Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 74

How to Solve a Wrong Narrator Problem

Do you have a wrong narrator problem?

(This is a note I created as I struggle with choosing the narrator’s voice for a memoir on my early life. This memoir has been stalled by simply not having the right voice. I had a wrong narrator problem. I offer this rumination as a sample of the sort of writing you can place in a writer’s journal and of the sort of issue you must resolve.)

Many narrator possibilities

Whom to choose to narrate of the story of those years when I yearned to become myself...

How to Undermine Your Memoir

The following is based largely on a response I wrote in March 2013 to a comment on a post called But is it a Memoir? Rereading my comment, I realized it is of value to all the new readers to this blog since then—and to longer readers who may have forgotten or never read it. You would do well to read the original blog post.

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A Memoir Serves as a Guide to the Reader

Liberties with facts ultimately, I believe, undermine the authority of a memoirist to present his/her life experience as a live...

Is a Life Ever Too Ordinary for a Memoir?

This is the fourth 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 (first, second, third) covered Martha’s premature birth and her family’s recent move to Worcester, Massachusetts, where her father had taken on to serve as minister of Congregational church there and her grandparents’ demanding stay with them and their precipitous departure.

This excerpt presents early memor...

Not A Writing Prompt: Non-Events Belong in Your Memoir Writing

What are Non-Events?

While having coffee in a restaurant recently, I saw a man and a 14- or 15-year-old boy whom I took to be his son walk in together and order. Then, carrying their trays, they sat in a table near me. At first, they were both silent and then the boy began to speak. He spoke quite a bit. I couldn’t hear the words, but he seemed to be talking about something that had happened to him. The man occasionally nodded his head in response, but I heard him talk only once. The boy ke...

How Is Learning to Write Memoir Like Learning to Swim?

We often see people who are not comfortable swimming flail about in the water, their heads reaching up high, desperately, to catch a breath of air. This awkward gesture soon tires them. Try as they might there is not enough air for them as they constrict their ribs, twist their heads, contort their jaws. Soon enough, considering that they had set out to enjoy the water, these people quit and return to the shore. Swimming is over for the day.

As I was swimming in Ceasar Pond recently, not fa...

Memoir Writing Deadline: How To Set Yours

How to set a memoir writing deadline

As in most endeavors in life, when you write a memoir as an open-ended task without any end in sight, you are likely to procrastinate and extend the project. What happens when you do not set an end date is, next year or the year after that, you are still writing, revising, and polishing your lifestory. You know how it is: you want to get it right.

There’s a precept that states what gets dated, gets done—and it invariably gets done more quickly. It is eig...

4 Ways to Become a Better Writer

You can become a better writer, but it will take some work.

How do you achieve mastery in a skill? The answer, however it is presented, comes down to both acquiring knowledge pertaining to the skill and to putting in the time to practice the skill with critiques available to correct your technique and approach.

This is what I look for in the membership sites I am a member of. I benefit from significant new material sent to me regularly, from the live interactions via conference calls, indiv...

Stop Trying to Write Your Memoir

Some people manage to write a lot of memoir text during the same period of time that others hardly produce anything. Often, those who don’t write but who say they try to write have really valid reasons: company to cook for and entertain, a bad cold, “the kids are in drama workshops and I have to taxi them around,” “the computer wasn’t working all week,” cleaning house, buying a new car, etc.

It comes down to this: they really “tried,” but you know how it is, they didn’t get to write a singl...

My Uncles Rescue My Grandparents

This is the third 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 (first, second) covered Martha’s premature birth and her family’s recent move to Worcester, Massachusetts, where her father had taken on to serve as minister of Congregational church there and her grandparents’ stay.

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As it turned out, my mother’s choice—albeit unconscious—of my grandparents over me proved t...

Writing Feelings into Your Memoir

How to write feelings into your memoir is a rather important topic.

Recently on the Forum, David wrote about not accessing the feeling side of his memories, of writing a memoir that, if I am understanding him right, was all details and facts.

Below is my response which can serve as a stand alone article, but I hope you will go to the Forum and read the thread and even write a note to David about what your take is on his situation.

Or if you prefer, leave a comment below about your thoughts...