Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 10

Commit to finishing your memoir

Today, I am offering you a dynamite coaching session. If you read through this post and check the links, you will have an experience that will set you up for success—when you commit to finishing your memoir.

Ahead of you is a week available to make progress on your memoir. By next week at this time, will you have written an encouraging number of pages on your memoir or…

Will you be regretting the week, saying, “Well, you know how it is…life got in the way! Ha ha!”

The choice of results is ...

Have you ever succumbed to this memoir shortcut?

“I just added a little bit of fiction to move the story along,” you say, to explain a memoir shortcut you have just taken, joining the ranks of such pseudo memoirist as James Frey in A Million Pieces?

Or, perhaps the ranks of Frank McCourt who fictionalized long dialogs in Angela’s Ashes. (No one remembers as much dialog as he tries to tell us he does years later from when he was six.)

Or perhaps you did just a bit of fictionalizing like making up a reason your mother did a certain thing...

Writing Another Person’s Memoir: Can you use the first person pronoun?

Shouldn’t writing another person’s memoir be called writing biography rather than writing memoir? You the writer are, after all, not the subject. Doesn’t that make it a biography?

But, are there occasions when a biography can justly be called a memoir?

In one of my books, A Sugary Frosting / Life in a 1960s Parsonage, I used lifestories that my late wife Martha Blowen had composed—and to which I added text. And…

I called the finished book a memoir.

Was this appropriate?...

Writing Negative Experiences into a Memoir

Of course, your memoir will have a lot to say about your family, your relatives and your community. How do you write about them when your feelings are not necessarily positive? Do you omit any mention and “make nice?” How do you avoid being mired in the quicksand of destructive emotions as you are writing negative emotions into a memoir?

When writing my childhood memoir, French Boy, I had some sorrow surrounding my father and some simply critical feelings about my mother. In short, I was writing...

Writing more Deeply: The pain in telling the truth

My new memoir, French Boy (due out in late 2022), is about my childhood. Much about this time in my life has a context that is unique and consequently different from that of my contemporaries. This memoir has a place in the world of memoirs, and I want it to find that place, but writing it has also brought up some pain which I did not want. Once again, I found out that there is pain in telling the truth.

My parents were thoughtful and loving people so their behavior towards me is not...

5 Better Ways to Describe The People in Your Memoir

Without other people, our lives and our memoirs risk becoming dull. Although ideas are pivotal for many individuals, relationships are even more commanding. We are intrigued with who other people are and how they function. “Who’s that? What are they doing? Where did they come from?” These are question we want answered. To write a strong story, capitalize on this interest.

The people in your memoir are your characters. It is your job to bring vivid characters to the attention of your read...

9 Tips for a Fast Start Writing Your Memoir

Ever wish you had the secret of generating a fast way to fast start writing your memoir—or most any other book?

A proven way to start writing is to follow a set of steps that will help you get into the writing habit. When I wrote and published A Sugary Frosting / A Memoir Of A Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage, I appreciated the efficiency and effectiveness of my writing process all the more. A Sugary Frosting is the story of the first 20 years of my deceased wife’s life. She had written a n...

Similes and Metaphors: Don’t Let Them Scare You!

“I don’t quite know how to describe what I’m feeling,” you might say during your writing as you grope for a way to describe in words this emotion that is beyond words. There is a solution to this dilemma that writers often resort to—but too many writers are sure they can’t handle it. The solution? It is the use of images, specifically similes and metaphors. These will bring your text to a level beyond words.

Not sure how to handle these literary techniques? Not to worry. The following ar...

Showing up for my memoir– again!

Last week, it occurred to me that I was putting off – does that really sound better than “procrastinating”?—doing the final edit of my memoir, French Boy.

I had already gone through it rather extensively for the umpteenth time and had made changes in Microsoft Track Changes.

Now my task was to go through all of the changes both make sure that I wanted those changes and make sure also that I had not introduced new mistakes.

Showing up for my memoir

I had done precious little in the ...

Dramatic story development, rather than dramatic events, adds up to an interesting memoir

To view this post as a YouTube video, click here.

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People will sometimes suppose that only big drama can make an interesting memoir. Of course, there are many readers who require constant titillation if they are to remain reading. Perhaps they are not the readers you should be seeking for your memoir. Nonetheless, nearly all readers require some attention to “interesting.”  

No, I do not believe that it is the scope of the drama of your memoir that is the crucial element to cr...