Start Your Memoir Right: A Writing Launch
By Denis Ledoux
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Start Your Memoir Right is full of proven ideas and approaches to successfully move you from wanting to write to producing the finished family stories or memoirs you know will be a treasured legacy for your children and grandchildren.
1.21 Must-Do Memoir-Writing Steps / Best Practices to Write Quickly and Well. This brief overview orients you to the many tasks necessary to create an interesting and meaningful memoir. FREE.
2.Craft A Memoir / 12 Basic Steps for the First-time and (Perhaps) Only-Time Writer The newbie will find suggestions and techniques to facilitate memoir writing and complete your memoir.
3.Memory List Question Book / 100s of Not-a-Prompt Questions. Memory Lists are your magic bullet. Recall more details, dates, people, and events than you think possible.
4.Start Your Memoir Right shows you how to stop asking if you should write your memoir, find inspiration to begin, and practice techniques of the art of memoir writing.
5.Organize Your Memoir / Find Your Structure answers the perennial question: How do I put all my stories and manuscript pieces together? This book is a guide.
6.Don't Let Writer's Block shows you how writer's block CAN teach you to push beyond stuck. Banish writer’s block forever.
7.Write to the End / Eight Strategies to Thrive as a Writer will help you to complete your writing projects and reach your audience.
Also read our classic, Turning Memories Into Memoirs.
Denis Ledoux
YOU CAN LEARN TO WRITE FROM THE INSIDE OUTI believe in the power of telling our personal and family stories. These are our hero's journeys, and by telling them we honor ourselves and the people we have come from. An important early task for the writer is go inside and find the story that is worth telling. The story is not about "nice" words; it is about honest words, visceral words.LIFESTORIES FEED USStories have always played an important role in my life. I grew up in a three-generation home with paternal grandparents who lived upstairs. I heard tales of my extended family and their history recounted by the family storyteller, my grandmother Ledoux. These stories were a food for my soul. I could not get enough of them, and her gift to me was that she was a voluble, entertaining storyteller.I began writing as a short-story writer, drawing on family characters, settings, and stories for my fiction. In 1989, I won the Maine Fiction Award for Mountain Dance & Other Stories. My other titles include What Became of Them and Other Stories from Franco-America (1988), and Lives in Translation: An Anthology of Contemporary Franco-American Writings (which I edited in 1990). In 1992, I published (and it is still in print) Turning Memories Into Memoirs / A Handbook for Writing Lifestories; in 1996, The Photo Scribe / How to Tell the Stories Behind Your Photos; in 2009, The Consumer's Guide to Ghostwriting, in 2013, a memoir—We Were Not Spoiled. E-publication includes the books listed here in Smashwords as well as others.MAKING THE LEAP TO BECOMING A MEMOIR PROFESSIONALIt was a natural leap from my own family stories to helping others to record their stories in well-written accounts that apply all the techniques of fiction writing to autobiography, family reminiscence, and scrapbooking.In 1996, I was honored as Lifewriting Professional of the Year by the Association of Personal Historians.THE MEMOIR NETWORKToday, I continue to work as a writer, educator, teacher, autobiography co-author, memoir-writing coach, editor and publisher. I direct The Memoir Network, an international group of lifestory writing teachers who use my method and materials to lead the popular Turning Memories® and Photo Scribe® workshops and programs.My Memoir Network offers Memoir Professional Packages for individuals wishing to do what we call memoir work in their communities. [http://thememoirnetwork.com/memoir-professional-packages/] Please inquire if you are interested in becoming a Memoir Professional.BUILD YOUR MEMOIR-WRITING LIBRARYYou will find a number of my memoir-writing e-books on Smashwords. Begin to purchase them now so as to develop your memoir-writing library. These are the best memoir-writing books available anywhere at any price.BEYOND THE BOOKSIf you need more than these great books, give me call at 207-353-5454 for a free consultation to determine whether coaching, editing, or ghostwriting is a good fit for you. When you're ready, we can also do book production for you.Keep writing and stay in the memoir conversation.
Read more from Denis Ledoux
Turning Memories Into Memoirs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings21 Must-Do Memoir-Writing Tasks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Writing Prompts / A Better Way / Hundreds of Memory List Questions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Craft a Memoir - 12 Basic Steps for the First-Time and (Perhaps) Only-Time Writer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jumpstart Your Memoir Business Success Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to Write to the End / Eight Strategies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Photo Scribe: How to Write the Stories Behind Your Photographs Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5How to Add Stories to Your Photo Albums Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Nice-Nice Club Holds Its Last Meeting Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Sugary Frosting: A Memoir of a Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Consumer’s Guide to Ghostwriting Services Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Don't Let Writer's Block Stop You / Push Beyond Stuck Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Reviews for Start Your Memoir Right
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent stuff.
Easy to follow tips.
I loved it.
i recommend this book to anyone who is planning to write a memoir.
Book preview
Start Your Memoir Right - Denis Ledoux
Your Memoir:
Get Started – Keep Going
Strategies for Lifestory Writers
Denis Ledoux
denis@turningmemories.com
Twitter: @denisledoux
Facebook: http://facebook.com/MemoirNetwork
My blogs: The Memoir Writer’s Blog
The Memoir Professional’s Blog: Earn Money Memoir Writing
Copyright 2013 Denis Ledoux
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations.
Smashwords Edition
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: When You Start to Write?
Chapter 2: Early Tasks
Chapter 3: Writing Set-ups
Lifewriting Resources
Memoir Professional Resources
About the Author
FREE STUFF
We hope you enjoy Getting Started – Keeping Going and feel, as we do, that it's a great tool to use to write memoir.
The book comes to you free. If it contributes to your writing—whether to its quantity or its quality—would you please take a moment to write a short review of the book? Tell your fellow writers what they might expect of Getting Started – Keeping Going. Thanks.
Introduction
Can I do it?
you ask, perhaps unsure of yourself. Can I write a book of lifestories that portrays my life’s experience to family and friends—and perhaps even to people I don’t know?
Sure you can!
Every year, people—perhaps just like you who have never written a book—decide to write just one of their lifestories and, lo, story by story, they succeed at writing their memoirs.
You, too, can write your lifestories and know the tantalizing success of achieving something you had never thought you would.
One woman from my Turning Memories Into Memoirs® Workshop, a woman with no prior writing experience, produced a book that was reviewed in Library Journal, a major American venue for pre-publication reviews. Hers was a sweet writing success that