Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 29

What Is Developmental Editing and Why You Need It for Your Self-Published Memoir

You can’t write your best memoir without this game-changing help.

What is developmental editing and do you need it? If the big New York publishing houses NEVER publish a manuscript without extensive editing, why would you as a self-publisher?

A professional editor can quickly and effectively help you tweak your story so that you get to say more clearly and dynamically what you have been trying to say.

Editors come in many stripes: some are copy editors, others are content editors while...

Be Committed to Writing and Spare Me of People Who Are “Interested” in Writing

“Interested” in writing is about self-image while “committed” to writing is about the writing itself.

“But I do want to write my book. I am very interested in writing my book,” I can hear too many writers insisting.

“Wanting to write” a book, “trying to write” one, “being interested in writing” doesn’t make it. It never does.

What I am exploring here with you is a commitment to writing your book and bringing it to successful completion.

In this post, I walk you through the significant...

What everyone ought to do to create vivid characters

Easy, proven tips for adding feelings to a memoir

As a memoirist, do you accept that your family, your friends and your acquaintances are characters in your story?

“But, I’m writing about my mother, not about a character,” you say.

Yes, you are writing about your mother and she is a character in your story. If you can’t incorporate that notion into your approach to writing, you memoir will not soar.

Without the interactions of and with other people, our lives and memoirs risk becoming...

TO OZ? YES, TO OZ!

Sara Etgen-Baker

Editor: In this memoir excerpt which uses fiction technique to emphasize feeling, Sara Etgen Baker writes about a defining moment of her childhood as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded.

It was an autumn day, October 22, 1962—far enough from summer to have lost the heat and not close enough to winter to have that bite of cold. Above me, brilliant shafts of sunlight ignited the color in each falling leaf. Below me, each leaf fell, not knowing that this was its last dance in...

More on Using Precise Language

Many memoir writers are under the impression that you need to have an extensive vocabulary to write. An extensive vocabulary can only help you–if by “extensive” you mean many precise words—not just “big” ones. More important is using precise language.

Precise words are specific

Precise words are specific and not vague and ineffective like nice, awful, big, OK. “She was nice” is vague. “She understands different points of view” is specific.

“He was awfully big” is vague. You might write...

Destiny and Fate: Have You Placed These Concepts at the Center of Your Memoir?

If understanding the interplay between destiny and fate worked for the Greeks, why not for us memoir writers?

Over the years, I have found that the concepts of destiny and fate, which explained so many things for Greeks in the centuries before the Christian era, also explain so much about the characters of a memoir. Sometimes the concept has proven to be the key to unraveling the meaning of a life.

A refresher on Destiny and Fate

Let me take just a moment to refresh your understanding of...

November 4 Activity: Don’t Trust Your Memory

Don’t trust your memory when it comes to facts, events, and dates when you are writing your stories for your memoir. There’s no way around it: your memory—and mine—is fallible, unfortunately sometimes false, and too often flattering as it “remembers” events.

Go to the sources

To counter this, for November is Memoir Writing Month, gather materials that will support your grasp of the past. There’s nothing like a document created at the time of an event to anchor you in reality.

More memoir writing information is avai...

November 3 Activity: Let Go of Having to Write Deathless Prose on Your First draft

In this post, you’ll learn how to let go of deathless prose in your first draft.  November is Memoir Writing Month is a good time to let go of the perfectionism that keeps you from writing.

Getting into the flow of writing

What you are accomplishing during November is Memoir Writing Month is getting the flow of your story down in a first draft.

More memoir writing resources are available with the free My Memoir Education membership. Members, please sign in. Not a member?  

 November

November 2 Activity: Showing Up to Write Your Memoir

Showing up to write your memoir is the key to writing your book. Wanting to write an interesting memoir is a start, but wanting will not get your memoir written. What gets a memoir written is showing up to write when you had promised yourself you would show up. 

Showing up to write is being accountable.

Being accountable requires a certain amount of measurement, quantification.

When will you show up? How many times a week will you show up? For how many minutes or hours are you going to be writing when you say you wi...

Better Book Production is Possible — Book Publishing Tips

Yes, I can do better book production!

Note: This is the 4th article in a series of 4 on the writing process of A Sugary Frosting published in 2016. 

Post 1: I Finish A Sugary Frosting: Notes on the Memoir Writing Process

Post 2: Mechanics of Writing a Memoir: It’s not all Inspiration

Post 3: Preparing for A Successful Book Launch

Post 4: Better Book Production is Possible

Here are a few book publishing tips to prepare for better book production that I learned from publishing A Sugary Frosting / A Memoir of a Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage.

My book,...