Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

writing motivation

May Is Creative Beginnings Month—Perfect Time to Start or Restart Your Memoir!

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Creativity Month man with paints and pens

By May, many of our New Year’s resolutions have long gone stagnant. With next New Year’s a long way off, I can suggest a different calendar trigger to get back to your memoir or other writing project. Guess what? May is Creative Beginnings Month!

Facts About Creative People

Are you creative? At Write My Memoirs, we believe everyone is creative. You’re creative if you develop computer code. You’re creative if you’re raising children. You’re creative if you decorate a room, cook a dinner, plant a garden or figure out why your car won’t start. Check out these factoids about creative people and creativity, which we’ve adapted from a National Today list:

  • Take a shower! Up to 72% of people have creative insights while they’re in the shower.
  • Spend some alone time. Creativity thrives in solitude. While collaboration is fun and group work can help, it is when you’re alone that you engage in constructive internal reflection, which boosts creativity.
  • Let yourself daydream! Studies have long shown that daydreaming provides a sort of mental incubation period for more creative thinking to come.
  • Imagination isn’t creativity. You might think of imagination and creativity as synonyms, but “imagination” refers to thinking about something that doesn’t exist, while “creativity” is more about making an idea a reality.
  • Don’t worry about messiness. Some research indicates that messy or cluttered spaces can help the brain focus on the bigger picture and boost creativity. A lot of creative people have trouble keeping their spaces tidy.

History of the “Holiday”

It may be a celebration without a lot of celebrating, but spring brings that fresh beginning anyway, so it’s great timing. Here’s what National Today says about Creative Beginnings Month:

“There are varying opinions on the origins of creativity. Some claim it began back in the days when humans made tools for hunting, while others say it started with Australian Aborigines and the invention of the boomerang. Many even state that creativity can be traced back thousands of years ago to the stone age when people carved inscriptions and drawings on the walls of caves. Another report claims that creativity and the art of creation started with the people of Egypt and Mexico. It is also said that ancient creativity comes from Asian countries like India, Iran, Cambodia, etc.”

The website further notes that this month is celebrated by several countries across the globe. “We celebrate Creative Beginnings Month so that people can awaken their hidden creative skills,” it continues. “Each person uses creativity differently and in their own way. There are a plethora of options for how you can celebrate the month of creative beginnings! This is the perfect time to get over that creative block you’ve been facing, resume a project that you’ve been putting off, or simply start a project you promised yourself you would. It can be simple, complex, fun, serious, or anything.”

Creative Beginnings of Writing Your Memoir

Coming to WriteMyMemoirs.com is a great first step for getting your memoir on track! We have suggestions to inspire your creative flow, and we’re happy to help with the writing as you proceed, the editing along the way, and the self-publishing when you’ve finished.

So how do you start? Write one sentence. Then write another. Before you know it, you have a paragraph. Write another paragraph. Before you know it, you have a chapter. Write another chapter. Before you know it, you have a memoir. It’s just like any other journey: one step at a time.

5 Ways to Motivate Yourself This Year to Write Your Memoir

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New year, new writing project, right? Or the same old writing project—probably your memoir—that maybe this year you will finally start, continue, or finish. Let this be that year. Choose your motivation among these five!

1. Get inspired by other memoir authors who are just like you

You are no different from the tons of people who decide to document their lives. Some are professional writers, but many are not. Some are celebrities with built-in followers, but most are not. Some want to sell their books, while others want to tell their story just for their family to have. Some are skilled at language, but many need editors to smooth out the rough edges.

The important thing is that you are just as worthy of having a memoir as they are.

There’s only one difference between you and those authors: they sat down and wrote. All you have to do is that. Make the time today. Make the time tomorrow. A half-hour or whatever you can spare. Soon you’ll have a chapter, and maybe by the end of the year you’ll have a full manuscript to submit to an editor, run by an agent, or self-publish as is.

2. Get inspired by people who are more challenged than you.

I compete in track meets so I have to train regularly to continue to do that, but I don’t really enjoy running. Sometimes I just want to give up—the way you probably want to just give up on your writing project. How do I turn myself around?

The best way for me is to see someone around my age who can’t walk or has cognitive impairment or faces depression or some other challenge. I’m in my late 60s and can still run. That makes me grateful enough to take advantage of it. At any time I might sustain an injury or be diagnosed with an illness. As long as I can function, I should make the most of that.

You can do the same. Maybe you’re not the greatest writer in the world, but there are people who can’t sit at a keyboard. We had one client who’d had a brain injury and couldn’t get his memories and thoughts straight, and it was so frustrating for him. If you CAN write, DO write. It’s a gratitude thing.

3. Get inspired by your own story in your own voice.

If you don’t write your story, who will? It’s such a powerful life statement to say, “Yes, my life is worth documenting.” Whether it’s ordinary or unusual, it’s your unique life. Friends and family will remember you, but their memories will be shaped by their own perceptions. Only you can provide the “inside story” of how your life was lived.

It’s special. Do it!

4. Get inspired by the people you’re leaving behind.

Do you wish you’d asked your parents or grandparents more questions about their lives? Maybe you’d like to know how it was to live before all of our 21st century technology, or what their city was like when they were growing up. Perhaps you are not sure how the family relationships played out or maybe even how you’re related to some of your family.

Your children and grandchildren, or maybe nieces and nephews or friends’ children, will have the same questions. You can give them all the details, the backstories, your impressions of your time and place. They will be so happy to have all of that. Draw motivation simply from the love you feel for the people around you.

5. Get inspired by the feeling of achievement.

Maybe your memoir will become a best-selling book or your life story will be turned into an iconic movie. It can happen!

Even if the only people who read your book are you and your family, the achievement of writing a book, being an author, having a hard copy to hand out to people—it’s priceless. Find out what it feels like to BE AN AUTHOR!

Bonus motivation

One more thing: we’ll help you. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and ask questions in our Facebook Write My Memoirs Group. We would love to get to know you, receive your feedback, and have you join the Write My Memoirs community of authors just like you.

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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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