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memoir writing

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!

Group Gathers for Memoir Writing

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©IoanaGrecu5Many goals are easier to achieve when you do them along with other people. In that way, writing memoirs is no different from writing poetry or less related goals such as losing weight, investing in stocks or quilting—you might find motivation from having a writing partner or participating in an entire group of autobiographers.

Chicago Tribune columnist Barbara Brotman reported yesterday on a suburban group of women that splintered off from a park district class on writing family histories to form a more permanent memoir writing group. According to the column, five women of varying ages meet every Monday at the home of one of the members to share their ideas, read passages from their writing and motivate each other to continue toward their own finish lines. They’ve decided to structure the process by writing one decade at a time.

“The act of writing their stories and sharing them has brought the women satisfaction, friendship and respect,??? Brotman reports. She quotes one of the group’s members as saying, “We all have kids. A lot of times your kids think your life began with them. Now my kids will look at me and say, ‘You did that?’ And I say, ‘Yes, I did that.’??? Perhaps you know a few people you could invite to join a memoir writing group. You could all bring laptops and read from your WriteMyMemoirs accounts!

Photo: © Ioana Grecu

New Book Traces the History of Memoir Writing

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blog16The urge to write memoirs has long been part of the human psyche, according to a new book, Memoir: A History, in which author Ben Yagoda connects the dots through 2,000 years of memoirs. In tackling the question of whether an autobiography must be 100 percent true and accurate, Yagoda concludes that telling your story in good faith is more important than getting every fact perfectly straight, according to the New York Times review of the book.

The aspect of memoirs that interests me more, however, is the widespread desire to write one. Why put so much energy into this task? I don’t believe that a hope to get rich from publishing their story is what drives people to write about themselves. The Times reviewer, Judith Shulevitz, theorizes that it’s a universal need to tell our side of things—to explain why we’ve done what we’ve done. Shulevitz quotes philosopher Hilary Putnam: “We are, most of us, interested in justifying at least some features of our own style of life, in the sense of giving a defense of them that would appeal to others.???

This strikes a chord with me; most of us want to be liked or, at least, understood. The latest big-deal autobiography to hit the bookstores, Going Rogue, would not have been written if author Sarah Palin hadn’t felt the need to tell her side of what went on during last year’s presidential campaign. As you write your memoirs, you may experience some of that “justification satisfaction??? yourself.

Retirement Years Too Busy for Writing Memoirs?

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blog13Last time I mentioned Moon River and Me, a new memoir by Andy Williams. This leads me to an intriguing quote that Williams gave to Parade a couple of weeks ago. He told the reporter that this is the busiest time of his life. He’s 81 years old!

Giving interviews about his autobiography is probably one reason Andy has been so busy lately. But he also performs at his theater in Branson, Missouri, makes guest appearances and perhaps is catching up on the family time he says he missed when his children were growing up. But I doubt that he’s the only 81-year-old who doesn’t sit in the rocking chair. Today’s octogenarians have plenty on their plate. Some are raising grandchildren or at least highly active in the lives of their families, many continue to work and lots of seniors make a second career out of hobbies or volunteering for causes close to their hearts.

If you’re busy doing a gazillion things, and unlike Andy Williams you don’t have a book deal deadline and an editor breathing down your neck for motivation, you might find that days and weeks pass without adding a word to your memoirs. The best way to stay on task is to set aside specific times to work on your autobiography. Otherwise, you get so busy living that you neglect to fulfill your goal of recording your life’s events!

Photo: © Rosanne Ullman

Correct Apostrophe Use in Writing Memoirs

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blog10As you write your memoirs, you may have questions about grammar and sentence construction. I’m a writer and editor by profession, and I teach an adult education writing class. On this blog I’ll try to help you with the most common writing difficulties. One mistake I see over and over is apostrophe misuse, particularly with regard to pronouns.

The confusion stems from our use of apostrophes to show possession as in, “John’s autobiography is very interesting.??? But notice what happens when we replace “John??? with a pronoun: “His autobiography is very interesting.??? The apostrophe disappears, because possessive pronouns like “his??? do not use apostrophes. “It,??? “your??? and “whose” are pronouns, too, so as possessives—indicating belonging to someone or something— they need no apostrophe: “The cat licked its paws???; “I enjoyed reading your memoirs; Whose book is this????

However, contractions also take apostrophes: “Sue’s [Sue has] finished writing her memoirs.??? When we replace “Sue??? with a pronoun, this time the apostrophe remains: “She’s [She has] finished writing her memoirs.??? All contractions with pronouns work the same way: “It’s [It has] been a nice day???; “You’re [You are] doing a great job???; Who’s [Who is] at the door?” So when you want to use a confusing pronoun—its/it’s; your/yours/you’re; their/theirs/they’re; whose/who’s—determine whether to apply the apostrophe form by testing whether you can replace the word with two words meaning the same thing.

Photo: © Alexandr Tkachuk

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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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