaining confidence through navigating on your own—it could be any number of things that you carried with you long after you returned home. All of that is valid to write about.

Ways to Contrive the Importance of Your Travel

You can indulge yourself only so much. Like every other story in your memoir, your travel tales must have a point and move the narrative to the next rung. To some extent, you can contrive that point. Maybe you were out of town when something important happened back at home. So it’s not the trip that was important in your life; it’s your absence.

Instead of saying you were out of town when this or that went on, you can emphasize the significance of your absence by going into some detail about where you were and what you were doing. The contrast of what was happening at home while you were on vacation, relaxing on a beach or touring a foreign city, can be effective.

The summer before my senior year in college, I traveled with my college’s French department on a six-week summer-study program in Nice, France. In the big picture, this trip didn’t have a monumental effect on my life. But pretty much everything you do at age 21 can be considered significant enough to include in a memoir.

Many of you probably assume I have penned a memoir, but even though I have written various autobiographical accounts, I haven’t devoted an entire book to myself. I may someday. And if I do, I think I’d find a reason to include that trip to France, which extended to spending some time in northern Italy as well. It was my first time abroad, which is enough right there to include in a memoir. My college arranged for us to meet with the late author James Baldwin in his garden in the south of France, and I can’t imagine writing a memoir without mentioning that magical hour or two, even though I don’t remember anything that took place.

Here’s an idea. To contrive a reason to include your travel, you could introduce it as “the last time I remember…” and go from there to describe your travel experiences. I’m thinking of something such as:

The last time I remember having any discretionary income, I spent it on an African safari.
The last time I remember having a candid discussion with my mother, I had just arrived home from a trip to Japan, and she wanted to know all about it.
The last time I remember being as frightened as I was then, I was in an alley in Rio de Janeiro, walking alone, when a man slid out of the shadows and approached me.

How to Know Where the Line Is

After all of the contriving, you may find that it just doesn’t work. It may veer too far off your central theme, and you’ll be better off to keep what you’ve written as the basis for your next fictional short story. The editing you’ll do after your first draft will force you to make a lot of hard decisions. Editing is usually painful!

If the story holds up as pertinent enough, you still may have to delete some of the details. When you reread what you’ve written, pay attention to the “travelogue” voice. If your description sounds even a little bit like advice on where to go and what to see, you’ve probably crossed the line between memoir and travel memoir. And even if that lasts only one chapter, it’s likely to feel out of place.

As I always tell you, this is your memoir, and you’re the best judge about what’s important in your own life story. But we authors also want to keep the reader engaged, and that requires sometimes making sure we don’t indulge in sharing our favorite memories just in order to relive them ourselves.

Editing Your Memoir for Word Choice: Part III

May 29, 2024 by Rosanne Ullman

Originality and a twist on clichés will help make your memoir memorable.

For the third post in this three-part series about editing your memoir for word choice, I want to discuss originality and ways to use clichés to your advantage. I remind you that this is your memoir. It’s not a famous writer’s story, and it’s not a term paper, either. Be authentic but creative; offer something the reader doesn’t ordinarily see.

Dip Into Your Speaking Voice

When you insert yourself fully into this personal storytelling, your speaking voice will blend naturally with your writing voice. Let’s say you’ve always called your mother “Ma.” Most of the memoirs you read refer to “my mother” or “Mom,” but if you’ve never called your mother “Mom,” your memoir is no time to start. Toggle back and forth between “my mother” and “Ma.” That is the best, most authentic word choice for your memoir. The reader will hear you, not some generic, watered-down version of you.

Now let’s say that you swear a lot when you talk. Confine that aspect of your speaking voice to the dialogue you enclose in quotation marks. The rest of the text will be too distracting if every sentence contains profanity.

Include a few Unusual Words or Ways to Describe Something

In a previous post, I gave an example from movie and television director Ed Zwick’s new memoir, and since that book remains fresh in my mind, forgive me if I use it for an example here as well. Zwick mentions that someone in his life luckily had “reservoirs of patience.” While “reservoirs” is a pretty common word, using it to describe someone’s patient nature strikes me as clever writing. She didn’t have “lots” of patience or “endless” patience; she wasn’t “super-patient” or “tremendously patient.” With “reservoirs of patience,” the author not only delivers a word that isn’t typically associated with having patience; he also creates a visual, stopping you just for a slight pause to consider how much he appreciates the person’s patience. And notice that he does not need an adjective such as “deep reservoirs of patience.” The unmodified noun says it precisely.

