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memoir

What Category of Writer is a Memoir Author?

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room of people writing on laptops and notepaper

All categories. That’s the hard part.

Memoir is an identified genre, but when you examine the process you see that this genre sources writing from many others. So when you ask yourself what category of writer you should be acting as in order to write a solid memoir, you may have to answer: all of them.

Well, not all. Children’s lit, horror, fantasy—there probably are others as well that don’t play much into memoir. But many do. Still, memoir is unique, and borrowing from other genres doesn’t mean letting them take control.

Diary

First, of course, you’re writing stories from your life. So in a way, you’re letting readers peek into your diary. Let that influence you to stay raw, honest and vulnerable.

But you’re not a diarist; you’re a memoir author. You won’t be giving readers anything close to a day-by-day account of your life. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to include more than necessary to stay on your theme. Choose your stories carefully.

Some authors even use the structure of a diary for their memoir, but I think in most cases a memoir does not benefit from the diary structure. It makes me think the author chose the format just because it’s easier.

Fiction

Memoir authors can be surprised when their book starts sounding a lot like a novel. That’s a good thing. It should read that way, with devices from fiction like dialogue, description and character development. It can have suspense and foreshadowing, story arcs and time jumps, cliffhangers at the end of chapters.

But this is nonfiction. That means it has to be essentially true. The “essentially” part is that you aren’t expected to write a conversation in the exact words that were said at the time. Or if you describe what your dad was wearing, you can picture him in something he wore often and not feel an obligation to know whether he wore it on the day in question. But “essentially” also means you have to get the essence of the conversation right and capture the essence of the person you’re describing.

News Report

Instead of sounding like a novel, some chapters may sound more like a news report—a straightforward description of events. So part of the time you’re a reporter, providing readers with a detailed account of something that happened in your life. Like other journalism students, I learned the five W’s: who, what, where, when and why. There’s also how. Keep these in mind when describing what occurred.

Journalism students also learn how to make a story short and dry. Newspaper articles are, or at least were, cut from the bottom, so you have to get all of your important facts in at the beginning and let them proceed in diminished order from there. There’s no room for adjectives, either. Just report the facts.

That short-and-dry aspect has little bearing on memoir writing. Make your writing concise and don’t ramble, but certainly “dry” is not a description you want for your book. You can start anywhere, and you have license to indulge in description. Remember the “show, don’t tell” mantra, which is true for both news report and memoir. If you describe the events well, the reader will know how you’re feeling about them.

Feature Article

If a magazine or website did a profile on you, what would it say? It would have a theme and then support that theme with pertinent stories from your life. A memoir is kind of a very long feature article about you.

But it’s not quite that, because it’s written in more of a fiction format. The bigger difference, though, is that it’s from your point of view. It’s inherently biased, not objective. Since you’re writing it, you don’t have to balance the piece with other people’s opinions, good or bad, about you.

History/Textbook

Memoirs teach readers about all sorts of topics that surround the person’s life. Like any book or movie, it should increase the reader’s knowledge in addition to offering an entertaining story.

But when your memoir captures a time period or geographical location so comprehensively that sections morph into a class lecture, you’ve gone too far. I often remind memoir authors specifically that they’re not writing a textbook.

Op-ed

I also remind memoir authors who are using their book to make a point that this is a memoir, not an op-ed. Persuasive writing is a talent, but in a memoir it has to be under wraps a bit. You can be fighting for justice or promoting one side of a cause, but you have to fold that into your storytelling. You’re not writing a diatribe.

Humor

Not every memoir can have humor, but authors of even the darkest tales can find a way to lighten up between tough memories. It gives readers a break. If your memoir doesn’t cover a tragedy and is more upbeat, humor adds a compelling reason for readers to recommend it to friends.

Young Adult

Memoir writing can be intellectual and complex, and some memoir topics may be too mature for young minds. For the most part, though, memoir is perfect reading for teens. They can learn about a person and what life was like during the time period covered and within the culture described. So if you’re struggling to explain your life in the most highfalutin language, you may do better to dumb it down enough to keep the reading flowing.

