Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Journey of Memoir: The Three Stages of Memoir Writing
    Journey of Memoir: The Three Stages of Memoir Writing
    Journey of Memoir: The Three Stages of Memoir Writing
    Ebook120 pages2 hours

    Journey of Memoir: The Three Stages of Memoir Writing

    By Linda Joy Myers

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    In Journey of Memoir you will find lessons on how to write a great scene; information on the difference between freewriting and outlining, and why

    you need both; timeline and turning point exercises to help create structure;

    and much more. This unique workbook gives you the tools you need to begin,

    develop, and complete your memoir.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShe Writes Press
    Release dateFeb 14, 2013
    ISBN9781938314278
    Journey of Memoir: The Three Stages of Memoir Writing
    Author

    Linda Joy Myers

    Linda Joy Myers has always been deliciously haunted by the power of the past to affect people in the stream of time. She has integrated her passion for history and her own struggles with intergenerational trauma into her work as a therapist and writer. The power of the truth to educate current generations about the past led Linda Joy to explore the little-known history of WWII in the weeks following the fall of France—which in turn led her to write The Forger of Marseille. She is the author of two memoirs, Don’t Call Me Mother and Song of the Plains, and four books on memoir writing. She’s also the founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers. You can learn more about Linda Joy’s work at www.namw.org and www.lindajoymyersauthor.com. She lives in Berkeley, CA.

    Read more from Linda Joy Myers

    Related to Journey of Memoir

    Related ebooks

    Composition & Creative Writing For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Why We Need Memoirs

      Jul 1, 2019

      They remind us that we are all flawed and complicated, all doing the best we can, none of us free from suffering. The post Why We Need Memoirs appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Starter Kit For Writing Memoir

      Jun 20, 2020

      Sorry, are you writing an autobiography? If so, you’re right – you should tell us all about your childhood, your middle-grade years, your high school experience, etc. But unless you’re famous – and we mean really famous – your odds of selling an auto

      9 min read

    • Article

      Nonfiction Book Proposals

      Oct 13, 2021

      FOR years journalist Chloé Cooper Jones, who was born with a rare congenital disorder called sacral agenesis that affected the development of her hips and legs, had been filling free moments between assignments by writing journal entries on how stran

      8 min read

    • Article

      On Writer’s Block: Advice from Twelve Writers

      Mar 19, 2018

      Our Writers at Work series, which spans sixty-five years of interviews with nearly four hundred writers, offers no shortage of advice. Should this multitude seem daunting, fear not! The editors of The Paris Review have combed through the series and s

      4 min read

    • Article

      Getting Creative With Reality

      Oct 1, 2020

      What do H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, Notes on a Small Island by Bill Bryson and Tall Stories and Wee Tales by Billy Connolly have in common? They all belong to the increasingly popular genre of creative non-fiction writing. When creative non-fic

      6 min read

    • Article

      From FACT to FICTION

      Jun 20, 2020

      American literary critic Leslie Fiedler once wrote: “Henry Miller wrote novels, but he calls his protagonist Henry, often Henry Miller, and his books are in this gray area between memoir and novel.” If you’re a novelist considering writing a memoir,

      12 min read

    • Article

      Writing The End of Your Memoir

      Oct 10, 2022

      … and I lived happily ever after. If only writing the end of your memoir was that easy! But life doesn’t always resolve neatly. What if you didn’t make it to the top of the mountain or your child is still an addict? Writing about loss? Chances are yo

      7 min read

    • Article

      Becoming a Mother-Writer

      Feb 16, 2022

      MOST of us, at some point in our writerly lives, have read with hunger the canon of books on writing, meaning how-to books about the process of becoming a writer penned by the Great Authors, white and/or male. Stephen King’s On Writing, Ray Bradbury’

      14 min read

    • Article

      Essays in Strange Forms and Peculiar Places: ‘The Shell Game’

      Jun 8, 2018

      The term “hermit crab essay,” coined in 2003 by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola in their book Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, refers to essays that take the form of something un-essay-like—such as a recipe, how-to manual, or m

      5 min read

    • Article

      Memoir as Detective Novel

      Aug 16, 2021

      Memoir as Detective Novel
      7 min read

    • Article

      Leslie Jamison: Storytelling and Sobriety

      Mar 27, 2018

      The acclaimed writer talks recovery, responsibility, and reforming the culture by which we treat addiction. The post Leslie Jamison: Storytelling and Sobriety appeared first on Guernica.

      16 min read

    • Article

      Breaking Into a “Secret Genre”—on Creative Nonfiction

      Feb 3, 2020

      “When I talk to students, especially younger students,” says Creative Nonfiction founder and editor Lee Gutkind, “they have no idea that creative nonfiction hasn’t been around forever. But it hasn’t. It had existed before, but never as a genre. It wa

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ursula Pike

      Oct 13, 2021

      Ursula Pike
      2 min read

    • Article

      Megan Culhane Galbraith

      Oct 13, 2021

      Megan Culhane Galbraith
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Time Is Now Writing Prompts and Exercises

      Oct 10, 2018

      Suggested Reading:The Story Cure: A Book Doctor’s Pain-Free Guide to Finishing Your Novel or Memoir (Ten Speed Press, May 2017) by Dinty W. Moore The director of creative writing at Ohio State University and author of a number of books of literary no

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Writer’s Toolbox

      Jan 30, 2018

      1. I pulled the heavy red book down from my dad’s bookshelf. Bryan A. Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, its cover announced. “David Foster Wallace said it’s the only usage guide he ever consulted,” my dad said, a note of pride in his vo

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Journey of Memoir

    5/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Journey of Memoir - Linda Joy Myers

      title page.jpg

      Copyright © 2013 by Linda Joy Myers

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

      Published 2013

      ISBN: 978-1-938314-27-8

      For information, address:

      She Writes Press

      1563 Solano Ave #546

      Berkeley, CA 94707

      "If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been

      written yet, then you must write it."

