And why you don’t have to be a writer to write a great memoir When you’re a writer, you write. You can tell whether you’re a writer just by looking at the sheer volume of your work. Do you have notebooks full of essays, poems, stories or even just thoughts? Is your computer filled with files of creative or expository writing? Writers Write 24/7 When you’re a writer, your mood and the outside world may influence your subject matter, but none of that keeps you from writing. When you’re happy, you write. When you’re angry or sad, you also write. When you’re bored, you write, but when you’re so bu ..read more

Fun with AI! We asked for some moderately bad prose so you can see what to avoid. You can write well while still knowing there’s room to professionalize your memoir writing. The amateur quality can be distracting for readers, who pick up on the feeling that it just doesn’t sound like a “real” book even when it more or less keeps their interest. Two Types of Unprofessional Writing First-time book authors often have a nice flair for writing. They have an eye for detail, an adeptness at turning a phrase and a rich vocabulary of words that precisely hit the mark in descriptive prose. In school, th ..read more

Memoir continues to be a popular genre as 2024 moves along. Reading memoirs for 2024 can give you a lot of clues to help you write yours. It’s hard to find time to read books when you’re writing one of your own. But it’s both motivating and instructive to read well-crafted memoirs published about the same time you’re hoping to publish yours. What is selling these days? What type of work do publishers accept? My tip if you have no time to read is to combine exercise with audiobooks. I listen as I run, which gets me out running and also takes no extra time, since I’m “reading” memoirs during th ..read more

Sometimes the hardest part of writing a memoir is identifying what it’s really about. Most memoir authors fall into one of two groups. They either write their memoir to share a compelling episode in their life that comes with lessons for interested readers, or they want to chronicle their entire life for their children and grandchildren. In both cases, there’s usually a theme. The theme is obvious in the case of authors rolling out a pivotal period of their life, but even with the older person writing a full autobiography, at least one theme tends to emerge—often the simple, relatable theme of ..read more

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 voi ..read more

Learn the rules once and use punctuation correctly forever. Experts will recommend that when you sit down to write, just keep going and don’t worry about grammar or getting punctuation correct in your memoir. That’s good advice. You want the ideas to flow out of you without roadblocks that interrupt you when you’re on a good writing roll. But that freedom at the beginning doesn’t mean you can neglect the mechanics as you polish your writing. When you go back and read what you’ve written, the editing begins, and you may find that you’re not sure about how to use commas, apostrophes and semicolo ..read more

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 ..read more

The questions start with why, how and who. When you get to the point of publishing your memoir in traditional book form, you’ll probably give some thought to also developing a memoir audiobook to let readers decide whether they want to read your book themselves or listen as it’s read to them. People like options, and today many are choosing to acquire the content of a book through its audiobook. Some nonfiction books are best digested through print. They include two types of books that are kind of polar opposites of each other—those that give you more information than you want, so you end up s ..read more

Figure out how many people you will ask to read your book and what information you will want them to provide. Are you thinking about asking someone to read your memoir manuscript? How many readers? How will you select them? How far into writing the manuscript will you wait before you start asking for feedback on your memoir? This Story Will Not Go in My Memoir Back in college, I had to make an oral presentation that would count for most of my grade in my “Myth Into Literature” class. Departing from the Greek, Roman and random other literary myths we were studying, me being me, I decided to foc ..read more

Your memory is probably not as good as you believe it is If you think you may want to write a memoir someday and you’re not journaling, start now! Reflect on your day. Write about your views of the world right now. Describe where you live and how you feel about living there. Share your thoughts about the important people in your life. Next, start finding your memories. Relate how you feel now to previous events in your life. On your mother’s birthday, write about growing up with her as your mom. When you travel, write about the last time you visited that site or how it reminds you of previous ..read more