More Ideas

There are lots of structures to choose from when you’re writing a memoir. Food can be an important element in your story, so maybe your book is a memoir/cookbook hybrid. Perhaps a home figured prominently in your life and you describe each room the way you might for an interior design magazine. Or your life may take place in so many locations that your memoir is part travelogue.

Wear as many writers’ hats as you need in order to craft the memoir you envision. You’re a memoir author. That means you’re hoping to be a master of multiple writing categories.

 

Memoir Authors: Use the Holidays!

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Cover of Meat for Tea literary journal issue

Family Gatherings Can Further Your Project

A lot of memoir authors don’t look forward to the holiday season because of all the family gatherings. Through your memoir, you may hold family members responsible for challenges you’ve had in your life. But as long as attending a holiday gathering does not endanger your mental health, use the holidays to your advantage! They hold a lot of promise for a memoir author. Bring a laptop, notebook or recording device!

  1. Memories. You know what your older relatives love doing? Reminiscing. You may think they keep everything close to the vest, protecting secrets and hiding background circumstances, but the older they get the less they care, or maybe they don’t quite remember which information they’re not supposed to disclose. And typically there’s alcohol to loosen those lips. Most holiday celebrations last hours and include casual sitting around, so focus on that and consider the advantages of being able to reach everyone at once:
    -Bring old photos. Family members will enjoy going through them, and you won’t have to say a word because the photos will generate comments and conversation all by themselves.
    -Approach relatives one by one to ask a few questions. You get a face-to-face interview without having to make a separate appointment with each person.
    -Walk up to a group and throw out a question that might provide a big-picture view for you when different people respond with different recollections. It can be anything from “Why don’t I know much about the years Mom’s family lived in California” to “What do you recall about me as a little kid?”
    -Talk to the family members you know the least. What insight can they give you into your own life?
  2. New memories. Even if your memoir’s timeline ends long before current day, hanging with your family can influence your memoir. Perhaps because you’re writing a memoir, you’ll be paying attention to the dynamics of relationships and traditions, and that will guide you in the tone of your writing. Maybe something dramatic will take place—a reconciliation, wedding announcement, memorable or clever remark, or empty chair due to a recent death. This can give you an idea for a good ending for your book.
  3. Test the publishing waters. If your family isn’t aware that you’re writing a memoir, this could be a convenient time to give them a heads-up that they may see their name in your upcoming book. You can even bring printed passages if you feel that you need someone’s permission to publish a detail, you want to check the accuracy, or you’d like to just let the person know how you’re presenting an aspect of your life. This may give your relatives comfort rather than having them fear the worst. Of course, you may get blowback as well, so don’t spoil the party with a preview if you’re determined to write an unforgiving tell-all. If you’re finished or close to finishing your book, you can ask whether anyone knows a literary agent or has connections to a publishing house. Again, this is easier with everyone in the room than making a series of phone calls or relying on word-of-mouth methods to spread the information.
  4. Trigger your writing habit. So much happens at the holidays, especially if you have house guests or you’re the one traveling and staying with relatives. Let the pile-on of experiences inspire you to write something unrelated to your memoir, just for practice. Call it a writing exercise, and I’ll give you the assignment: Write a short story or poem about your 2025 Thanksgiving or winter holiday. Some years ago, I found myself writing fiction, which I never do, based on our family’s Thanksgiving. I knew I could report in a narrative way, but I have no imagination and didn’t realize I could write fiction if I sat down and just did it. A lot of the story I crafted was truly made up, and I wrote in first person but from my daughter’s point of view, not my own. And guess what! A little literary journal, Meat for Tea, accepted it for publication after I reworked the story according to the issue’s parameters—the story had to revolve around “mugwort.”