Now I’ll make up an example. Let’s say you like the word “serendipity.” Instead of calling something a “pleasant coincidence,” in your everyday speech you just tend to use the word “serendipity.” Then give the reader a taste of your unique flavor of language by using that word. However, using it once, or twice at most, will be enough.

What about including words that you never use? Maybe you’ve already described various people as “smart,” “intelligent,” “wise” and “brainy,” and you don’t want to repeat any of those words, but you have a smart friend you still want to write about. So you Google for synonyms of “smart” and come up with “sagacious.” You’ve seen the word and know what it means, but you’ve never used it. Should you write “sagacious” to describe that friend in your memoir? My vote is probably not. If you feel it fits comfortably into the rest of your memoir, then okay, but if you’re using mostly everyday words, I think a word like “sagacious” sounds as if you’re trying too hard to be, well, sagacious.

Remember that synonyms are not the only solution. You can always rework the sentence. Instead of describing your friend with a synonym for “smart,” you can say that your friend seemed to know everything about everything, or your school friend was always tops in your class, or your work friend sat around doing tough crossword puzzles during his coffee break. Again, get creative.

Not All Clichés Are Bad, and Most Clichés Can Be Made Good

You may have been told to avoid clichés, and that’s generally good advice. But lately I’ve felt more kindly toward the much maligned cliché. I think these common phrases can give your memoir a relatable quality.

Let’s consider the reasons you’ve been told to steer clear of clichés as well as overused similes and metaphors. This is a bad sentence: “She was running around putting out fires, busy as a bee, but when I walked in she looked as if she’d seen a ghost.” Not only are three clichés too many for one sentence, but those particular clichés are not the best choices.

But it can be charming to let a few familiar sayings creep in here and there. And you can control your clichés by altering them for effect. I’ll contrive a paragraph for this purpose:

I believed that every cloud had a silver lining, but I couldn’t find even one in the series of storms that rained on all of my parades that June. I’d hoped my graduation would bring my parents together in some sort of peaceful reunion, but Dad never even showed up. I thought moving out of Mom’s house would certify my entry into adulthood, but by August I’d moved back in, unable to juggle enough jobs to have anything left over after paying rent. Most of all, in Alex I thought I’d found my soul mate, my companion for riding into the sunset and leaving all of my anger and disappointment in the dust. Alex took me for a ride, all right, and the sunset did get darker and darker.

It’s not Shakespeare, but I think the clichés prove useful: “every cloud has a silver lining,” “rain on my parade,” “find my soul mate,” “ride into the sunset,” leave something “in the dust,” and take someone “for a ride.” I could see an editor saying, “Ugh!” But I think it all puts the reader at ease. I find that compelling memoirs tend to have a bit of folksiness in them, and common phrases work toward that end.

I’m just saying that when you edit your first draft, don’t automatically delete your clichés. Give a little thought to whether they might be adding something to your narrative.

**Word Choice Is Your Choice**

When you write a memoir, it’s motivating and inspiring to read other memoirs. But you don’t want to copy another author’s style. Your memoir is about your life, written in your voice. Every word you choose has a piece of you in it. If a sentence sounds as if someone else said it, replace it with words that are either yours alone or yours as representative of ordinary language.

How to Include Life Lessons in Your Memoir

May 1, 2024April 17, 2024 by Rosanne Ullman

Without turning your memoir into a self-help book

Like many memoir authors, you may be aiming to include life lessons in your memoir. You’ve overcome addiction, escaped domestic violence, triumphed over an illness or condition, healed from an injury or grown in some other way, and one major goal in writing your memoir is to help readers replicate your success. It’s partly a self-help book.

Still, you don’t want to cross genres. Even though you want to be pretty explicit in stating the lessons, you envision your book listed in the memoir category, not as another self-help manual. Can you incorporate a bit of how-to in your memoir? Sure. As I always say, it’s your memoir, so write the book you want to write. I have some ideas for ways you can offer suggestions while staying in the memoir space.

