Magical Memoir Moments

A Memoir Overview: Guest Blog post at Jane Friedman's blog

Depending on whom you ask—or what lens you apply—memoir is either a boomlet that burst or a timeless form just now coming into its own. The first lens, the literary lens, gets a fair amount of press attention. The second lens, a more hidden one, may need a little more magnification. While I believe memoir is…

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How to Write a Memoir

So you want to explore the fog of memory and write a memoir. Great! Like the IRS, I’m here to help. And so are many others. In fact, I am going to send you to them. Here is an eight-page booklet (.pdf) I wrote on the subject. What I say below will not duplicate the…

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A Free National Tele-Conversation on Place in Memoir–Sign Up!

Friends. Here’s a chance for us to hear each other’s voices, literally. I will be speaking on a roundtable along with the fabulous authors Tracy Seeley and Linda Joy Myers, whom you may have met in previous posts and comments on this blog. Linda Joy will interview Tracy and me on the tantalizing subject of…

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All in the Family: Memoir Q & A

As promised, here is an interview with today’s memoir expert, Linda Joy Myers. Dr. Myers was kind enough to answer six questions about specific cases concerning what, if anything, an author owes to family and friends in a memoir. This post is also Day Two of the giveaway. If you leave a comment below, you…

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How To Write Your Memoir and Still Go Home for the Holidays: A Guest Blog

The day has come for both the guest blog by Linda Joy Myers and the first day of our giveaway contest. Below is the guest post that addresses the question of how to deal with our fears of offending family members from Dr. Myers, a therapist, writer, and teacher. I invite you to offer your…

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The Power of Memoir Giveaway: Just Around the Corner

I am looking forward to a week of reading, writing, exercising, meditating, and blogging–another wonderful “staycation” like the one I described last summer. On Wednesday of this week, writer, teacher, and therapist, Linda Joy Myers will be doing a guest blog about the memoir writer’s relationship to family and friends–“How to Write Your Memoir and Still Go…

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Laughter and Family in Memoir Writing: Guest Blogs and an Upcoming Giveaway

 “What makes us laugh out loud?” is the question I am asking as I re-read Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Next week I will try to answer that question for a guest post  I plan to send to Matilda Butler at the great website  Womensmemoirs.com. If you have not discovered this website, I recommend that you…

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Don't Call Me Mother: A Memoir That Teaches When to Hold 'em and When to Fold 'em

Willa Cather once said that nothing is more exciting in life than to get inside the skin of another person. Sometimes I get that feeling when I make a new friend or have a deep conversation with an old one.  Other times books transform me in a similar way. I love reading just for the…

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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…

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Memoir as a Healing Art

Becoming Whole:  Writing Your Healing Story by Linda Joy Myers belongs in your library of books about memoir.  Like Tristine Rainer’s Your Life as Story, Maureen Murdock’s Unreliable Truth: Memory and Memoir, Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, and Patty Miller’s The Memoir Book, all of which have been mentioned or reviewed here, this book…

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