While Meat for Tea sells its books and I encourage you to read the stories because they demonstrate good writing, my story is from 2022 so I think it’s okay if I just let you read it here. I hope you write something in 2025 yet that will give you confidence to work on your memoir in 2026. And Happy Holidays to you all.

Is Memoir Really Your Book’s Genre?

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A library with signs for each book's genre

Maybe it belongs in another section of the bookstore or library.

Today it’s not easy to sell any book, but memoir is a particularly challenging and competitive category. So ask yourself: Is memoir really your book’s genre?

Authors can start out thinking they’re writing about their life, but sometimes a book has a mind of its own. The narrative can be leading the author rather than the other way around, and you can find yourself flowing into another section of the bookstore altogether.

Perhaps your book is more authentically:

  • Self-help. Some authors wonder whether it’s okay to devote a chapter or more, usually at the end of the book, to straight advice. While they want to document whatever hardship they experienced, they’re even more determined to offer help to others facing that same situation. If your book ends up at 60% memoir and 40% self-help, you might do yourself a favor and fashion your text to swap those figures, because self-help is an easier book to sell to a publisher and likely to appeal to more readers.
  • Fiction. Maybe you’ve changed people’s names, represented them as composite characters, switched story locations and disguised details of events. At what point does memoir cross over into fiction? If you’re that concerned about getting sued or just hurting people’s feelings, it may make more sense to write a novel “based on a true story.” Then it’s not even about you or the people in your life. I think some authors want to have it both ways. They want to write out their life story to have their voice heard, but without risk or retribution. I think that does justice to neither truth nor great, imaginative storytelling. Opting for the latter might make help you write a really good novel.
  • Op-ed. Let’s say your book centers on your escape from an abusive marriage. As you share your experiences, you may have a lot of opinions at every turn. Maybe your state’s restraining orders aren’t enforced well enough or the divorce laws favored your spouse or your children’s school failed them in some way—you could have a lot to say, along with research, about how to improve matters to make it easier for people like you. If you find yourself interrupting your personal narrative to share your views on the topic, and if that’s the aspect that is taking your writing energy, perhaps you’d be better off writing a book or magazine article that merely references your own experiences in primarily advocating for the societal improvements you have in mind.
  • Travelogue. If you’re writing an “Eat, Pray, Love” type of memoir, obviously this is not an original idea. Maybe your book will benefit if you focus more on the travel than the travail. A book of travels can be informative and helpful to the next traveler who will just skip over the chapters telling one more “finding myself” story. But no judgment!
  • History textbook or how-to. Similarly, if your memoir theme is so narrow that you’re educating the reader in-depth, maybe you’re actually writing a textbook for college majors in a particular discipline. Or it’s a nonfiction book about the history of an era, event or location. Maybe it’s lighter reading—a how-to guide in gardening or diet and fitness or following some obscure philosophy. Or you start out with the premise that it’s not quite a cookbook, but it has so many recipes that maybe it turns out to be a cookbook after all.
  • Poetry. I’m surprised at how many people want to include poetry or song lyrics in their memoir. In this case, keep the “memoir” label. Poetry is nearly impossible to get published.

Or it could be a memoir

A book stands on its own merits, your memoir is fully yours to cross genres or create your own hybrid if you like, and for general reader enjoyment it doesn’t matter what category the book falls under. But for marketing, sales and just getting published to begin with, you have to identify what you have there. So give it some thought before slapping “memoir” on your cover.

Still, I don’t want this to discourage memoir authors. If I’m the reader, give me a memoir every time. I think they’re cool and fascinating, and they’re always as unique as the individuals who have written them.

Memoir Is More Forgiving Than Biography

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Old photo in a memoir of woman paddling a canoe

Fuzzy facts provide one more reason to write your story from the first-person perspective.

I was reading a recent book review of a biography—not a memoir—of Dr. Mary Putnam, a pioneering doctor in women’s medicine, when a single criticism struck me. Writing in The New York Times Book Review section, the reviewer noted that the author “indulges in sentimental moments of seeming speculation.” This is why memoir is more forgiving than biography—in memoir, speculation is accepted as accurate enough, and if anyone has the right to be sentimental, it’s a memoir author.

