Breaking Ground on Your Memoir: Craft, Inspiration, and Motivation for Memoir Writers

By Brooke Warner and Linda Joy Myers

In Breaking Ground on Your Memoir, Linda Joy Myers (President of the National Association of Memoir Writers) and Brooke Warner (Publisher of She Writes Press) present from the ground up—from basic to advanced—the craft and skills memoirists can draw upon to write a powerful and moving story, as well as inspiration to write, finish, and polish their own story. Full of rich insights and practical advice and strategies, Breaking Ground on Your Memoir offers all the tools writers need to write a powerful, publishable memoir. In this book you will discover:
• how to get focused on what your memoir is about—your themes.
• how to build the structure of your story.
• techniques to make your memoir come alive.
• the secrets of craft: how to write a great scene, colorful and memorable descriptions, narration, and flashback.
• how to connect with your reader using through-threads and takeaway so they’ll keep turning the pages, and learn something about their own lives by reading your book.
Visit the authors online at WriteYourMemoirInSixMonths.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781631520112

Brooke Warner

Brooke Warner is publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Green-light Your Book, What's Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Warner is a TEDx speaker, weekly podcaster (Write-minded with co-host Grant Faulkner of NaNoWriMo), and the former Executive Editor of Seal Press, as well as the Chairperson of the Independent Book Publishers Association. She writes a monthly column for Publishers Weekly.

Book preview

Breaking Ground on Your Memoir

Copyright © 2015 by Linda Joy Myers, PhD, and Brooke Warner

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2015

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-085-3

e-ISBN: 978-1-631520-11-2

Digital ISBN: 978-1-63152-011-2

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1563 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Getting Grounded

CHAPTER 2

Building Your Framework

CHAPTER 3

The Art of Storytelling

CHAPTER 4

Craft

CHAPTER 5

Finishing Touches

Thank You, and an Offer

About the Authors

Introduction

Memoir writers often ask us what they can do to get the attention of an agent or publisher, hoping that if they’ve written a great memoir, someone will pick them up, ideally after the first query! We know how passionate memoir writers are about sharing their stories with the world, but we also know how much effort and time and practice it takes for writers to get their memoirs to a place where they’re ready to be shopped to agents or editors, or to be published—traditionally or otherwise.

A memoir offers testimony and legacy, and it also invites readers into a world that may either be familiar or wholly different from their own; but either way, it must provide a mirror in which readers see themselves. For a memoir to become beloved, it must reach the heart of others; it must make a difference.

In order to write a memoir that illuminates your life experience, you need to have a combination of art and craft. The art of memoir draws upon your memory and imagination, your understanding of the past and how your story fits with what you know about life. The art involves tapping into your creativity and self-expression. Most writers who feel called to write don’t have too difficult a time tapping into the art of writing, though sometimes what pours out is satisfying and sometimes not. Then there’s craft, which involves bringing the skills of good writing to your story in order to make your memoir more vital and alive. These are skills that writers must acquire, and must learn to recognize in others’ work. And memoir, while it employs many of the same techniques as fiction, has some unique elements, particularly in narration and reflection, that we hope you will learn to adapt and implement in your memoir, if you haven’t already.

In this book, we present from the ground up—from basic to advanced—the skills you need to draw upon to write a powerful and moving story. The book is peppered with the motivation we all need when we start to hear that niggling voice of doubt that wonders: Can I really do all of this? Writing any long-form work requires passion, accountability, and a stick-to-itiveness that at times can be a challenge, but there are always solutions. And we know you can do it. We’re here to help you believe—and then know—that you can, too.

