write your memoir in six months

Craft Essentials: Shape Your Memoir for Success

Our latest six-week craft class takes you beyond the basics of structure and scene and reflection and into some of the more nuanced and extremely important aspects of good memoir writing with a top-notch roster of teachers who will challenge and inspire.

6 Mondays:
Sept 18, Sept 25, Oct 2, Oct 9, Oct 16, Oct 23
4pm PT | 7pm ET
$299

During these six consecutive weeks, you’ll learn to:
• write with all your senses (with Janet Fitch)
• show your reader so they feel like they’re inside your story with you (with Rebecca Carroll)
• harness the power of narration (with Jeannine Ouellette)
• honor subtext and subtly in your story (with E.J. Koh)
• track the many ways context is necessary for your readers (with Linda Joy Myers)
• unlock the ways in which aboutness holds the key to a more contained story (with Brooke Warner)

6 Mondays:
Sept 18, Sept 25, Oct 2, Oct 9, Oct 16, Oct 23
4pm PT | 7pm ET
$299

All classes on Zoom and always recorded.
Registration and teacher details at: https://magicofmemoir.com

We invite you to check out the details of your 6-month class, kicking off with an orientation in December and running January through June 2024. Check out the details here.

When you decide to write a memoir, you begin a journey into the heart of who you are. You draw upon memories, desires, imagination, and writing techniques to paint a picture of your life, or a portion of your life. You start down the long and winding path toward becoming a writer, and eventually a published author. Published author—yes! This is the goal of most memoir writers. You may want to learn from your story, or even settle some old scores (internally and externally), but mostly, as a memoirist, you want to share your wisdom and your story—if only you can get it done! That is the challenge.

As coaches and writers ourselves, we know that good, consistent writing emerges and blossoms with structure, accountability, and encouragement. These are the cornerstones of Write Your Memoir in Six Months. You and a cohort of eleven other memoirists will embark upon a journey together that will culminate in the book you’ve been wanting, needing, and longing to write.

We treat the process of writing a memoir like the journey it is. You will encounter three stages—the excitement of getting started; the muddy middle where you may encounter a few snarls and saboteurs; and the long-range view to the end, when you’re weaving all the pieces together and the finish line is in sight.

Here are the five things we believe any memoirist needs for this journey:

Consistency—your body in front of the computer regularly (daily for a short time is ideal).
Accountability—someone who’s expecting you to deliver on what you want for yourself.
Goals—when you have goals, you’ll know when you reach them.
Guts—the sheer determination to write and write, consult, edit, rethink, and write some more.
Patience—it takes time to write a book. But you only can do it one sentence at a time.

We are two passionate memoir advocates who have coached hundreds of authors through the completion of their manuscripts and all the way to publication. In this course, you’ll be met with support each step of the way—getting your fill of craft and technique, as well as the necessary emotional support that a journey like this requires.