Biography is History

The sentence the reviewer quoted was: “Sometimes while they worked, their hands touched, causing Mary to feel electrified.” The author created this visual in order to bring to life a courtship, explaining how Mary Putnam came to marry a fellow scientist at a time when women in a serious profession like medicine were commonly considered too masculine for a man to marry. Is it a stretch to think that a brush of their hands might have occurred as they were in close proximity in the lab together, working toward a common goal and appreciating each other’s scientific mind? Not at all.

But did it actually happen? Probably not, but who knows? In a biography, though, I agree with the reviewer that the description feels contrived. There’s no footnote to credit a source for this “fact.” There’s no descendant or witness to interview. The author can’t know what happened between the two people, and the reader understands this.

Memoir is True-ish Story

Memoir carries different rules. You may conjure up out of your imagination the very same scene about a relationship you had, with no memory of hands touching or not touching. But when you write that your hands touched and sent electricity flowing through you, the reader accepts it—even appreciates that you’ve included such intimate detail.

This is the beauty of memoir. It must be accurate in dates and in the facts of the events, and the author must present the information in a sincere way. But your descriptions of little backstory events can include a blurriness of accuracy. You’re not expected to remember every aspect of a setting or encounter.

Maybe the lady at the counter didn’t say the exact words you quote in chapter two, but your account of the exchange still captures the intent of her words. Perhaps you’re not sure whether it was your brown jacket or your blue one that you had on the day your dad walked out, but you know you were wearing one or the other so you just choose one because the narrative becomes more vibrant when you include the jacket’s color. And your hands probably touched as you flirted with your lab partner senior year of high school, but you can’t be sure. You just like the image so you throw it in there.

In memoir, that’s all okay. In a biography, it’s cheesy, “indulgent” as the book reviewer calls it, and insulting to the reader. Isn’t that funny? As a memoir author you can get away with a lot more, and you should try. Your memoir should read more like fiction than like history, whereas a biography, even with elements from fiction such as a lot of dialogue, still is meant to be taken as a historical account.

Stick to As Much Truth as Possible

That doesn’t mean everything is loosey-goosey in your memoir. It’s still easy to alienate readers when your story develops a feeling of falseness. So follow a few principles:

  • Don’t exaggerate! If you say that your mom hit the city street at a speed of 100 miles per hour, it doesn’t ring true. Either refer vaguely to a “high speed,” or you can say it felt to you as if you were moving at 100 miles per hour. Better yet, find a creative way to describe a child’s impression while riding in a fast-moving car.
  • Keep any fact-fudging believable. Beyond just exaggeration, everything you contrive must sound at least plausible. Going back to the example of the lady at the counter, the conversation has to be close enough to the truth to sound as if it could have taken place. Let’s say I want to write a chapter about my mother. The photo above is of my mom attending a summer resort before she was married. I have little idea what she did there, but owning a picture of her paddling a canoe gives me a point of accuracy to cite.
  • Stay consistent. One of the biggest pitfalls in writing a memoir is letting your information clash—not keeping your facts straight. If chapter three takes place in 1967 and mentions that you spent your summer with your eight-year-old cousin, chapter six can’t have the same cousin coming home from the army in 1973.
  • Fact-check what you can. Dates, names, spellings, street names—was it a road or an avenue? Anything the reader might know or can google is something you should check before you get to the final manuscript. If you visited western Pennsylvania, the city is Pittsburgh with an “h”; if you were in Kansas, it’s Pittsburg, no “h.”

But when you tell your own story, you are the number-one source for facts. You’re not only the author but also the main character. The reader trusts you to tell the truth about your life—or a version that captures the truth in spirit.

10 Ways Writing Your Memoir Boosts Your Self-Esteem

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Man jumping from one cliff to another

Like any goal, completing your memoir will bring you a sense of accomplishment. That’s not the only way it will make you feel good, but let’s start there in counting out the 10 benefits writing your memoir has in store for you.

