how to start an essay on memoir

How to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide

Zining Mok  |  January 29, 2024  |  25 Comments

If you’ve thought about putting your life to the page, you may have wondered how to write a memoir. We start the road to writing a memoir when we realize that a story in our lives demands to be told. As Maya Angelou once wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

How to write a memoir? At first glance, it looks easy enough—easier, in any case, than writing fiction. After all, there is no need to make up a story or characters, and the protagonist is none other than you.

Still, memoir writing carries its own unique challenges, as well as unique possibilities that only come from telling your own true story. Let’s dive into how to write a memoir by looking closely at the craft of memoir writing, starting with a key question: exactly what is a memoir?

How to Write a Memoir: Contents

What is a Memoir?

• Memoir vs Autobiography

Memoir Examples

Short memoir examples.

• How to Write a Memoir: A Step-by-Step Guide

A memoir is a branch of creative nonfiction , a genre defined by the writer Lee Gutkind as “true stories, well told.” The etymology of the word “memoir,” which comes to us from the French, tells us of the human urge to put experience to paper, to remember. Indeed, a memoir is “ something written to be kept in mind .”

A memoir is defined by Lee Gutkind as “true stories, well told.”

For a piece of writing to be called a memoir, it has to be:

• Nonfictional
• Based on the raw material of your life and your memories
• Written from your personal perspective

At this point, memoirs are beginning to sound an awful lot like autobiographies. However, a quick comparison of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love , and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin , for example, tells us that memoirs and autobiographies could not be more distinct.

Next, let’s look at the characteristics of a memoir and what sets memoirs and autobiographies apart. Discussing memoir vs. autobiography will not only reveal crucial insights into the process of writing a memoir, but also help us to refine our answer to the question, “What is a memoir?”

Memoir vs. Autobiography

While both use personal life as writing material, there are five key differences between memoir and autobiography:

1. Structure

Since autobiographies tell the comprehensive story of one’s life, they are more or less chronological. writing a memoir, however, involves carefully curating a list of personal experiences to serve a larger idea or story, such as grief, coming-of-age, and self-discovery. As such, memoirs do not have to unfold in chronological order.

While autobiographies attempt to provide a comprehensive account, memoirs focus only on specific periods in the writer’s life. The difference between autobiographies and memoirs can be likened to that between a CV and a one-page resume, which includes only select experiences.

The difference between autobiographies and memoirs can be likened to that between a CV and a one-page resume, which includes only select experiences.

Autobiographies prioritize events; memoirs prioritize the writer’s personal experience of those events. Experience includes not just the event you might have undergone, but also your feelings, thoughts, and reflections. Memoir’s insistence on experience allows the writer to go beyond the expectations of formal writing. This means that memoirists can also use fiction-writing techniques , such as scene-setting and dialogue , to capture their stories with flair.

4. Philosophy

Another key difference between the two genres stems from the autobiography’s emphasis on facts and the memoir’s reliance on memory. Due to memory’s unreliability, memoirs ask the reader to focus less on facts and more on emotional truth. In addition, memoir writers often work the fallibility of memory into the narrative itself by directly questioning the accuracy of their own memories.

Memoirs ask the reader to focus less on facts and more on emotional truth.

5. Audience

While readers pick up autobiographies to learn about prominent individuals, they read memoirs to experience a story built around specific themes . Memoirs, as such, tend to be more relatable, personal, and intimate. Really, what this means is that memoirs can be written by anybody!

Ready to be inspired yet? Let’s now turn to some memoir examples that have received widespread recognition and captured our imaginations!

If you’re looking to lose yourself in a book, the following memoir examples are great places to begin:

