Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 72

Dialog in a memoir: “So what did you say?”

Dialog is important in a memoir because it allows us to “hear” the subject, but using dialog is also fraught with problems. It can throw your memoir off.

Pitfalls of using dialog in a memoir

Essentially, most writers use dialog that is too long. A memoir, of course, is a remembered story. When the writer uses lengthy dialog in a memoir, s/he stretches credulity. The reader questions whether the writer is actually making the dialog up—how can the writer who is now 60 possibly remember such l...

November 1st: November Is Memoir Writing Month Kick-off

Get a quick start on your memoir during of November Is Memoir Writing Month.

(Or jumpstart your memoir any other month!)

It’s possible to get a large part of your first draft of the memoir you have been dreaming of written in a month’s time.

Here are some activities that will facilitate the process. You can work them on per day or several at a time.

Good luck!

More of this NIMWM Activity is available with free My Memoir Education membership, please join now.

November 1: Choose a period of...

Cell phones: A fine way to avoid intimacy

This post is part of the “Beyond Writing Prompts” series to help you to access memories that may not have made it to your Memory List.

Walking through the nearby Bates College campus recently, I walked towards five young women who were heading in the direction of the college dining hall. I could imagine them having gathered each other in a dormitory hallway for the hike to the cafeteria.

“Hey you want to go out for supper with us?”

“It’s time to go eat!”

“Why don’t we go to the dining hall...

Memoir Coaching Laser-focuses on Getting Your Memoir Written Faster and Better

How does memoir coaching improve your manuscript?

“What does ‘My family was poor mean,’ ” I asked a memoir writing client in a recent coaching session.

“Poor?” he asked at the other end of the phone line. “What do you mean what does poor mean? Poor means poor!”

“Does poor mean you didn’t have enough to eat or does it mean you never ate out at restaurants? Does poor mean you were forced to run out on your rent or does it mean you did not have an in-ground pool?”

Clearly, adjectives don’t mea...

A Room of One’s Own to Write Memoir In

Do you wish for “a room of one’s own?”

Are you a writer who has felt cramped about not having a dedicated space for writing?

You have read about writing spaces and have longed for one.

An outside writing space

An outside writing space sounds great to me—and a luxury I am not willing to wait for. In fact, I have never used outside writing rooms—except for once when I borrowed a summer home for week and finished a book there as I wrote ALL day. Being there was very productive as I had nothing...

My Mother Organizes a Kindergarten for Me

Although I loved being at the house on the hill, I was sometimes lonely for other children to play with. As there were no neighbors at the house’s level, the isolation was real. One day, perhaps remembering my friends in Worcester and my birthday party with Gordie and Louise and Billy, I demanded that my mother find me a playmate. I must have, as I have been told I used to do, stomped my foot as I demanded redress to the wrong that was being inflicted on me. (My mother who was docile was un...

Raising My Family Around the World ~ The Adventures of a CIA Wife and Mom

My book,Raising My Family Around the World ~ The Adventures of a CIA Wife and Mom in Stories, Snapshots and Letters,was self-published in the summer of 2015. Two hundred and thirteen pages and two hundred and thirteen photographs make up my hard-bound book. This was actually a surprising coincidence and not planned!

Several months later, I did a re-print—this time in paperback, a much cheaper alternative than the costly, but beautiful, hard-bound version. I gave the hard-bound copies to fam...

How to Choose a Title for A Memoir

Sometimes people ask me to come help them choose a title for a memoir. Here are some guidelines I use to generate a memoir title.

Choose a title for a memoir: it’s about the reader not about the writer.

When a title is good, it refers to something the reader will resonate with without any knowledge of the writer or even of the memoir. A good title brings the reader to the book; it “snookers” her/him to pick the book up and possibly buy it.

A title consists of both the main title and the sub...

We Move to Athol

This is an excerpt from the as-yet-unnamed memoir of Martha Blowen, my lifemate and business partner who died in 2008 of metastatic intraductal breast cancer.

The previous posts covered Martha’s life in Worcester where she was born.

While I believe my father did well as minister in Hadwin Park, he was by nature a small-town minister. Coming from the working class, he was familiar and comfortable with working men and women. Or, I might say, he was comfortable being the educated man among une...

Are you making memoir writing more difficult than necessary?

I hope this is not you…

You are memoir writing about a time when you—alas—got fired from your job. As you write about this, you throw in your college studies, how much you loved your major and how eager you were for the workplace. Then you go on to write about the catty politics of the office from which you got fired. You even throw in a vignette about your boss’s spouse who came onto you and another snippet about the wasteful (and tasteless) redecorating your boss commissioned. For good...