The new adjectives you can use to refer to yourself will be:

  1. Accomplished. Writing a memoir is an achievement! There’s nothing like working on a goal until you finish it to make you feel that you had time well spent. Go ahead and cross it off your list!
  2. Industrious. Writing a memoir is a long process, and it’s hard work. It’s an extra task, apart from your day job, family responsibilities and ordinary routine. You got down to work and did it.
  3. Persistent, also tenacious and persevering. So many people start Chapter 1 but never get to Chapter Last. You stuck with it.
  4. Relieved. Even if you enjoyed the process, on some level you’re relieved that it’s over. And if writing your memoir was part of healing from trauma, then you’re very relieved that, finally, you can truly move on.
  5. Magnanimous. Writing your life story for others to read and learn from is a generous act of giving back to your family, the community and, well, the universe.
  6. Brilliant. You’re brilliant not in the meaning of super-intelligent, but in the brilliance of shining like a star. When you finish your memoir, you are a shining star, lighting the way for others and beaming with the glow of, again, accomplishment.
  7. Talented, also artistic. Not everyone can sit down and write at all. You have the skill to get what’s in your head onto the screen/paper, and you’re not just reporting facts. A memoir is a work of art, showcasing your own writing flair.
  8. Grateful. You probably weren’t sure you could do this, and maybe you worried whether you’d live long enough to see your book. Gratitude for the opportunity to write and publish is a common outcome.
  9. Brave, also courageous, a synonym, but this point deserves two words even if they mean the same thing. It’s not easy to put yourself out there, display your triumphs and errors, your assets and weaknesses. Good for you.
  10. Trendy. From celebrities and politicians right down to people with what can be considered ordinary lives (no life is ordinary, really), everyone is writing a memoir! You’re on trend now that you’ve written yours.

Would you like to claim all of those ten attributes? Plus an 11th – proud of yourself? Start writing—or continue writing—your memoir, and when you finish you will feel all of that.

Your Memoir Resolution for the New Year

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Be an author on Write My Memoirs

Every year around this time, Write My Memoirs lights up with a rush of new members. I always love seeing that.

Of course, it’s not difficult to figure out what’s going on. In the first few days of the new year, people are signing up because their New Year’s resolution is to finally, finally write that memoir they’ve been promising themselves. It’s a great resolution! If you’ve made it, we are here to help you fulfill the goal.

How will you make sure you won’t let yourself off the hook and abandon this resolution? Polls show that many resolutions have gone by the wayside by as soon as February and more by halfway through the year. Your resolution to write a memoir does not have to be one of those statistics.

It’s that “one bite at a time” approach that will probably work best for you. Write up one story. Your chapter doesn’t need to have a name; in fact, you don’t even need to assign the story to a chapter yet. Write up the easiest story in your life. Then you will have that written!

The next step will feel easier – just another story from your life, or you can go chronologically and write up whatever happened after the story you just wrote. You can wait until the next day or the day after, but don’t wait a full week. Make writing your memoir part of your routine at least 3 days a week.

You can keep yourself accountable by sharing your goals or your writing on our Write My Memoirs Facebook page. We would love to hear how your memoir is coming along.

Take This Quiz to Find Out Whether You’re Writing a Memoir or an Autobiography

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Woman wondering what to call her book.

A common question authors have about memoir is whether they’re writing a true memoir or an autobiography. At Write My Memoirs, we don’t make much of a distinction. If you’re writing about your life, you’re writing about your life. Call it a memoir, autobiography, life history—we don’t think it matters much.

But authors continue to want to know how to label their book, so here’s a little quiz for you to take to reveal whether, according to conventional thinking, you’re writing a memoir or an autobiography.