• The Year of Magical Thinking , which chronicles Joan Didion’s year of mourning her husband’s death, is certainly one of the most powerful books on grief. Written in two short months, Didion’s prose is urgent yet lucid, compelling from the first page to the last. A few years later, the writer would publish Blue Nights , another devastating account of grief, only this time she would be mourning her daughter.
• Patti Smith’s Just Kids is a classic coming-of-age memoir that follows the author’s move to New York and her romance and friendship with the artist Robert Maplethorpe. In its pages, Smith captures the energy of downtown New York in the late sixties and seventies effortlessly.
• When Breath Becomes Air begins when Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon, is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Exquisite and poignant, this memoir grapples with some of the most difficult human experiences, including fatherhood, mortality, and the search for meaning.
• A memoir of relationship abuse, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House is candid and innovative in form. Machado writes about thorny and turbulent subjects with clarity, even wit. While intensely personal, In the Dream House is also one of most insightful pieces of cultural criticism.
• Twenty-five years after leaving for Canada, Michael Ondaatje returns to his native Sri Lanka to sort out his family’s past. The result is Running in the Family , the writer’s dazzling attempt to reconstruct fragments of experiences and family legends into a portrait of his parents’ and grandparents’ lives. (Importantly, Running in the Family was sold to readers as a fictional memoir; its explicit acknowledgement of fictionalization prevented it from encountering the kind of backlash that James Frey would receive for fabricating key facts in A Million Little Pieces , which he had sold as a memoir . )
• Of the many memoirs published in recent years, Tara Westover’s Educated is perhaps one of the most internationally-recognized. A story about the struggle for self-determination, Educated recounts the writer’s childhood in a survivalist family and her subsequent attempts to make a life for herself. All in all, powerful, thought-provoking, and near impossible to put down.

While book-length memoirs are engaging reads, the prospect of writing a whole book can be intimidating. Fortunately, there are plenty of short, essay-length memoir examples that are just as compelling.

While memoirists often write book-length works, you might also consider writing a memoir that’s essay-length. Here are some short memoir examples that tell complete, lived stories, in far fewer words:

• “ The Book of My Life ” offers a portrait of a professor that the writer, Aleksandar Hemon, once had as a child in communist Sarajevo. This memoir was collected into Hemon’s The Book of My Lives , a collection of essays about the writer’s personal history in wartime Yugoslavia and subsequent move to the US.
• “The first time I cheated on my husband, my mother had been dead for exactly one week.” So begins Cheryl Strayed’s “ The Love of My Life ,” an essay that the writer eventually expanded into the best-selling memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail .
• In “ What We Hunger For ,” Roxane Gay weaves personal experience and a discussion of The Hunger Games into a powerful meditation on strength, trauma, and hope. “What We Hunger For” can also be found in Gay’s essay collection, Bad Feminist .
• A humorous memoir structured around David Sedaris and his family’s memories of pets, “ The Youth in Asia ” is ultimately a story about grief, mortality and loss. This essay is excerpted from the memoir Me Talk Pretty One Day , and a recorded version can be found here .

So far, we’ve 1) answered the question “What is a memoir?” 2) discussed differences between memoirs vs. autobiographies, 3) taken a closer look at book- and essay-length memoir examples. Next, we’ll turn the question of how to write a memoir.

How to Write a Memoir: A-Step-by-Step Guide

1. how to write a memoir: generate memoir ideas.

how to start a memoir? As with anything, starting is the hardest. If you’ve yet to decide what to write about, check out the “ I Remember ” writing prompt. Inspired by Joe Brainard’s memoir I Remember , this prompt is a great way to generate a list of memories. From there, choose one memory that feels the most emotionally charged and begin writing your memoir. It’s that simple! If you’re in need of more prompts, our Facebook group is also a great resource.

2. How to Write a Memoir: Begin drafting

My most effective advice is to resist the urge to start from “the beginning.” Instead, begin with the event that you can’t stop thinking about, or with the detail that, for some reason, just sticks. The key to drafting is gaining momentum . Beginning with an emotionally charged event or detail gives us the drive we need to start writing.

3. How to Write a Memoir: Aim for a “ shitty first draft ”

Now that you have momentum, maintain it. Attempting to perfect your language as you draft makes it difficult to maintain our impulses to write. It can also create self-doubt and writers’ block. Remember that most, if not all, writers, no matter how famous, write shitty first drafts.

Attempting to perfect your language as you draft makes it difficult to maintain our impulses to write.

4. How to Write a Memoir: Set your draft aside

Once you have a first draft, set it aside and fight the urge to read it for at least a week. Stephen King recommends sticking first drafts in your drawer for at least six weeks. This period allows writers to develop the critical distance we need to revise and edit the draft that we’ve worked so hard to write.

5. How to Write a Memoir: Reread your draft

While reading your draft, note what works and what doesn’t, then make a revision plan. While rereading, ask yourself:

• What’s underdeveloped, and what’s superfluous.
• Does the structure work?
• What story are you telling?

