Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 75
August 12, 2015
What’s your take on telling the truth?
The Memoir Cafe is a forum in which members of My Memoir Education, the free basic membership in The Memoir Network, post questions and receive replies.
One discussion that I want to bring to your attention is about “telling the truth that hurts” in a memoir. While this may seem to have an easy resolution—”What’s the problem! Just tell the truth!”—it often is not that easy in practice. The thread was recently added to. David had a problem writing about his blended family—I hope you agree wi...
August 11, 2015
My Interview at Writer Fun Zone
DL: On July 7, 2015, the Writers Fun Zone ran an interview with me that I want to be sure you got to read.
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1. Tell us who you are and how you help writers in 100 words or less.I help writers to write memoir with more focus, joy and skills. Many writers start their project with enthusiasm and then get bogged down in the problems inherent in any long writing project. They become discouraged. They doubt their ability to proceed and ultimately to finish. They second guess their vision and th...
August 10, 2015
My Mother Chooses Between Me and My Grandparents
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 post 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.
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Taking her cue from others and their needs, my mother was not a person to take care of herself.
In spite of her pregnancy, she had agreed to h...
August 6, 2015
Writers Are Finishing Their Projects
In the last weeks, a number of people have contacted me with news about the status of their memoirs. It seems that their projects are coming to a completion.
A book by a Liberian man who came to the United States, essentially as a slave, will be published in September. A woman I first met about 20 years ago at an Elderhostel workshop I was teaching is sending her manuscript in to the office for the layout and design. Not a fast writer.
Another woman who wrote about healing yours...
July 24, 2015
Why You Should Write Strategically!
We writers are artists. Most of us cultivate inspiration and are happy when we are under its influence. However, there is no one reading this who is unaware that writing can be pick and shovel work and it can be hard going sometimes—there are days when we would rather clean out the garage or the refrigerator than sit down to write. So…why not make the most of our work and write strategically?
We all love inspiration, but the problem with inspiration i...
July 23, 2015
Coming Into This World
This is an excerpt from the as-yet-unnamed memoir of Martha Blowen, my lifemate and business partner who died in 2008.
When you are both a story teller and a story keeper, in thirty-one years of co-habiting with someone who is very verbal, you get to learn many of her stories. A number of them you have heard not only because they are told directly to you as you went about your day—perhaps driving into town—or as you sat in the morning sipping your coffee but also because she told them to ot...
July 22, 2015
We Were Not Spoiled: A Memoir for the Family and for the World
Yesterday would have been my mother’s 94th birthday. The following post was published on Matilda Butler’s fine bog http://womensmemoirs.com.
My mother died on May 5, 2015. This is the first July 21st of my life that I spend without her.
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Let me celebrate my mother’s life by writing about her memoir We Were Not Spoiled—which I will offer you as a gift at the end of this post.
Between 2009 and 2013, I interviewed my mother for her memoir for which I was to serve as ghostwriter. I have writ...
July 9, 2015
Bringing Discipline to Your Memoir Writing
A big part of success is showing up and doing the work. The same is true in writing a memoir. To succeed you have to do some writing; you have to demonstrate some discipline in your memoir writing, some nose to the grindstone.
Now the writing process is not straightforward or linear and there are many unexpected twists and turns to the process. In fact, in the link below to blog posts on discipline in writing, you will even find a p...
July 8, 2015
Before Sending Your Manuscript To An Editor. [Part 2]
This second post on self-editing revolves around the use of time. In the next post, I will write about time sequencing and flashbacks.
1. The historical present looks like the past, but it isn’t.What tense are you going to use to narrate your story?
For must writers, that choice is clearly the historical present—i.e., the past tense. When you write, “She walked into the room,” while the verb is in the past, the reader sees the character walkin...
June 24, 2015
More Editing You Can Execute For Yourself.
Following the recent posting of part one of What You Can Do Before You Send a Manuscript to An Editor, I am reprinting a post that contains more useful information on how you can edit your own work before sending it to a professional editor. Self-editing can focus your narrative and save on editing fees.
I hope you find it useful and will leave your own suggestions in the comments section.