Over the years, we’ve read, edited, assessed, and even judged contest entries for countless memoirs. We see how even when a writer has an interesting story, it can be hard to fully immerse ourselves in the world being presented to us, generally because the writer has unintentionally omitted or overlooked certain critical elements of craft. Sometimes this stems from the writer’s not understanding certain elements of craft, sometimes a writer just doesn’t have the confidence to execute what they know they should, and sometimes it’s a classic case of not knowing what they don’t know. All successful memoir writers need to deepen their commitment to learning how to write scenes, how to choose the structure that best suits their book, and how to carry ideas and themes all the way through to a satisfying conclusion. There are multiple layers to writing a powerful story, and in this book we have included the tools to help you write a solid draft of your book, along with the elements you will need to revise and edit your work toward the end goal of having a publish-ready manuscript.

We have also included throughout this book many examples of writing from best-selling memoirists to showcase certain elements of craft and how to do it right. We encourage you to read and to take classes, and to remember that this journey you’re on, though it might at times feel like more than you signed on for, will ultimately be one of the most rewarding of your life. Come along with us to break ground on your memoir and to gain and hone the skills necessary to tend to it, gently and intentionally, until it becomes the beautiful gift in the world you envisioned it would be when the seed of the idea first emerged. We invite you to learn and to be inspired, and where you feel like you already have a handle on something, then just celebrate! There is so much to know, and you get to pat yourself on the back for those things you already know you’re doing well. And if everything feels new, then that’s just fine, too. Wherever you are in your journey is where you are, and we are honored that you chose our book to be a support along the way. So let’s begin!

CHAPTER 1

Getting Grounded

How do we begin this amazing journey we call memoir writing? Your life is complex; there are so many stories to tell, and it can be difficult to decide what to include and what to leave out. Because of this, it’s easy for fledgling memoirists to leave their memoirs floating in the air, suspended from the earth, with nothing to anchor them. But everything you have experienced has taken place at a certain time and in a particular location, and it’s crucial to ground your memoir in those moments—and in the message you want to share.

The difference between writing just for yourself and writing for an audience—which is what you’re doing when you write a memoir—is the difference between writing in your journal and writing a book. There is absolutely real value in simply getting your writing out onto the page in any form, of course, but if you believe that there is a readership for your book, you will eventually need to sit down and sift through your story in an outwardly focused way. Ultimately, this process all comes down to figuring out your theme, message, and scope—and doing that starts with getting grounded.

To us, getting grounded means getting centered and getting connected with your story. Too many writers just jump in without thinking about what it is that they want to say or how they want to say it. In order to avoid falling into this trap and ending up spinning your wheels indefinitely, you need to figure out what focus your memoir will have.

FIGURING OUT YOUR CATEGORY

If you’re writing memoir, your genre, of course, is memoir. There are subgenres of memoir, categories and types, and understanding which one(s) your memoir belongs to is vital.

Deciding which category best fits the theme of your memoir is a subjective choice, and you may find that your memoir belongs in a few different subcategories. But it’s important that your memoir not try to broach all of the categories—that it not be a spiritual memoir that is also a humor memoir that is also a travel memoir that is also a coming-of-age memoir, for example. If you feel your memoir does span multiple categories in this way, there’s probably too much going on in your story, and you need to find a sharper focus.

You may know exactly what you’re doing—or trying to do—and if that’s the case, good for you! But for many writers, this isn’t the case. They’re trying to get their book to be too many things—perhaps because they don’t understand how valuable it is to pick a specific subgenre and stick to it, or perhaps because they find it difficult to make a decision about what kind of book they’re writing. If this is you, know that figuring out your category will ground you in what it is that you are currently doing and what it is that you actually want to do.

So let’s touch upon what some of these categories are, starting with coming-of-age memoir. This is very straightforward; usually these kinds of memoirs start when someone is around four or five years old and end in the teenage years. A classic example would be Augusten Burroughs’s Running with Scissors. Some people might say that Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle is also a coming-of-age memoir, but we place memoirs like these—stories that deal with difficult childhoods and/or abusive situations—in the transformation/survivor memoir category. This is where some subjectivity is going to play a role.

Another big category is life-experience memoirs. These are memoirs about motherhood, career, inspiring