Magical Memoir Moments
Why Blog? Seth Godin and Tom Peters Explain the Benefits
Remember how to get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice? Blogging gives those of us who are spending the majority of our time doing something else the chance to write, get feedback, write, get feedback, and get better! But Godin and Peters say it so powerfully in this video link that you will want to…
Papa Hemingway's Memoir: A Moveable Feast Redux
If you write a memoir, don’t die before you publish it! That’s one lesson to conclude from the ways in which the Hemingway family and scholars have debated in print over the posthumous memoir A Moveable Feast. Below you can listen to son Patrick Hemingway and grandson Sean Hemingway describe the newly “restored” edition of…
Tips for Writers from National Association of Memoir Writers
Sharing writing tips is one of the goals of this blog. So today I pass along a few tips from the National Association of Memoir Writers. I recently joined this organization out of interest in finding other memoir writers and locating expertise in the genre. I look forward to exploring the blog, CD’s, teleseminars, newsletters…
Boy, Did I Love Lucy: A Mini-Memoir
If a genie had appeared to me when I was ten and offered me anything my heart desired, the answer would have poured out of me. Some girls want ponies. Some want Barbies. Some are generous enough to think of others first, asking for world peace or food for the hungry. Others go straight for…
Memoir Contest News: Win $500
The good people at the journal Memoir (And) sent me a request some time ago about their contest. I should have notified you in May, but you still have until August 15 to get an entry together. Here is the description. You can click on the website link above for more. Good luck! The Memoir…
"But Enough About Me: What Do You Think of My Memoir?"
Books about memoir tend to be serious. Writers theorize about the role of memory, wonder about its reliability, and offer suggestions about how to write artfully. This one is different. Nancy K. Miller has written a witty and thoughtful book about memoir. She writes about her own life while splicing in bits of contrast and…
The Girls from Ames: A Group Biography/Collective Memoir
“Sociologists now have data showing that women who can maintain friendships through the decades are healthier and happier, with stronger marriages, ” says Jeffrey Zaslow in the introduction to The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women & a Forty-Year Friendship. If you are a woman, and if you have a group of life-long close…
My First Rock Concert: A Mini-Memoir
Rock music is like a foreign language to me even though I graduated from high school in 1966 and college in 1970. Like many explanations of my most anomalous behaviors, this one goes back to being Mennonite. And a little geeky (meaning bookish–not a math whiz!) on top of that. I like to joke that…
Malcolm Gladwell's Memoir–Did You Know He Wrote One?
If you have read The Tipping Point or Blink, or if you watch talk shows or read The New Yorker, you don’t need an introduction to Malcolm Gladwell. Every book he writes becomes a bestseller. Gladwell claims he’s no genius. He’s not just lucky, either. He would tell you that he is the product of…
Sarah Palin's Independence Day
You don’t have to be a seer to recognize material for political celebrity memoir these days. Everyone knew that Sarah Palin would ink a book deal (even though she would not ink the memoir herself). Sure enough, HarperCollins signed her. The August issue of Vanity Fair includes an in-depth portrait of Palin by Todd S….