      —Toni Morrison

      Editor's Note for the Digital Edition

      Journey of Memoir is a workbook and as such is meant to be written in by you. Throughout the book you will encounter this pencil symbol: Black_pencil.jpg . This is your cue to type in your own notes (depending on how your e-reader functions) or to get out a notebook and write your responses there. Enjoy the journey.

      A Note to Memoirists

      Writing a memoir is an adventure, a challenge, and a journey that challenges writers to craft a story, capture memories, and become an editor, marketer, and even a publisher. Having taught memoir writing for over fifteen years in person and online, I’m always inspired by the people I come to know through their process of unfolding their stories.

      I want to thank each person who has trusted me with a story, each person who has helped me to learn about the journey of memoir writing, and everyone I’ve worked with at the National Association of Memoir Writers as presenters and experts. All of you have educated me and helped me to grow as a writer, teacher, and leader.

      There are so many people to thank, but I offer a special nod to Jerry Waxler, Sharon Lippincott, and Brooke Warner. All the times we have talked about writing, creativity, and pushing the limits of storytelling have inspired me to develop more ways to invite stories from people and to find new ways to support them.

      When I give talks, I always mention my great-grandmother, who was the first person to tell me the stories of her life. We’d lie in a featherbed during the summers of my childhood, and she would unwind what the world was like for an ordinary nineteenth-century woman—wood cook stoves, feeding the harvesters three times a day (all twenty of them), raising seven children. She told me of the death of her first husband (the father of my grandmother who raised me) two months after they married. Through Gram, the woman I lived with most of my childhood, I learned that a woman could raise herself up from poverty, come to love literature and culture, and also shake the Iowa farm dust off her feet to board ocean liners to England. The piles of books all around her house showed me that literature was important—that it could even change your life.

      Most people who are writing memoir are looking for the stories that offer meaning in their lives. They are trying to make sense of something, to heal and offer hope to others. All of us who are creative nurture each other’s creativity, and we are all joined in a circle of stories—some we know and some we will come to know. This is an era of storytelling and sharing, a grassroots movement that is sweeping along ordinary people, people like my great-grandmother. Stories keep whispering in our ears until we listen and pick up a pen. I hope this workbook helps you to listen to these invitations to story, and that it helps you to write yours.

      The motto at the National Association of Memoir Writers is Be Brave—Write Your Story.

      Do it now!

      Introduction

      Having taught memoir writing for the last fifteen years, I encounter questions, problems, and topics that all memoir writers have in common. In my first two books about memoir writing, Becoming Whole and The Power of Memoir, I talk about the power of story to transform and heal, and present a step-by-step method that can get the stories sorted and downloaded from the mind to the page. For each workshop I’ve taught through the years, the handouts, tips, and prompts have proven again and again to be useful to writers to chip away at the marble block of information that can overwhelm us. They’ve helped countless students to reveal the powerful moments within that make up a good story someone else can read and understand.

      Over the years, my students have asked me to create a workbook where they can try out some of the concepts and exercises, and where they can collect and develop ideas for their memoir. And that’s what this handbook is. Each element of memoir writing, including skills, the transformational journey of memoir, and getting published are included. In the appendix is a collection of life stage memoir writing prompts that have helped my students focus on topics and find the themes for their stories. Having prompts can help you get unstuck and focus in without creating a whole new topic on your own.

      Another aspect of creating a memoir that’s important and that weaves its way into both the process of writing and this handbook are the reasons you want to write a memoir. Most people are inspired to take up this lengthy, challenging, and satisfying project by having experienced special life circumstances that have affected them deeply. There are experiences they want to explore, often with the purpose of healing or finding resolution. Writing a memoir is a journey in two ways: it’s our journey as writers and as people with emotions, memories, and conflicts. And as counterintuitive as it may seem, it’s this complex juice that makes us want to read and write stories.

      Consider this workbook a guide for getting your memoir down on the page. There’s a logical step-by-step order to how the exercises and topics are presented based on the arc of the process of writing a memoir. You may wish to skip around to the writing prompts or certain skills as you page through the book. You don’t have to go through it in order, though it may make sense to do that, as the skills build upon each other.

      Most people writing a memoir are learning to write while also excavating the terrain of their memories and facing up to elements of the past that may be painful or unresolved. If you have started your memoir, or are about to start, you know that writing a book is a journey with several stages. As you go through the stages, you build one upon the other to get to your goal. As you write, the journey will change you. There is no way that we can encounter art, the imagination, and our inner psyches without being altered by the experience. And just like any journey, it shifts our perspective on life and on ourselves. You will not be the same person who began the journey when you’re done.

      Writing a memoir is a transformational learning experience that offers new windows into understanding who we are, and helps us to connect with other people who want to learn from our experiences as they travel on their own life path. A memoir delivers a powerful message to your readers about you—and about themselves. A good story is always universal, as well as particular. It’s time to get started writing your memoir! Enjoy the journey.

      As the poet T. S. Eliot wrote in Four Quartets: You are not the same people who left that station / Or who will arrive at any terminus.

      - - - - - - -

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1