Answer TRUE or FALSE:

  1. My story begins with my birth and continues to present day.
  2. My primary goal in writing my book is to provide information for my children and grandchildren to “know where they come from.”
  3. I would like generations in the future to have a reliable record of what life was like growing up when and where I grew up, as well as what adulthood was like during my lifetime.
  4. Even though my life hasn’t been that unusual, I want to get all the facts down.
  5. I want to tell all about my life in my own voice.
  6. The hurdles I overcame in my life holds lessons for other people.
  7. Even though I am not yet 50 years old, I want to write my book now.
  8. I will devote much of my book to one part of my life that was very unusual.
  9. Something happened to me that I feel compelled to write about.
  10. Everyone asks me about one episode in my life, so I decided to write about that.

As you may have figured out, this list of 10 questions starts heavy on autobiography and progresses incrementally to memoir.

Give yourself 1 point for each time you answered TRUE to questions 1 through 4.
Give yourself 2 points for each time you answered TRUE to questions 5 and 6.
Give yourself 3 points for each time you answered TRUE to questions 7 through 10.

Scores

1-8: Your book is an autobiography.

9-16: Your book is more of a memoir.

17-20: Your book may not have enough of a theme. Rethink whether you want to focus on one part of your life or write a comprehensive book that gives relatively equal treatment to all parts of your life.

Hope this helps! At Write My Memoirs, we want to help you write and publish the best book you can have to represent your perspective of your life.

Can You Write a Good Memoir Without Fact-Checking? No!

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Fact-check your memoir

Memoirs rely on the author’s memory, but we all are  aware that memory tends not to improve with age. It’s well-known that witnesses to the same crime report sometimes vastly different details. When you compare notes with siblings or childhood friends, you’re likely to discover that your accounts of the same incident differ significantly.

In many cases, you can’t know for sure whether your memory is correct. That bullying incident on the playground in fourth grade—did the other kid really say the words you remember? There’s no way to know for sure. That’s ok. Whether it happened exactly the way you remember is not as important as the fact that, in your mind, it did happen as you’re describing it. The incident’s effect on you is clear even if the truth about it isn’t.

But so many small facts can be checked. Today’s technology makes writing a memoir easier than it’s ever been in so many ways, and fact-checking is high on that list. Unlike in years past, there’s no need to sit in a library all day.

If you’re writing about the snowfall that occurred on your sixteenth birthday, take a minute to look up the weather report on that day. If you believe you attended your town’s bicentennial when you were 12 years old, some quick Googling will make sure you have the time line correct. If you describe walking down Center Street to your elementary school, make sure in your hometown it wasn’t spelled “Centre” Street, or it wasn’t Center Avenue. These are not unforgivable errors, but this is your book—why have any error that you can easily prevent?

Show your draft to family members for their input and recollections on the events you describe. Ask them to be particularly attentive to the facts you lay out. A parent, child or sibling may offer a perspective that you hadn’t considered or have some information that would add texture to your account.

Knowledge that we’ve carried with us all our lives can turn out to be our impressions rather than hard facts. Just check out everything you can.

A Memoir Doesn’t Have to be a Book Format

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When you have a compelling story to tell, the most obvious route to take is to write a book about it. But that route is not the only way to get where you’re going. Between technology that provides do-it-yourself options for creative projects and established websites that accept personal essays, you can find lots of alternatives to the traditional book. So let’s look at those options.

  • Book. When you write a book, you have something in your hand. You can give it to friends and family members. You can list it on Amazon and sell it. You can convert it to digital and sell it as an e-book or get a narrator and also have it as an audio book. You put your book on your bookshelf, and it’s there forever. At Write My Memoirs, we offer writing services to help you publish.
  • Short-form written account. Maybe you want to describe just one incident in your life or a short period of your life, and really there’s not enough content for a whole book. You can write a personal essay instead. Websites like Narratively accept well-written, compelling essays. I have had personal observations published on Motherwell, BoomerCafé and SixtyAndMe. Or consider a magazine article format like the one we offer here at Write My Memoirs.
  • Video. Creating a video of your story may seem like an overwhelming undertaking, but if you take it step by step it can be manageable even for a novice. Gather the photos and video clips you’ve taken during your life, focusing on the incident or period you want to cover. Write a script that you’ll read as a voiceover, and also take some video of yourself talking to the camera about your life. To put it all together, you’ll need video editing software. There’s a learning curve for sure, but the learning can be the fun part! Here’s a powerful example of a video created by a friend of ours about his journey as a young man who lost a leg to cancer.
  • Dedicated website. It’s so easy to purchase a URL that has some form of your name—johnsmithmemoir.com kind of thing—and the website host will have page builder software that makes it pretty easy to upload text and photos and embed videos. It turns into a sort of private Facebook site just for you. The beauty of this option is that you keep updating it, so it chronicles your life in a dynamic way rather than having a beginning and an ending.