6. How to Write a Memoir: Revise your memoir and repeat steps 4 & 5 until satisfied

Every piece of good writing is the product of a series of rigorous revisions. Depending on what kind of writer you are and how you define a draft,” you may need three, seven, or perhaps even ten drafts. There’s no “magic number” of drafts to aim for, so trust your intuition. Many writers say that a story is never, truly done; there only comes a point when they’re finished with it. If you find yourself stuck in the revision process, get a fresh pair of eyes to look at your writing.

7. How to Write a Memoir: Edit, edit, edit!

Once you’re satisfied with the story, begin to edit the finer things (e.g. language, metaphor , and details). Clean up your word choice and omit needless words , and check to make sure you haven’t made any of these common writing mistakes . Be sure to also know the difference between revising and editing —you’ll be doing both. Then, once your memoir is ready, send it out !

Learn How to Write a Memoir at Writers.com

Writing a memoir for the first time can be intimidating. But, keep in mind that anyone can learn how to write a memoir. Trust the value of your own experiences: it’s not about the stories you tell, but how you tell them. Most importantly, don’t give up!

Anyone can learn how to write a memoir.

If you’re looking for additional feedback, as well as additional instruction on how to write a memoir, check out our schedule of nonfiction classes . Now, get started writing your memoir!

25 Comments

Thank you for this website. It’s very engaging. I have been writing a memoir for over three years, somewhat haphazardly, based on the first half of my life and its encounters with ignorance (religious restrictions, alcohol, and inability to reach out for help). Three cities were involved: Boston as a youngster growing up and going to college, then Washington DC and Chicago North Shore as a married woman with four children. I am satisfied with some chapters and not with others. Editing exposes repetition and hopefully discards boring excess. Reaching for something better is always worth the struggle. I am 90, continue to be a recital pianist, a portrait painter, and a writer. Hubby has been dead for nine years. Together we lept a few of life’s chasms and I still miss him. But so far, my occupations keep my brain working fairly well, especially since I don’t smoke or drink (for the past 50 years).

Hi Mary Ellen,

It sounds like a fantastic life for a memoir! Thank you for sharing, and best of luck finishing your book. Let us know when it’s published!

Best, The writers.com Team

Hello Mary Ellen,

I am contacting you because your last name (Lavelle) is my middle name!

Being interested in genealogy I have learned that this was my great grandfathers wife’s name (Mary Lavelle), and that her family emigrated here about 1850 from County Mayo, Ireland. That is also where my fathers family came from.

Is your family background similar?

Hope to hear back from you.

Richard Lavelle Bourke

Hi Mary Ellen: Have you finished your memoir yet? I just came across your post and am seriously impressed that you are still writing. I discovered it again at age 77 and don’t know what I would do with myself if I couldn’t write. All the best to you!! Sharon [email protected]

I am up to my eyeballs with a research project and report for a non-profit. And some paid research for an international organization. But as today is my 90th birthday, it is time to retire and write a memoir.

So I would like to join a list to keep track of future courses related to memoir / creative non-fiction writing.

Hi Frederick,

Happy birthday! And happy retirement as well. I’ve added your name and email to our reminder list for memoir courses–when we post one on our calendar, we’ll send you an email.

We’ll be posting more memoir courses in the near future, likely for the months of January and February 2022. We hope to see you in one!

Very interesting and informative, I am writing memoirs from my long often adventurous and well travelled life, have had one very short story published. Your advice on several topics will be extremely helpful. I write under my schoolboy nickname Barnaby Rudge.

[…] How to Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide […]

I am writing my memoir from my memory when I was 5 years old and now having left my birthplace I left after graduation as a doctor I moved to UK where I have been living. In between I have spent 1 year in Canada during my training year as paediatrician. I also spent nearly 2 years with British Army in the hospital as paediatrician in Germany. I moved back to UK to work as specialist paediatrician in a very busy general hospital outside London for the next 22 years. Then I retired from NHS in 2012. I worked another 5 years in Canada until 2018. I am fully retired now

I have the whole convoluted story of my loss and horrid aftermath in my head (and heart) but have no clue WHERE, in my story to begin. In the middle of the tragedy? What led up to it? Where my life is now, post-loss, and then write back and forth? Any suggestions?

My friend Laura who referred me to this site said “Start”! I say to you “Start”!

