Denis Ledoux's Blog, page 79
February 26, 2015
La ultima vez—The last time
Besame, besame mucho / Como si fuera esta noche la última vez…
Kiss me, kiss me a lot / As if tonight were the last time…
Cesaria Evora’s voice, strong and oh! so beautiful, comes in from the livingroom as I pour myself coffee in the kitchen. It is early morning, and I am thinking of my day, organizing it in my mind. There’s work at The Memoir Network—a ghostwriting client at 11, Sally who works with me in the office at 2—the gym this evening, a visit with my mother who is 93 and lives in a n...
February 25, 2015
Coaching or Editing? Which Is Which? Which Is Best?
There’s often only a permeable line between coaching and editing. In practice, as I work with a writer, I find myself slipping from coaching to editing and back. That’s how close coaching and editing really are. Depending on the state of your manuscript, one or the other or both are called for.
How it works
Generally, I read sections of a manuscript—say 20-30 pages—and return this edited portion to you [as an attachment—but snail mail works well too] with comments and suggestions—and sometime...
February 23, 2015
Slow Writing is the Literary Relative of Slow Cooking
With all the blog posts I have read about learning to write faster—I have even heard of “how to write a book in a weekend, I want to take a moment to re-emphasize the value of writing slowly and carefully. Perhaps, what I would like to stop a moment to ponder is the literary equivalent of “slow cooking.” But…
This is not the first time I have taken time to consider the value to you of slow writing. In September of 2012, I wrote a piece for this blog entitled “Linger With Your Story — It’s a...
February 19, 2015
A Blogged Book Has to Be Greater than the Sum of Its Posts
DL: The following article was posted on Nina Amir’s blog howtoblogabook.com as part of my virtual book tour for the Memoir Network Writing Series. I am now working on books three and four of the series.
If you have a blog and would be willing to host me, I would love to make a stop at your site.
What a blogged book needs
What could be an easier process to write a new book than to go to my Memoir Writers’ Blog, pullout some articles on the same topic, and put them together? After all, I had rea...
February 17, 2015
Navigating the Memoir Journey
As part of my virtual book tour to promote my new Memoir Network Writing Series, I appeared on Julie Anne Eason’s Successfulauthorpodcast.com last week in an episode called Navigating the Memoir Journey. If you haven’t been, the site is full of interesting and useful podcasts. While still new, theSuccessfulauthorpodcast.com site is already an important tool for writers wanting to stay in the writing conversation.
IN NAVIGATING THE MEMOIR JOURNEY YOU’LL DISCOVER:
What makes memoir such a uniqu...
February 16, 2015
How to Write a Significant Memoir
DL: This is a piece I published on the LinkedIn blog Pulse. It addresses a major challenge many writer face—at least writers who want to have an audience beyond family and friends.
How to write a significant memoir
Thatour memoir is insignificant isabout the last thing we memoir writers ever want to read about our magnum opus.
What separates a significant memoir from an insignificant one?
A memoir tells the story of a hero’s journey.
I’ll give you a hint: it’s not fame it’s not the scope of the...
February 13, 2015
Don’t Tell Us About Your Characters—Show Them Walking Across the Page!
How many times have you heard "Show your story rather than tell it!"
And, how many times have you gone right on and did a lot of telling! I know I have.
"Showing" is one technique that will always improve your writing. I admit that there is some great writing that makes a precedent for "tell," but as a rule "show" is more effective.
Here are three "show don't tell" ideas to improve your story—every time.
1. Your pen is your movie camera.
In a film, a director (that's you!)...
February 12, 2015
You Can’t Write Without a First Draft.
Give yourself permission to write a rough first draft. Write pages and pages in which you describe the who, the what, the where and the whenof the story. Later, as you rework the piece, the whywill be written in.
If you are one of those memoir writers who is not otherwise a writer and who will perhaps never write anything else, know that you need to be kind to yourself. In the Turning Memories Into Memoirs workshops, I am often surprised—and dismayed—at how demanding...
February 11, 2015
Why a Book Tour Works
DL:Why does a Book Tour Work? It does so because it allows people to know, like and trust you—essential characteristics of any selling and buying relationship. This post is an original contribution to LinkedIn's Pulse. Pulse is a blog on LinkedIn for people to post on topics of their expertise.
The following is about some of what I have learned about book tours.
That fall evening in 1992, there were no parking spaces along the town’s Main Street as I approached the library, a copy of my rece...
January 18, 2015
Our Second Son Is Born
(Today is my birthday. Here is the story of my birth on January 18, 1947. It is taken from my mother's memoir, We Were Not Spoiled . DL)
My second pregnancy was also easy. This time, Albert was with me, and he and I could experience it together. My mother had had most of her babies at home, but by the mid-1940s, women were being urged to have their babies in the hospital. (Dr. Desaulniers must have been urging me, too, but I can’t remember.)
We were still living with Albert’s parents when our...