The important thing to remember is that your life is worth documenting. There are many ways to leave a legacy for your children or a record for history. Choose one—or try them all!

Critique of Traditional Writing Rules, Part 6: Kill Your Darlings

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Critique of Traditional Writing Rules, Part 6: Kill Your Darlings
Continuing this series of “critiquing the critics” of 10 widely accepted rules of writing identified by Writer’s Digest, we’re up to rule 6, which is difficult to apply to a memoir. The rule, “kill your darlings,” advises writers to be careful about including anything that doesn’t really belong in your book. These rules, though, address fiction, and this one applies to furthering the plot and developing characters. If you’re not doing either of those, even if that passage is one of your favorite “darlings,” maybe you should let it go. But you’re not writing fiction; you’re writing a memoir. Your life doesn’t follow a script or plot line.
Even regarding fiction, writer and writing commentator N.M. Kelby argues both sides of the issue. On one hand, she suggests, “Think of your work as a producer thinks of a film. Words are like money. Spend them wisely. Each scene and actor is expensive, and so you must include only what you really need to tell your tale. And if you find yourself saying, ‘But I love this idea!’ that should be the first thing to become suspect.”
Then on the other hand, Kelby finds reasons for breaking this rule. “This approach to editing is the most dangerous tool in your repertoire,” she says. “We write for the beauty of the well-turned phrase and the surprise of unexpected wisdom.”
I have to agree with breaking this rule. Don’t throw in every boring detail of your life. Sometimes the off-the-topic paragraphs or chapters become readers’ favorite parts. Your thoughts and some minor events that you think are special should go in there if you think that your grandchildren and other readers will be interested in hearing about them. Memoirs are for posterity even more than for entertainment.
http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/writing-rules-10-experts-take-on-the-writers-rulebook

Continuing this series of “critiquing the critics” of 10 widely accepted rules of writing identified by Writer’s Digest, we’re up to rule 6, which is difficult to apply to a memoir. The rule, “kill your darlings,” advises writers to be careful about including anything that doesn’t really belong in your book. These rules, though, address fiction, and this one applies to furthering the plot and developing characters. If a sentence or more does neither of those, even if that passage is one of your favorite “darlings,” maybe you should let it go. But you’re not writing fiction; you’re writing a memoir. Your life doesn’t follow a script or plot line.

Even regarding fiction, writer and writing commentator N.M. Kelby argues both sides of the issue. On one hand, she suggests, “Think of your work as a producer thinks of a film. Words are like money. Spend them wisely. Each scene and actor is expensive, and so you must include only what you really need to tell your tale. And if you find yourself saying, ‘But I love this idea!’ that should be the first thing to become suspect.”

Then on the other hand, Kelby finds reasons for breaking this rule. “This approach to editing is the most dangerous tool in your repertoire,” she says. “We write for the beauty of the well-turned phrase and the surprise of unexpected wisdom.”

I have to agree with breaking this rule. Sometimes the off-the-topic paragraphs or chapters become readers’ favorite parts. Don’t throw in every boring detail of your life, but your thoughts and some minor events that you think are special should go in there if you think that your grandchildren and other readers will be interested in hearing about them. Memoirs are for posterity even more than for entertainment.

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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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