Hi Dee, that has been a challenge for me.i dont know where to start?

What was the most painful? Embarrassing? Delicious? Unexpected? Who helped you? Who hurt you? Pick one story and let that lead you to others.

I really enjoyed this writing about memoir. I ve just finished my own about my journey out of my city then out of my country to Egypt to study, Never Say Can’t, God Can Do It. Infact memoir writing helps to live the life you are writing about again and to appreciate good people you came across during the journey. Many thanks for sharing what memoir is about.

I am a survivor of gun violence, having witnessed my adult son being shot 13 times by police in 2014. I have struggled with writing my memoir because I have a grandson who was 18-months old at the time of the tragedy and was also present, as was his biological mother and other family members. We all struggle with PTSD because of this atrocity. My grandson’s biological mother was instrumental in what happened and I am struggling to write the story in such a way as to not cast blame – thus my dilemma in writing the memoir. My grandson was later adopted by a local family in an open adoption and is still a big part of my life. I have considered just writing it and waiting until my grandson is old enough to understand all the family dynamics that were involved. Any advice on how I might handle this challenge in writing would be much appreciated.

I decided to use a ghost writer, and I’m only part way in the process and it’s worth every penny!

Hi. I am 44 years old and have had a roller coaster life .. right as a young kid seeing his father struggle to financial hassles, facing legal battles at a young age and then health issues leading to a recent kidney transplant. I have been working on writing a memoir sharing my life story and titled it “A memoir of growth and gratitude” Is it a good idea to write a memoir and share my story with the world?

Thank you… this was very helpful. I’m writing about the troubling issues of my mental health, and how my life was seriously impacted by that. I am 68 years old.

[…] Writers.com: How to Write a Memoir […]

[…] Writers.com: “How to Write a Memoir” […]

I am so grateful that I found this site! I am inspired and encouraged to start my memoir because of the site’s content and the brave people that have posted in the comments.

Finding this site is going into my gratitude journey 🙂

We’re grateful you found us too, Nichol! 🙂

Firstly, I would like to thank you for all the info pertaining to memoirs. I believe am on the right track, am at the editing stage and really have to use an extra pair of eyes. I’m more motivated now to push it out and complete it. Thanks for the tips it was very helpful, I have a little more confidence it seeing the completion.

Well, I’m super excited to begin my memoir. It’s hard trying to rely on memories alone, but I’m going to give it a shot!

Thanks to everyone who posted comments, all of which have inspired me to get on it.

Best of luck to everyone! Jody V.

I was thrilled to find this material on How to Write A Memoir. When I briefly told someone about some of my past experiences and how I came to the United States in the company of my younger brother in a program with a curious name, I was encouraged by that person and others to write my life history.

Based on the name of that curious program through which our parents sent us to the United States so we could leave the place of our birth, and be away from potentially difficult situations in our country.

As I began to write my history I took as much time as possible to describe all the different steps that were taken. At this time – I have been working on this project for 5 years and am still moving ahead. The information I received through your material has further encouraged me to move along. I am very pleased to have found this important material. Thank you!

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Write a Great Memoir: How to Start (and Actually Finish) Your First Draft

by Joe Bunting | 1 comment

When I first started writing my memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , about a real-life adventure I experienced with my wife and ten-month-old son, I thought it was going to be easy.

After all, by that point in my career, I had already written four books, two of which became bestsellers. I’ve got this, I thought. Simple.

It wasn’t. By the time Crowdsourcing Paris was published and became a #1 New Release on Amazon, it was more than five years later. During that time, I made just about every mistake, but I also learned a process that will reliably help anyone to start and finish writing a great memoir.

My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , as a #1 New Release on Amazon!

In this guide, I want to talk about how you can start writing your memoir, how you can actually finish it, and how you can make sure it’s good .

If you read this article from start to finish, it will save you hundreds of hours and result in a much better finished memoir.

Hot tip : Throughout this guide, I will be referencing my memoir Crowdsourcing Paris as an example. To get the most out of this guide and the memoir writing process in general, get a copy of the book to use as an example. Order your copy here »

But Wait! What Is a Memoir? (Memoir Definition)

How do you know if you're writing a memoir? Here's a quick memoir definition:

A memoir is a book length account or autobiography about a real life situation or event. It usually includes a pivotal experience in your life journey.

