Posts chronicling my memoir writing journey, lessons learned, observations, revelations, and thoughts on the art of writing memoir.
I’ve gone through three distinct stages in my memoir writing journey and I’ve yet to find my groove. Stage One: Enrolling in a memoir writing course. When I got serious about writing memoir–and when I say writing memoir, let me be clear, I mean writing a book–I decided I needed to prepare. I enrolled in …
I enrolled in an online memoir writing course last November. Twelve weeks. Twelve lessons. All taught by an award-winning, best-selling memoirist. It’s one of the smartest (I’m patting myself on the back!) decisions I could have made. Although I’ve been writing my entire adult life, I didn’t know what I didn’t know about writing memoir, …
I Just Completed a Memoir Writing Course, Now What? Read More »
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 …
