Take a look at the tips I wrote for your memoir journey at Nina Amir’s special blog to celebrate National Lifewriting Month! This is the month that memoir writers join the fiction folks over at NaNoWriMo to write as much as 50,000 words in 30 days. 6.5 pages a day–can you do it? Can you dedicate a couple of hours a day to get your memoir first draft done?
Tips for what we’ll call MemoirWriMo:
1. Write fast, let ‘er rip.
2. Feed your imagination with photos and research when you’re not writing.
3. Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation or details. Get the basics down.
4. No time for that inner critic either. Blow on by it!
When you have a few minutes, stop by Nina’s blog: http://writenonfictioninnovember.com
Go to this link to sign up for the FREE Roundtable Discussion at NAMW this Thursday with Nina and veteran memoir workshop leader Denis LeDoux.
Read more about memoir writing in my book The Power of Memoir. It’s a whole course in memoir writing–8 steps to a completed memoir!
See you there!
Linda Joy
I’m happy to have found your website through Nina’s Write NonFiction in November month. I’m not writing a memoir right now, I’d love to someday, but I’m writing a lot of myself on my blog and in my self-help book on doing what you love so you helped me with your post today, about understanding the muddy middle. And I’m glad to know it works putting it under the pillow :). Thanks!
Thanks, Marie! Personal writing can occur in so many different contexts–blogging, nonfiction and how-to books, and of course self-help books, where your story becomes an example others can learn from. Yes, the muddy middle happens to all of us–and I’m glad to hear you’ll try the pillow technique! Keep writing and do stay in touch.
–Linda Joy