The Spielberg List: Determining What Actually Belongs in Your Memoir

By Beth Kaplan

I recently had a meeting with a new client who’d hired me as his writing coach. Glen is a retired businessman who has never done any creative writing but now wants to produce a memoir-type chronicle for family and friends, and, who knows, perhaps the wider world. He told me about himself, that he’s grateful for a good life, with a successful career and a happy marriage to a woman he adored, although he was forced to endure the tragically “long slow goodbye” of her dementia. ...