FROM THE BLOG
How To Research A Memoir
HOW TO RESEARCH A MEMOIR is one of the concepts that plagues many writers in our favorite genre. After all, it’s your life, right? Why should you have to go and look up anything? This is (il)logic I listen to everyday in my role as a memoir coach and writing teacher, and every day I set the record straight by speaking of accuracy as being a first-and-foremost objective of memoir. Yes: Accuracy. This not only requires getting the dates correct and the names spelled right, but also unearthing the backstory of your own vivid tale. Don’t know how? Let’s let Barbara Scoblic, author of a gorgeous, smart, and well-written new memoir inform you. Read on. [Continue reading]
How to Write A Memoir in Essays
HOW TO WRITE MEMOIR as a series of essays? Can a series of essays be a memoir? And, if so, do you string them together to make a satisfying experience for the reader? These are questions I get all the time in my work as a memoir coach and memoir … [Continue reading]
Which Book Were You Meant to Write?
WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN you discover that you're writing the wrong memoir? Well, if you are Louise Ross, you make the decision to write the right book. In this case, it was going from writing her own memoir to instead writing a collective one that … [Continue reading]
Can a Memoir Be a Self-Help Book? Can a Self-Help Book Be a Memoir?
Can a memoir be a self-help book? For that matter, can a self-help book be a memoir? These questions were posed to me recently in a one-on-one memoir coaching session and got me thinking about the many such books I've handled, edited and coached into … [Continue reading]
How To Characterize Someone in a Personal Essay
MY FATHER DIED forty-one years ago this week and, as it does each year, it got me thinking about what I miss. But what to write? How to characterize someone in a personal essay? How to show who he was without showing what you do not need to know? … [Continue reading]
What is a Memoir? Let’s Define It and Get You Working.
I HAVE A NEW response I give when asked how to define memoir and I’ve been testing it on people, hoping it resonates. Now, I think I’ll share it with you. When defining what is a memoir, one can scour the internet and get some really useless … [Continue reading]
How To Write a Personal Essay? Go Small to Reveal Life’s Large Themes
THE PERSONAL ESSAY will always be among my favorite forms of discovery. In it, one can have a little look, bounce something in the hand and gather one’s wits on the larger issues of life by reflecting on something small. And in that last phrase is … [Continue reading]