If you have written your memoir, or are in the process, and it’s not shaping into what you envisioned, you could transform it into a personal essay. It might be easier, at some point, to concentrate on writing a personal essay, rather than a book-length manuscript. There are many posts on The Write Spot Blog about how to write personal essays. (Please scroll down for the how-to posts). You may be writing vignettes to satisfy your desire to write family stories. You can publish these with the help of many do-it-yourself publishing companies. If you want your personal essays to be published for public consumption, there are many opportunities for submission: Big Brick Review, Chicken Soup for The Soul, The Christian Science Monitor, Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction and so many more places. Check the back pages of Writer’s Digest magazine. You can submit your writing to be included in…
Category: Just Write
How to turn memoir into fiction
What if you have written your memoir, or are in the process, and it just isn’t working? What to do? You might decide to publish your work as fiction based on fact, rather than memoir. Adair Lara’s article might be helpful: “10 Ways to Tell if Your Story Should be a Memoir or a Novel” in the January 23, 2012 issue of Writer’s Digest magazine. You can use prompts on The Write Spot Blog for inspiration, especially, “Make a list of pivotal events, Prompt #40” and “How to write fiction based on fact,” Prompt #41.” If you don’t want to write about what happened exactly as it happened, you can use the emotions you felt during the event. Tap into those emotions to write strong scenes. Sometimes it’s helpful to see examples of ideas you want to pursue. The following novels are based on fact. Half-Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls,…
How to Write A Memoir— Part Two
How To Write A Memoir, Part 1 lists a variety of methods for writing personal stories. Part 2 continues with revision and the business of writing. Take care of yourself Writing one’s life story can be difficult. While writing, take good care of yourself. Anytime you are feeling overwhelmed by this writing process, set your work aside. Take a break, get some fresh air, visit with a friend. Read helpful, supportive material such as Toxic Mom’s Toolkit. Organize When editing, save your “cuts” in separate files (either paper file folders or on computer files). You might be able to use these darlings in another personal essay. Use manila file folders to store print material: newspaper articles, photos, handwritten notes, letters, brochures, etc. Revising In the revising stage, delete what might cause embarrassment. Fine tune for accuracy. Shape like a gardener pruning a hydrangea. Take a few snips here, cut a…
How To Write A Memoir — Part One
Your Life. You lived it. Surely you can write about it. Right? In How To Write A Memoir, Part 1, we’ll discuss methods and ideas about writing personal stories, with links to published memoirs. How To Write A Memoir, Part 2, we’ll cover organizing, revising and more. You can write in chronological order, or build your story around pivotal events. In the beginning, it doesn’t matter what structure you use. Write in a style that is comfortable for you. Try one way and if isn’t working for you, try something else. Memoirs written in chronological order (with back story woven in): To Have Not by Frances Lefkowitz and Grief Denied by Pauline Laurent. Rachael Herron, A Life in Stitches, assembles her stories around her knitting experiences. For the first draft, it’s fine to jump around in time. Don’t worry too much about making sense in the early stage of writing….
Take note.
It’s early Monday morning. The day is just getting started and it’s very quiet. The softly falling rain has hushed all ambient noises. No cars drive up our country lane. People are still sleeping on this soft-feeling day, not quite ready to begin the busyness of our lives. Even the birds are quiet this morning. And I’m wondering, do you want to write? Do you contemplate ideas to write about as you stay in bed just a little longer in the morning? Do you have brilliant, awesome thoughts for writing while you are driving? As you wait for sleep to settle in, do these brilliant ideas swirl in your head? And they are brilliant, I am sure. You tell yourself you will remember everything until you have time to write. Finally, you sit down to write and those creative ideas seem to have vanished. You stretch to grasp your dazzling…
Let’s discuss and write!
Hello and welcome. Do you have a writing question or a topic you would like to see discussed on The Write Spot Blog? Perhaps I can research and discover answers. Also, you are welcome to contribute as a guest blogger. ~600 words something inspirational or informational for writers. Have you read a book that you love and want to tell others about? Send an email to me. Let’s talk. ~Marlene
How to flesh out villains.
Do you have a villain in your story? Is this scoundrel executing gruesome acts? Is it hard for you to get into the head and heart of the “bad guy?” Does he or she have a heart? Here’s an idea about how to flesh out your baddie. . . so that he/she is someone you can live with for the duration of your writing. Do a freewrite. The antagonist was once a child. What were his/her passions as a teenager? What games did they play as children? What delighted this child? Write about his/her first car. Choose a prompt and write as if you were answering from the villain’s point of view. Imagine you are a neighbor or a relative of the undesirable person. Write about the mean person from someone else’s point of view. What is the turning point, or the chain of events that changed this innocent toddler…
The Sixth Sense
We have previously talked about the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. Today, we’ll talk about the sixth sense. The sixth sense can be described as telepathy, intuition, perception, imagination. . . those traits that use the mind to create and understand. Some people believe the sixth sense is the ability to problem solve; using our minds to read and interpret signals, to pick up or sense energy. NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar started reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series during his 1969 rookie road trips. He was “fascinated by Holmes’ remarkable ability to see a world teeming with subtle but revealing clues where others saw only the mundane.” September 27, 2015 Parade Kareem realized that Holmes used his power of observation to pick up clues missed by others. Kareem did the same with basketball. He observed players’ moves and habits and used that information…
Vary sentence structure
Have you heard about varying length of sentences? Here’s what Mary Gordon says about that: “One of the things that I try to do is to have a paragraph that begins and ends with a sentence of approximately the same length and verbal structure. . . . in the middle, the sentences tend to be longer and more complex. It allows for a kind of velocity to happen . . . A shorter sentence you actually have to read more slowly . . . If you are a writer, you have more power than the greatest tyrant in the world because of punctuation. You get to tell people how to breathe . . . a sentence that has very little punctuation, you actually have to read more slowly because you’re not stopping to breathe. So it’s a slowing down and then a kind of build up – a crescendo and…
Sensory Detail – Taste
When writing simmers with sensory detail, readers digest the story and perhaps, are satiated with emotionally charged memories. Do you remember dipping graham crackers in milk and eating it quickly before it broke off and became a soggy mess? You might use something like this in a scene where the hero/heroine has just been dumped by a boyfriend/girlfriend. Perhaps your character can’t make decisions. Employ a scene where he taste tests while walking a buffet line; a bite here, a nibble there, unable to settle on a nourishing decision. Employ sensory detail to involve readers in the story’s emotional ingredients. Match emotions with taste receptors: Bitter: She recoiled and didn’t know whether it was from her bitter coffee or his abrupt, “We’re done.” Salty: “The oysters were so fresh they tasted like my tears. I closed my eyes to feel the sensation of the sea.” — Laura Fraser, “Food for…