Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 63

Where Do You Start Writing Your Memoir?

Is there a best place to start writing your memoir?

It’s a quandary: where do you start writing your memoir? Many people may say: from the beginning. But, I don’t think that is the best place to start composing.

1. The answer is actually quite simple: Start writing your memoir anywhere in the story.

Start from where you feel like writing about on any given day and keep writing as long as you wish to do so. Then, if the topic ceases to interest you and you would like to write about something...

Tell the truth, or why washing family laundry in public is painful.

It is not always easy to tell the truth

Anyone writing a memoir must face the challenge of how to tell the 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 of “silly me thin...

Revealing Ourselves in a Memoir: 3 Reasons We Don’t Do It.

In writing a memoir, all of us, at one time or another, come against the fear of revealing too much of ourselves. The fear is founded—it’s not always a friendly world out there. And…

As we reveal too much about ourselves, we may be revealing too much about someone else.

But, excessive revealing is generally not the problem most memoir writers face. Revealing too little is a much more frequent problem for writers I coach or edit.

Often revealing too little can come about because:

you want t...

Writing Is Soul Work

Do you find that writing is soul work or do you struggle with doing your pages?

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. What I am concerned with is how I view myself.

An evolving s...

Seven Reasons for Writing a More Personal Memoir

You must not resist 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...

8 Tips for a Fast Start to Writing Your Memoir

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

Recently, I wrote and published A Sugary Frosting / A Memoir Of A Girlhood Spent in an Orphanage. I now appreciate the 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 number of her stories but died before completing a memoir. When I took up the task, I followed what I co...

Make a Memoir Writing Schedule That Works For You.

A memoir writing schedule frees the imagination.

When you know that you will write your lifestories at a certain time, then you will not feel anguished if you are not writing all the time. Because the unconscious seems to thrive on ritual—and memory depends heavily on the cooperation of the unconscious as well as the effort to remember you will inevitably find yourself remembering more when you write regularly.

Write at the same time—say every evening from 7 to 8:30 PM or every other mornin...

Add Depth To Your Memoir

It’s time to add depth to your memoir.

Here are links to five information-packed articles that are sure to make you think more deeply about your writing—and help you in the important task of re-writing your stories and vignettes so that they form a more coherent and meaningful whole.

1. Holding Back the Truth in Your Memoir
The post will challenge you to be more open about your story. A memoir needs to demonstrate courage. Is yours?

2. Better Than Writing Prompts – Five Tips for Creating a...

Linger With Your Story — It’s a Good Habit to Develop.

Many, and perhaps most, people write too fast. I don’t mean that theyend up with a text characterized by sloppy grammar, spelling problems and chronology issues—although that may be the case, of course.

Linger with your story

No, what I mean is that they push through the process of writing theirstories much too quickly. They end up with only a part of thestory they could have written had they lingered.

So many times in my workshops, I have found it easy to tell those manuscriptsthat have be...

Don’t Wait To Write Your Memoir!

“What are you waiting for? Why are you avoiding the real work? What will it take for you to go deeper?”

—Phil Cousineau in Stoking the Creative Fires

The Phil Cousineau quote above ought to be for all of us a stirring call to continue—or to begin if that is where we are at—the work of writing a depth memoir we may have procrastinated about for so long.

It is later than you think. In the twenty-five years I have been doing this work, I have seen people die and people grow too old. The energy...