Make Lessons Part of Your Writer’s Voice

Your book’s theme—or maybe just one chapter’s theme—is succeeding despite a setback or life circumstance. By definition, you’ll be writing about the initiatives that changed your life. The reader will pick up on this, but you still can give it an extra boost.

If you wanted to revolve life lessons on a knee replacement, for example—which I realize is unlikely but it will demonstrate my points—it might look something like this:

It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do. I knew all too well. The doctor had laid it all out, I was googling “knee replacement” night and day and, of course, Robbie was constantly giving me the blow-by-blow on his own surgery and recovery. I’d already stocked my kitchen with inflammation-fighting foods, popping blueberries like gumdrops and vowing to find recipes that made kale taste less like a rubber glove. I made sure my freezer’s icemaker was churning out cubes.

There was more. I completely dropped out of my golf group so that I wouldn’t be tempted to tee up before my knee was ready to accommodate my distinctively twisty swing. I borrowed a footstool from my neighbor Debra, who also insisted on lending me four perfectly sized pillows to pile on the stool in order to create the required elevation when I sat on my couch. I lipsticked the word “REST” on mirrors in both my bedroom and my bathroom. One day I even let myself into a church, quickly whispered, “Dear God, please don’t let me die on the table,” and slipped out before any official saw me.

Here’s another idea for introducing these lessons using your voice within the text of the memoir. This would come later in the story:

I got to thinking about how I’d gotten this far while other people were struggling even though they’d had surgery at about the same time that I had and, for the most part, were quite a bit younger than I was. I decided that, along with some luck plus proximity to an excellent hospital and medical staff, my simple determination played a big role. Since I’d always been a good student, it was natural for me to be a good patient. I dutifully followed doctors’ orders while also doing some of my own online research. I stocked my kitchen….. And then go into the steps but in first person and past tense.

Use a Device Such as Dialogue or Written/Watched Instructions

Sticking with your knee replacement memoir—again, an unlikely topic I’m using only for its applicability to neutral examples—you can put the advice into the mouth of your mom, friend, doctor, clergy or whomever. In that case, it changes to something like this:

It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do. I knew all too well. The doctor had laid it all out, I was googling “knee replacement” night and day and, of course, Robbie was constantly giving me the blow-by-blow on his own surgery and recovery. Other than the repetition, “Robbie’s Rules” as I came to call them were actually pretty helpful:

Stock your kitchen with inflammation-fighting foods like berries and greens. Robbie assured me that I’d get used to the taste of kale, but I figured I’d find recipes to disguise it instead.
Keep plenty of ice on hand.
Drop out of leagues. Golf, tennis, running clubs—officially drop out, even if only temporarily, so you won’t be tempted to tee up, serve a ball or lace up your running shoes before your knee is ready to accommodate the sport.
Place a footstool in front of your couch, and pile three to four pillows on it to create the required elevation.
Make signs with the word “REST” that you can tack up everywhere. Then you have no excuse that you forgot to be patient.
Don’t be afraid to use whatever shred of spirituality you have left. Praying might just work.

Memoir authors tend to be concerned about the truth. If no one gave you advice, you don’t have to invent the story. Instead, you can have a lead-in as vague as “I remember reading somewhere that…,” or something like this:

It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do. I knew all too well. The doctor had laid it all out, I was googling “knee replacement” night and day, and when I mentioned my upcoming surgery in passing conversation, absolutely everyone had a piece of advice to share. I don’t remember where or from whom I learned what, but I decided to be patient and follow some common-sense guidelines.

Set Aside a Chapter for Your Acquired Wisdom

You can devote a chapter or two to come off as a more obviously specific advice column. This can be your epilogue or last chapter, or it can be somewhere in the middle if it feels more suitable at that point. This can serve as a handy guide for the reader, especially if the suggestions you’re passing along are very different from those found elsewhere or if they concern a very unusual condition.

In this chapter, you can write as if you’re speaking with someone who has asked you to share what you’ve learned from your experience. It’s okay if it sounds a little drier than the rest of the book, but don’t abandon your writer’s voice completely. Keep in mind it’s still part of your memoir, part of your story, and not an op-ed or essay.

