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Category: Memoir writing

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Verisimilitude: Why It’s Important to Get Your Story Facts Straight

You work hard to capture your reader’s attention, but errors in fact can cause them to lose their faith in you as the author and walk away from your story. Versimilitude is key to arresting your reader and giving them the best environment in which to sink into your work. Read on to learn why it’s important to get your story facts straight and how to avoid missteps with your writing.

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Sharing Food Through Stories: The Power of the Memoir Cookbook

The trend with the modern cookbook is to fuel the soul and stomach of the reader in equal measure. They do this by braiding together the two genres of cookbook and memoir. The result is an intimate and embodied reading experience that enhances our humanity along with new appreciation of the cuisines that have enriched and informed the authors’ lives. And, as a result of them sharing the food through story, enriching and enhancing our lives as well.

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Roadblocks, Detours & Dead Ends: 6 Things That Stop Aspiring Memoirists From Writing Their Stories

Writing a memoir can bring up all kinds of fear and uncertainty about judgement, failure, wrecking relationships, and even being sued. But once you learn how to navigate the road blocks, detours, and dead ends that can cause aspiring memoirists to stop writing your story, you’re in a much stronger position to forge ahead and make a meaningful connection with yourself– and your readers.

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How Long Does It Take to “Write” a Book?

Writing a book can take a short specific period of time or go on forever, depending on the writer’s definition of what “writing a book” entails and whether they get support to see them through. Find out how long it takes to write (or write) a book and see what you need to get yours written, too ~

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Why Winter Is a Productive Time to Write Your Memoir

If you’re feeling low from winter, rather than let it affect your writing, instead, try hunkering down and getting cozy! By embracing the attributes of the season, you can use winter as a highly productive time, especially so if you’re working on memoir. Make the most of the cold months to delve into your most authentic, insightful, and emotionally diverse writing and experience great productivity as a result.

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Should I Write My Life Story As An Autobiography or Memoir?

Putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) is the first step to telling your life story. But fairly early on in the process, you will need to pause to consider what kind of book you’re writing. Should you write your life story as an autobiography, a memoir, or another nonfiction sub-genre? The purpose, frameworks, audience, and marketing options differ dramatically from one sub-genre to the next, so you’ll want to get clear on how you’ll craft your story if you wish to meet your readers in the ways you intend.

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Why It’s Important We Bear Witness in Memoir

Memoir is a valuable way to bear witness, both to ourselves and to others. The memoir writer gives voice, shape, and meaning to their life and those in it, and the reader, as a result of connecting with the memoirist at such a deep level, forges a stronger relationship with their own humanity. Why is bearing witness important? The more we do it, the more we truly see one another and grow. In this way, memoir becomes the connective tissue between people and forges important bonds.

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Is My Story Memoir Worthy?

Writers question all the time whether their stories are worthy of memoir. If you know that telling your story will be meaningful to you, give you a valuable chance to examine your life with inquiry, and show others how you transformed to give them as much opportunity to transform, too, then you know you have a memoir worth telling.

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memoir notebook beside stack of memoirs

Protecting the Innocent: How to Use Disclaimers in Memoir

Modern memoir writers issue disclaimers in their books to indicate how they’ve dealt with aspects of the genre and protected the innocent (or the not-so-innocent) by managing their subjects’ privacy. What the memoir disclaimer covers and how it’s written can alleviate the memoirist — to a degree — and enable them to write their story as it needs to be told.

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The Best 3 Techniques to Rewrite Your First Draft

For many writers, the bridge from a first draft to rewriting a short story or novel is long, shaky, and leads to an uncertain destination. Rather than despair, use these 3 techniques (and watch the video below!) to rewrite your first draft, and you will be able to successfully prepare it for publication!

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