Memoir Creator: Changing the world one story at a time.
Memoir & Life Writing
From the category archives:
by Elly Danica
When first sitting down to write a memoir you may have only a couple of events that really stand out, so that’s where you will logically begin. Then what? Here’s something to try to bring more of your stories to the surface. Take at least three sheets of 8.5 x 11 inch paper and tape [...]
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by Elly Danica
A family reunion is a memoir writer’s dream resource. This is primary research on a grand scale. Imagine a collection of all the significant people in your extended family and their partners, wanting to get together simply to share stories. Okay, yes, they’ll want to party as well. You should probably consider going into marathon [...]
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by Elly Danica
A memoir can be anything that records your life. A written memoir is just one of many options. Photographs, if you have a lot of them, supplemented by written stories is another method to capture your life memories. You can use your photos in an album with pages of text to accompany them or build [...]
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by Elly Danica
“Childhood is a branch of cartography.” Michael Chabon in an essay called “Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood” in the July 16 issue of the New York Review of Books. Cartography, the science of map making suggests an interesting way to think about memoir writing. What we are making when we write a memoir [...]
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by Elly Danica
Sooner or later when writing a memoir, or even notes for a memoir, you’ll get to some tough bits. There are sorrows, hurtful experiences, damaging relationships and many other things that give pain in most lives. How are you going to deal with that? You could of course choose to ignore these hurts and sorrows [...]
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by Elly Danica
I have an inner troll. Some writers call this critter an inner critic, but that’s too tame a concept for what I have to contend with. My troll has an amazing repetoire of kindness, things like ‘that sucks’, ‘who do you think you are?’ ‘there’s no way anybody will read that’, and my favourite of [...]
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by Elly Danica
Now that you have a few dozen pages of your memoir written; or you’ve got a prologue drafted; or you have notes, maybe even an outline–you’re stuck. You try to go back to the project time and time again, yet nothing happens. You are too frustrated to continue. You don’t know where you are going [...]
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by Elly Danica
You know you need to start writing your memoirs when: you keep telling the same stories over and over until your children and friends have them by heart you find yourself waking in the early morning hours with stories dancing in your mind you’ve started to collect notebooks and nice pens, and go fantasy shopping [...]
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by Elly Danica
A memoir can be about your whole life or any part of it you want to write about. Let’s look at a few starting points. 1. Start with a date. In 1975 a friend and I bought an abandoned white clapboard prairie church in a tiny village in Saskatchewan for $300. I’ve got a lot [...]
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by Elly Danica
If there is one thing I wish for as a writer, it is the blessed state of having written. Sound odd? It isn’t really. A project such as a memoir is a significant commitment of time and energy, and having it written even in first draft feels absolutely terrific. Only thing is you have to [...]
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