Training, Lessons

Lessons, skills development and training on how to write your memoirs.

  • Creative Writing,  Memoirs,  Training, Lessons

    Repeat After Me…

    The Power of Focus in Writing Too much repetition is bad, except when it’s not. Too much detail is bad, except when it’s not.   So, what do I mean by that?   Often, we weaken our writing by repeating words and phrases without being consciously aware that we’re doing so, but the proper use of repetition can help strengthen our writing, give it more impact and make it more memorable.    The same is true for unnecessarily detailed descriptions. There’s a time and place for both of these techniques when we use them to focus our readers’ attention on something in the narrative.   In our brain, we have…

  • Creative Writing,  Structure and Plotting,  Theme, Purpose and Outcome,  Training, Lessons

    Think Big, But Write Small

    There’s an overall shape to a book-length story that we’ve come to expect — certain elements fall into certain places at certain times during the course of the story, and we’ve learned, even if subconsciously, to anticipate this underlying structure.     Everything in a story is connected. Think of your book as a fractal. This may help you stay on track with the multitude of ideas and abstract concepts that go into a book that’s as introspective as a memoir.   Six Elements 1. Story — A memoir is a story built around one main idea, theme or point.    2. Chapters — Within a story, there may be…

  • Creative Writing,  Structure and Plotting,  Theme, Purpose and Outcome,  Training, Lessons

    The Joy of Structure

    When we first begin writing our memoirs, more often than not, it’s dull. Boring. A recitation of the facts of our life. Devoid of emotion. A bland telling of the stuff that happened without any of the emotional involvement that makes a story great. Meh!   And that’s totally okay.    First drafts are supposed to be a dull recitation of plot, without all the bells and whistles that make a story come alive for the reader. First drafts are meant to get the ideas out of your head and down on paper or screen so you can do something with them. It’s only as we revise and revise and revise…

  • Creative Writing,  Dialogue,  Point of View and Character Development,  Training, Lessons

    When It’s Okay To Act Out

    Okay, so you’re writing away and you have no idea what motivates your main character (or yourself at age twelve).   Or you can visualize your MC’s best friend, but you can’t hear her voice.     Or you’ve finally finished your fifteenth draft and you’re ready to share with your beta readers or your writing group or your editor or (gulp!) your publisher, but you have a niggling feeling there’s something missing.   Take a step back and try a couple of editing techniques that are a little different.   When we read, we tend to “hear” the words in our heads.  If the story’s well-written, we “see” the…

  • Memoirs,  Point of View and Character Development,  Training, Lessons

    How Not To Be A Wimp

    Using Blind Spots and Limiting Beliefs to Power Your Memoir In my memoir classes, one of my favourite things to do is ask questions of my students to get them thinking more deeply about their stories, their characters and ultimately themselves. One of my students brought up the topic of fear of success the other day.  She mentioned that she had a crippling fear of being successful, ie. “a public figure”. When I asked her what she thought was scary about that, she couldn’t tell me exactly, although, for her, it was tied up with public appearances, maybe interviews or readings of her work.  They terrified her.  It came down…

  • Creative Writing,  Training, Lessons

    Description—How Much Is Too Much?

    Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.  — Mark Twain   What is Description? Merriam-Webster calls it “an act of describing, specifically: discourse intended to give a mental image of something experienced.”   Or: “a statement or account giving the characteristics of someone or something, a descriptive statement or account.”   Narrative (the events), and description (how the character experiences the events), are the glue that keeps your reader stuck in your story.  If nothing much happens, if the character is not emotionally engaged, then neither will the reader be engaged.   Why is Description Necessary? 1.  Description is all about the strategic delivery of important…

  • Creative Writing,  Productivity,  Structure and Plotting,  Theme, Purpose and Outcome,  Training, Lessons

    How to Focus your Blog Post

    Start with the End in Mind   Recently, a reader asked me, “How do you write a story with the end in mind?  How do you know what the end is before it’s written?”   He was responding to a blog post in which I wrote about using constraints to spark creativity. One of the points I made was:    “Writing with the end in mind applies especially to writing memoirs.  When you first apply a life lesson, a theme, a psychological or theoretical point to the memoir as its raison d’être, you don’t need to think about everything that doesn’t fit the point.     “But if you don’t…

  • Creativity,  Productivity,  Thoughts, Opinions and Philosophical Discussions,  Training, Lessons,  Writers and Writing

    Are you a terrible writer?

    Have you ever suddenly decided halfway through a writing project that it’s all crap?  That everything you’ve done up to this point is garbage and you’ll never be a “real” writer?     Do you habitually reach a point in your drafts when you convince yourself that it’s not good enough, it’ll never be good enough, and you should throw it out and start over, but you desperately try to stick with it, even though you have an overpowering urge to delete your work and start again with a different style or P.o.V. or…anything?   Welcome to the world of the frustrated writer.   Anyone who’s any good at all…

  • Creative Writing,  Organization and Research,  Point of View and Character Development,  Productivity,  Prompts,  Theme, Purpose and Outcome,  Thoughts, Opinions and Philosophical Discussions,  Training, Lessons

    Questions and Answers

    How NOT To Write Your Memoir Most people, when they start to write their memoirs, think they have to stick strictly to the facts, that their story has to be a list of the things they did, in the order that they did them.     This simply isn’t true.  It leads to the belief that they have to write their entire history — an autobiography, which, for most people is messy, disconnected and hard to follow.   This means that they end up with a list of dry, dull facts, like some kind of desiccated checklist that may reflect the events of their lives, but doesn’t say much about…

  • Creative Writing,  Memoirs,  Training, Lessons,  Writers and Writing

    Snippets

    I’m sitting in my recliner, teaching a creative writing class on Zoom, tea cooling beside me, about to show the class how to use short stories in autobiographies.  I’m using the “Homework for Life” exercise from Matt Dicks’ book, “Storyworthy”.  This is an exercise I’ve adapted to fit my short story workshop series and it works like a kind of free-writing or stream-of-consciousness process similar to Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages.    I’ve called this exercise “Snippets” and it’s a ten- or fifteen-minute activity in which students go back over their day and try to find a moment or incident that for some reason sticks out for them.  It also works…