Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 29
November 2, 2019
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...
October 29, 2019
Better Book Production is Possible — Book Publishing Tips
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,...
Better Book Production is Possible–Book publishing tips
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,...
October 24, 2019
Preparing for A Successful Book Launch
Note: This is the 3rd 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
Preparing for A Successful Book Launch: I’m finished writing the text for my next book, A Sugary Frosting/A Memoir of A Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage. What follows is a syno...
October 22, 2019
Mechanics of Writing a Memoir
Note: This is the 2nd 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
The mechanics of writing a memoir involve the work of writing a story and how life can insert delays & provide contemplative times, yet leave time left to write.
...October 17, 2019
I Finish A Sugary Frosting: Notes on the Memoir Writing Process
Note: This is the 1starticle 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
It’s 2016, and I am in the very last days of the memoir process and polishing A Sugary Frosting / A Memoir of a Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage, the early lifestory of my deceased sp...
1articleOctober 10, 2019
How to write vividly–Avoiding vagueness in writing
If you want to learn how to write vividly, use the following tips for avoiding vagueness in writing your memoir.
When a manuscript slips into a vagueness, the reader reads and rereads and does not quite “get it.”
“What’s the author trying to say here?” we ask ourselves. “What am I missing?”
Here are a few of my ideas as to why this may happen.
1. The author is not sure herself what she is trying to say. She has not lingered with this part of the story to extract from it the essence of her...
October 8, 2019
Tell the painful truth, or why washing family laundry in public is difficult
Anyone writing a memoir must face the challenge of how to tell the painful truth of his or her story at the same time as one does not want to cause harm or pain. I have written elsewhere about telling the truth in a memoir. Those posts have been more on the objective level—the theory of telling the truth.
My latest memoir A Sugary Frosting has brought me face to face – personally – with the challenge of telling the truth. I’m not a great fan o...
October 3, 2019
Writing As Soul Work
You can approach writing a memoir as soul work or you can approach writing as a depressing, meaningless struggle.
Like many readers of this blog, I myself struggle with the concept of what it means to me to be a writer.
Notice I have written “what it means to me.” I am not much concerned with how other people regard me as a writer. Don’t get me wrong: I want to be read and I want to sell my books. But, I am not concerned particularly with how other people view me personally. What I am conce...
October 1, 2019
Seven Reasons for Writing a More Personal Memoir
You want to write your memoir, but you resist getting too personal, going in too deep.
Your guarded secret that you wanted to have your own business one day or your hope that your father would apologize eventually for his denigration of you—this has happened and it has had a great impact on you. Your even deeper secrets—the sexual orientation that you dared not reveal or your negative self-concept—surely this can’t be the subject of a memo...