Break Up Your Advice to Create a Pattern

In his 2024 memoir, Hits, Flops and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood, director Ed Zwick tacks a “postscript” addendum, in the form of a list, onto the end of every chapter. They’re rosters of filmmaking tips, Hollywood secrets or observations—literally life lessons in some cases.

While I’d say this works well enough for Zwick in a memoir about a long career, I’ll also say that I can picture Zwick teaching a college course in filmmaking. If you can picture yourself teaching a course in the topic of your memoir, then this approach could be for you, with lists that could just as easily go up on a blackboard during a class session. Otherwise, I think it’s a stretch on an ordinary memoir.

Save It for Another Book or Other Project

After you include your life lessons, when you edit your book you may admit to yourself that they’re out of place and just don’t fit. In that case, keep what you’ve written and consider writing a second book that truly would fall into the self-help category. Or it can be the starting point for a workbook, a podcast or a chapter in a later book with life lessons from all aspects of your life. Maybe you have advice on marriage, parenthood, politics, living long, travel—the piece you’ve already written would be one of those chapters.

If you never use that portion at all, you still took the opportunity to write it all out. The process of memoir writing is part of the magic. Never feel that you wasted time on paragraphs just because they end up on the cutting room floor.

How to Find Your Writer’s Voice

January 24, 2024January 24, 2024 by Rosanne Ullman

Sound like yourself but only like the writer inside you.

“When did you start writing for that company?”

The question caught me off-guard. Like my colleague who was asking it, I’ve focused much of my career writing in and about the professional beauty salon industry. She was referring to an article I’d written for a beauty product distributor, but I knew that the piece had no byline.

“How did you know I wrote that?” I asked her.

She laughed. “Of course that was you,” she said, taking for granted that I knew I had an identifiable writing style. But until then I did not know that my “writer’s voice” was recognizable. And I wasn’t entirely pleased, because I didn’t want everything I wrote for different clients to sound the same.

It did explain why writing had become so much more effortless as I grew more experienced. I just wrote the way I wrote, evolving over time but always sounding like the writer inside myself. By this time, my writer’s voice had become indistinguishable from my brand.

Start with Confidence and Be Yourself

Every time you receive positive feedback when someone reads what you’ve written, you gain confidence. It’s that confidence that leads you to writing in an authentic way that inherently communicates your perspective on, well, everything. Being yourself when you write is the key to finding your writer’s voice.

Think about the essential you and how you would describe yourself not as a writer but as a person. Place yourself at a point on a continuum between opposites like formal/casual, dramatic/low-key, extravert/introvert, teacher/learner, proper/disrupting, obeying/rebelling, cautious/adventurous, traditional/unconventional—I’m sure you can come up with more. As you get to know yourself in this manner, you’ll let your writing reflect your personality.

There’s No Shortcut—You Must Write a Lot

The more you write, the smoother the process becomes. I think that’s what happened to me. Because writing is my career, I’m always writing. I never consciously developed a writer’s voice, but as my work has taken me into different genres, I’ve brought along the thread of me, so even though each project is different, there’s something about it that sounds consistent.

So write! Even if you’re in the middle of a writing project such as a memoir, take a break and write something else. Catch a friend up on what you’ve been doing by sending a long email. Write some flash fiction or poetry. Write an op-ed or letter to the editor—you don’t have to send it anywhere. Or give yourself an assignment such as writing about the funniest thing that’s happened to you this week.

Of Course, Read

Always have something you’re reading. Whether it’s a memoir, a biography, a book of fiction or just a magazine feature article, every piece of writing gives you access to the author’s voice. Maybe you love a particular mystery writer or author of historical fiction. What do you like about the writing?

Try two exercises. First, write a few paragraphs in a style as close as you can to an author you enjoy. Second, take those same paragraphs and “make them your own.” Examine what you’re doing that changes the work to transform it, and that may be your “signature style,” your voice.

Your Voice May be Quiet in the First Draft

My first draft gets the story out, and in that draft specifically I do not consciously write in any voice. Only when I edit and polish and rework the writing do I begin to at least notice some of my own classic writing habits.

