So many memoirists Linda Joy and I work with are concerned about legal issues surrounding libel and invasion of privacy that it's high time we get clear about what you can and cannot do in memoir here on our blog. I obtained the information below about libel and invasion of privacy at a session I attended at Pub U in April (notice—next year Pub U is happening in Salt Lake City, April 8-9), where attorney Jonathan Kirsch was helping a bunch of publishers and authors wrap their mind around the … [Read more...]
Transformation in Wild—The True Inner Journey
January 2, 2015 By Leave a Comment
Last week, my writing group celebrated our annual holiday gathering by seeing the movie Wild. Prepped with the excitement and the long wait for the release of the movie, we settled in to see how the filmmakers and Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed would translate the book onto the big screen. Earlier in the year, we had met the “real” Cheryl at a daylong writing conference where, in a graceful and authentic way, she shared her stories of living and writing the moments that were so profound in … [Read more...]
Get Wild with Flashback and Memory
December 15, 2014 By 4 Comments
Because Linda Joy and I taught Cheryl Strayed’s Wild as our first best-selling memoir course in our best-seller series, I’ve been eager to see the movie from the moment I heard about it. In our six-month course, Linda Joy and I talk a lot about writers’ strengths. There are always certain elements of craft that writers will nail. You might feel comfortable with scene-writing, or narrative voice, or takeaways without even realizing it. These are areas in your writing that might come naturally … [Read more...]
Why to Write Through the Holidays
December 1, 2014 By 4 Comments
There’s an exercise I do with clients that I got from Tsultrim Allione, author of Feeding Your Demons. The exercise is more or less a guided meditation that encourages people to give characteristics to their saboteur (demon). The point is to give form to your saboteur—to determine its shape, smell, size, color, and even to name it. Over years of doing this with writers, there’s been an interesting commonality: Oftentimes the saboteur haunting writers is sticky. I’ve seen saboteurs manifest in … [Read more...]
Memoir Writing Is Not an Act of War
September 28, 2014 By Leave a Comment
Writing a memoir is not an act of war, but it can seem that way to our family. When our “truths” are other people’s “lies” that they need to believe, when the larger than life stories are skewed or downright wrong—some people look askance at any story that does not agree with their own version. Family members are like slices of a pie, seeing the center through a different lens. It’s a war when families fight over what “really” happened, and this can go on and on, for generations. Memoirists … [Read more...]
Manifesting Your Idea into a Memoir
August 24, 2014 By 2 Comments
I had the privilege of seeing Elizabeth Gilbert’s keynote address at the Wake-Up Festival this August 2014. Although Liz is most famous for her memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, she told the audience that her true and original love was fiction. Dani Shapiro wrote this month in the New Yorker that she is an accidental memoirist, and although Liz didn’t frame it exactly this way, it’s clear that she is too. It’s not uncommon for writers to be visited, or haunted, by a story that will not let them go. … [Read more...]
Your Scene-writing Toolkit
April 8, 2014 By 2 Comments
It happens in each of our long courses that I hit a point where I realize how much writers really shoulder when it comes to writing a memoir. There are so many things to hold in addition to the memories, messages from our saboteurs, and bouts of self-doubt. Most writers who are working on a memoir are learning a new craft while also dealing with the wellspring of emotion that comes from tapping into experiences that can oftentimes feel like stirring a hornet’s nest. Sometimes it’s hard to keep … [Read more...]
How to Craft the Beginning of Your Story
January 21, 2014 By Leave a Comment
As readers, we all have the experience of trying to find our bearings as we begin a story. To get “inside” the story that’s beginning, we readers are curious about who the main characters are, and we’re eager to learn about them—to learn why we are being told this story about these people. Early in a story, we’re getting grounded in where we are—literally—on the planet, in the world, and in the geography of place. We need to know the time frame for the story, too. That’s the who, … [Read more...]
15 Tips for Mining Your Memories
December 18, 2013 By 2 Comments
Memoirs are woven from memories, but many memoirists I talk to wonder if they have enough memories, or if their memories are “correct.” The important thing is to understand that memories can't be measured or proven correct. What you remember is your raw material for creating your memoir--and there are a lot of ways to enhance your memories. It can be helpful to do "research"-- to gather with others and share memories around the table, to pore over family photo albums, reminiscing and … [Read more...]
The PTT of Memoir—Positioning, Theme, and Takeaway
December 7, 2013 By 3 Comments
The PTT of memoir will help you think about three things you want to keep in your awareness as you write your memoir. A memoir has to be able to be positioned (if not by you then by your future marketing team—so you might as well do this heavy-lifting before you start shopping your work) in order to sell. Its themes and takeaways need to be clear for an editor and his or her Editorial Board to be sold on the idea that it will hold value and meaning for a reader. These three points are equally … [Read more...]
