A beautiful circle for women Life & Memoir writers and readers. This is where we share our writing and life stories.
When I started on my memoir journey, in 2016, I spent way too much time trying to learn how to write. Much of my problem was trying to learn from teachers who wrote and thought fiction writing or, memoir coaches who hadn’t written their own memoirs. There were some, who had written and published memoirs, but I didn’t identify with them. The really good ones, of course, were outside my budget.
Writing a memoir is not like writing fiction.
We are not creating new characters or ‘worlds’. We are excavating our own life, turning ourselves into a protagonist and the people in our life, into characters our future readers can identify with. Most importantly, we dig deep and strive to enjoy spending time on the page.
There are so many outstanding memoir teachers who’ve written their own memoirs. While their courses were (mostly) out of my geographical or price range, I’ve studied their books and include Mary Karr, Dani Shapiro, Cathy Rentzenbrink, Maya Angelou, Joyce Maynard, and Laura Davis among my best teachers. There are many – oh, so many more wonderful Memoir Writers and Mentors among us.
Unless we are already famous, readers won’t pick up our memoir because they want to know about us. They choose our memoir because of the theme we write about. They want us to show them what it was like to be you, me, us – in the situation or time we write about. They want to see how we handled it and know what we learned from our experience. Every reader wants to know how, what happened, change us. Oprah calls this Life Lessons, she did a great YV and podcast series on it.
I highly recommend ‘Good Morning, Monster’ by Catherine Gildiner as a companion to both learning the craft of a good memoir and figuring out who we are as humans. From your past, in the present, and into the future, who were you? Who do you truly WANT to become? I visualise the future I want, near or far in time, I visualise and manifest. Ive learned to manifest from Moira. It’s easy enough to manifest our desires, it just takes practise.
Having a circle of friends to share my writing with is crucial for my memoir journey. I must feel safe in the circle, I must feel I belong. We all come to the circle vulnerable. We are figuring out, not just how to craft our stories but what our stories are about. Together we unfurl our TRUE selves, from there, we write, share and revise, then we share some more.
We write memoirs to get validation that our story matters. In my circle of writers Big Magic happens. Our confidence in our writing grows together with our understanding of the craft and what our stories are about.
My Memoir & Life Writing circle is a tribe of like-minded compassionate, sisterhood of writers, mentors, readers and teachers who desire to write and share our stories with the world.
My Memoir & Life Wrirng Circle meets, online, every two weeks for 90 minutes. This gives 8 of us time to read and receive compassionate feedback on our memoir and life writing pieces. Many of us meet more regularly and work in pares on completing our memoir pieces.
Apply to join The Memoir Circle today. this link might not go where I’m planning it to go 🙂
Women’s Day, Mother’s Day & Voting for Change
“The extent to which you know your inner child is proportional to how well you know yourself.” Vig’s Trauma Theory […]
This video, by Ira Glass, has been a wonderful companion and reminder for me – while I learn to write. It’s taught me to be patient, to start small and grow slow. To nurture my hArt and be kind to myself. I never thought writing this memoir would take this long, coming back to Ira Glass’ video, reminds me to be kind to myself. I want you to be kind to yourself too.