For example, I really try not to repeat random words not essential to the topic, or at least not use them close together. So when I read that I wrote, “I stared at him for the longest time,” and three sentences later I say, “She couldn’t stop staring,” you can be sure I will change one or the other. Maybe I glared or she couldn’t stop gazing. The funny thing is that when I do this, I often end up replacing the original word—“stared/staring” in this example—in both instances. I find two preferable words and use those.

So which is my writer’s voice? The first draft when I write to get my ideas down or the more polished version when I’ve put on my editor hat? You may believe that the free-flowing first draft is more representative of my true voice, but I would say it’s the edited second—or tenth—draft. As I read what I’ve written, I hear the cadence and can tell when it’s off. I think about the precision of the words and know when something is not up to my standards. So it’s subsequent drafts that contain the identifying markers of my writer’s voice.

Finally, Don’t Overthink It

Your writer’s voice is already in you. It may not be on paper/screen, but it’s in you. Write frequently and stay aware of signs that you’re developing a recognizable style, but don’t force it. If you keep writing, keep reading and know the essence of who you are, the voice will emerge. As I found out, it may take someone like a friend or colleague to point it out.

2,024 Reasons to Write Your Memoir This Year

December 27, 2023December 27, 2023 by Rosanne Ullman

Numerology Offers a Lot of Motivation to Say: New Year, New Book.

Like a lot of people, memoir authors look for signs. Should I write my life story? I’ve started my memoir, but should I finish it? Will my memoir be any good if I write it? Give me a sign. Please!

According to numerologists, the coming year is full of signs that point to: Yes, write your memoir already. Wait no longer.

The First Two-Thousand Reasons

This is a lot to bite off, so let’s swallow the first 2,000 reasons in two big chunks and then take our time chewing on the last 24 reasons. The first 1,000 reasons boil down to the simple fact that you wanna do it. You want to chronicle your entire life or a segment or more of your life. You probably have even more than 1,000 reasons for wanting to write your book. In general, you should do what you want to do as long as it’s legal. So do it.

We can group the second 1,000 reasons as well, which come down to a sort of obligation to live authentically and leave a legacy or some type of inspiration. Your life, every life, is fascinating in its uniqueness. Your life, every life, is worthy of documenting. Your life, every life, provides lessons that you can pass along to others. There are at least 1,000 reasons for someone to want to read about your life and derive inspiration from it.

The Rest of the Reasons for Writing Your Memoir in 2024

Now let’s go more slowly as we tackle the remaining 24 reasons for you to write your memoir this year. I can come up with 24 generic reasons for you to start or complete this project—it makes a perfect New Year’s resolution, writing about your life is cathartic, writing a book is a very satisfying project, you’re not getting any younger, etc. Or you can customize 24 reasons that apply to you in particular. Maybe you have a high-number birthday coming up this year, or your children asked you to write up your life, or the part of your life you want to document has just ended and it’s fresh in your mind. Go ahead and write out those 24 reasons—can’t hurt!

But the 24 reasons I’m supplying here have their foundation in numerology. Even though I don’t believe at all in the non-science of numerology, I’m finding it interesting that the characteristics numerologists are assigning to the year 2024 align extremely well with the goal of writing a memoir. And maybe you do have some belief in this. Those of us who are skeptical still can have some fun and accept whatever motivation the universe seems to be sending us.

I’ll explain them first and then list them 1 through 24 in summary.

The Numerological Process of Evaluating the Year

Numerologists combine three approaches when predicting a year’s mood. First, they take each of the numbers individually. This coming year, then, since I don’t think zero counts, we’ll look at the numbers 2 and 4. Second, they add up the digits—2+0+2+4=8. They use the sum, which is 8 in this case, as the most significant number to analyze. Third, they drop the two-thousand and consider only 24, add those digits, and come up with the number 6.

To me, this means they cover a lot of bases. If 8 doesn’t work that well, they still have 6 and 2 and 4. But I’ll try to keep my snarky comments out of this and get back to taking the leap of faith.

