Posts chronicling my memoir writing journey, lessons learned, observations, revelations, and thoughts on the art of writing memoir.
Medium is a website where writers share stories, ideas, or their perspective with the world. According the the CEO of Medium, the goal is to help writers find their audience. While I have a small, growing audience here on my blog, Medium gives me the opportunity to reach more people. In the same way I …
I sat down recently with Gopal Singh, host of the Career Convos & Coffee Podcast to talk about leaving my marketing career to become a writer. We talked about all of the career pivots I’ve made over the years, beginning with what prompted me to leave my marketing job way back in 1998 to start …
This piece is the result of a memoir-writing exercise to shine a light behind a difficult character. I sat down to write about my memories of mom and ended up writing 3,000 words that were more about me than her! I pulled out the part that resonated the most, cleaned it up, and I’ve shared …
Memories of Mom: How a 25-year-old letter changed everything Read More »
After completing a writing lesson on the topic of Show and Tell, I realized it’s probably the one skill I most need to master in my quest to become a memoirist. My journalism education taught me to report the facts. As a nonfiction writer, I focused on writing clear and concise descriptive prose. Painting a …
Now that dad’s gone and mom is 84 years old and slowly losing her memory, I find myself trying to put together the puzzle pieces of my life. Of their lives. Of how our lives intersected. And, how it all made me into the person I am today. This quest is generating more questions than …
The email landed in my inbox on Saturday afternoon. That’s when they always arrive. Every week, a new chapter released, with video and text lessons, interviews, suggested reading, and of course writing exercises. The subject line read, Writing is Prohibited. I breathed a sigh of relief. After beginning the memoir writing course with an excited …
My journey as a writer began in college. I studied journalism, advertising, and marketing at San Diego State University. It was an interesting combination of liberal arts and commerce. Writing to communicate and writing to persuade and sell. I wrote everything from marketing copy to magazine articles. I even served as senior editor of the …
According to my memoir writing teacher, memoir is about turning our personal stories into art. Art with meaning. Art with a message. Art that heals. Art written in service of others. Art people can relate to and resonate with. Art that provides the reader with a perspective that just might help them in their own …
I’ve written for as long as I can remember. I majored in Journalism in college. But I never considered myself a writer. I was a business person and marketer who wrote, a woman who journaled. I wrote with an agenda: to educate, market, sell, share, and understand and process life. Professionally, I labeled myself an …
I’ve felt called to write a memoir for more than a year. Coincidentally, I realized I’ve been reading memoir for the past few years. Always a nonfiction reader, my previous book choices were usually in the personal development or self help genre. I read to learn, to grow, to understand life… mine and other people’s. …