A Close Look at the Numbers 2, 4, 6, and 8

According to The Times of India, the number 2 refers to the moon, and the moon is a sign that indicates money, work, jobs, abundance and emotions. Since there are two incidences of the number 2 in the year 2024, we can expect an abundance of abundance.

The number 4, according to the same source, is associated with Rahu, which is connected to new technology, ideas, opportunities and gains. Rahu is an imaginary shadow planet, so take that signage for what it’s worth.

When we drill into the sum of 2+4, which is 6, we connect to the planet Venus. This softens the year with a focus on love and affection, but it’s accompanied by challenges and growth. Numerologists encourage us to be true to our emotions involving love and affection.

The number 8 is associated with a lot of positivity. You know how a figure 8 loops around with no end? When you think about it, that’s a sideways infinity symbol. So 8 represents eternity and the totality of the universe. Picture it as “what goes around comes around,” and you’ll see why 8 is considered a sign of karma.

The Significance of 2024 Numerology for Memoir

According to horoscope-focused refinery29.com, the Egyptians saw 8 as bringing balance and cosmic order, while in tarot it’s a card of magic and inspired action. That website provides the perfect message for this year’s hopeful memoir authors: “Whenever this tarot card shows up in a reading, the message is: ‘You have everything you need to make stuff happen — so, go for it!’”

That same energy comes up in other descriptions of 2024 numerology. Well and Good quotes numerologist Novalee Wilder, who predicts that 2024 will be a year of “radical honesty and transparency.” That sounds like a candid memoir to me!

The same website notes that another numerologist, Sarah Faith Gottesdiener, urges people to confront “the ways in which you’ve been lying to yourself or holding yourself back from living the way you truly want.” She says it’s a time for finding and nurturing your inner spark and following your heart’s true path. To me, that means that 2024 is the year to stop holding back from being the memoir author your heart wants you to be.

That article paraphrases Gottesdiener’s advice: “Another aligned way to uncover your desires and identify your bigger-picture goals is to self-reflect through journaling. Just being able to put those goals on paper might just point you toward the first step you’ll want to take in 2024 to bring them to life.” Instead of your goals, put your whole memoir down on paper!

Angel Number

Over on astrology.com, they talk about “angel numbers.” You guessed it—2024 is an angel number. This website notes: “Number 2024 is a spiritual awakening number, as it symbolizes the beginning of a spiritual journey, developing your inner wisdom, and trusting your intuition.”

Again, is there any better description of the journey of writing a memoir? To add to that, astrology.com also mentions 2024 as “a positive sign for your career and financial prospects.” If you’re hoping to sell your memoir, better get it out in 2024!

If you haven’t yet put pen to paper or finger to keyboard, make this the year you write that first sentence. If you’re well on your way, decide to finish a first draft by the end of the year. If your first draft has been sitting in a drawer, get past your fear or whatever roadblocks are keeping you from polishing the draft, finding an editor, querying publishers or self-publishing. Get your book finished!

If you’re not feeling the numerology for 2024, I’ll offer some final inspiration by sharing what I learned in my numerology research about the last day of the current year. That will be 12/31/23. Dropping the slashes turns it into 123123. Consider that your count to get started. 123… 123… go!

Here’s the listing 1 through 24:

The number 2 is for the moon, which promises conditions perfect for writing and publishing a memoir:
1. Money
2. Work
3. Abundance
4. Emotions

The number 4 indicates:
5. Ideas
6. Opportunities
7. Gains

Add 2+4 to get the number 6, which offers the full experience of reviewing your life’s important points:
8. Love
9. Affection
10. Challenges
11. Growth

Add 2+0+2+4 to get the number 8, which is associated with words you could pair with what your memoir creates in the world:
12. Eternity
13. Balance and order
14. Inspired action and magic

Based on the full number 2024, numerologists give advice that easily applies to goals of memoir:
15. Stop holding yourself back
16. Live your true desires
17. Find your inner spark
18. Reach levels of radical honesty and transparency
19. Write it all down

2024 is an “angel number” that means:
20. The beginning of a spiritual journey
21. Developing your inner wisdom
22. Trusting your intuition
23. Career advancements and financial increases

The last day of 2023 tells you to get started:
24. 12/31/23 = 123 123 go!