A key point to make is that memoir is a  true story . You don't have to get every piece of dialogue perfect, but you do have to try to tell the personal story or experience as best as you remember.

If you're looking to fictionalize your real life account you're writing a novel, not a memoir (and specifically a roman à clef novel ).

For more on the difference between a novel and a memoir, check out this coaching video:

How to Get Started With Your Memoir: 10 Steps Before You Start Writing

This guide is broken into sections: what to do before you start writing and how to write your first draft.

When most people decide to write a memoir, they just start writing. They write about the first life experience they can think of.

That’s sort of what I did too. I just started writing about my trip to Paris, beginning with how I first decided to go as a way to become a “real writer.” It turned out to be the biggest mistake I made.

If you want to finish your memoir, and even more, write a good memoir, just starting with the first memory you can think of will make things much harder for you.

Instead, get started with a memoir plan.

What’s a memoir plan? There are ten elements. Let’s break it down.

Get the memoir plan in a downloadable worksheet. Click to download your memoir plan »

1. Write Your Memoir Premise in One Sentence

The first part of a memoir plan is your premise. A premise is a one-sentence summary of your book idea.

You might be wondering, how can I summarize my entire life in a single sentence?

The answer is, you can’t. Memoir isn’t a full autobiography. It’s not meant to be a historical account of your entire life story. Instead, it should share one specific situation and what you learned from that situation.

Every memoir premise should contain three things:

• A Character. For your memoir, that character will always be you . For the purposes of your premise, though, it’s a good idea to practice thinking of yourself as the main character of your story. So describe yourself in third person and use one descriptive adjective, e.g. a cautious writer.
• A Situation. Memoirs are about a specific event, situation, or experience. For example, Marion Roach Smith’s bestselling memoir was about the discovery that her mother had Alzheimer’s, which at the time was a fairly unknown illness. My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , begins on the first day of my trip to Paris and ends on the day I left. You can’t write about everything, at least in this book. But you can write about one thing well, and save all the other ideas for the next book.
• A Lesson. What life lesson did you learn from this situation? How did your life change inexorably after going through this situation? Again, here you can’t write about everything you’ve ever learned. Choose ONE life lesson or emotional truth and focus on it.

Want to see how a premise actually looks? Here’s an example from my memoir Crowdsourcing Paris :

When a Cautious Writer is forced by his audience to do uncomfortable adventures in Paris he learns the best stories come when you get out of your comfort zone.

One thing to note: a premise is not a book description. My book description, which you can see here , is totally different from the premise. It’s more suspenseful and also less detailed in some ways. That’s because the purpose of a premise isn’t to sell books.

What is the premise of your memoir? Share it in the comments below!

2. Set a Deadline to Finish Your First Draft

Or if you’ve already finished a draft, set a deadline to finish your next draft.

This is crucial to do now , before you do anything else. Why? Because there are parts of the memoir plan that you can spend months, even years on. But while planning is helpful, it can easily become a distraction if you don’t get to the writing part of the process.

That’s why you want to put a time limit on your planning by setting a deadline.

How long should the deadline be?

Stephen King says you should write a first draft in no longer than a season. So ninety days.

In my 100 Day Book program, we’ve helped hundreds of memoir writers finish their book in just 100 days. To me, that’s a good amount of time to finish a first draft.

However, I wouldn’t take any longer than 100 days. Writing a book requires a level of focus that’s difficult to achieve over a long period of time. If you set your deadline for longer than 100 days, you might never finish.

Also set weekly milestones.

In addition to your final deadline, I recommend breaking up the writing process into weekly milestones.

If you’re going to write a 65,000-word memoir over 100 days, let’s say, then divide 65,000 by the number of weeks (about 14) to get your weekly word count goal: about 4,600 words per week.

That will give you a sense of how much progress you’re making each week, so you won’t be in a huge rush to finish right at the end of your deadline. After all, no one can pull an all-nighter and finish a book! Create a writing habit that will enable you to actually finish your book.

Keep track of your word count deadlines.

By the way, this is one reason I love Scrivener , my favorite book writing software , because it allows you to set a target deadline and word count. Then Scrivener automatically calculates how much you need to write every day to reach your deadline.

It’s a great way to keep track of your deadline and how much more you have to write. Check out my review of Scrivener to learn more.

3. Create Consequences to Make Quitting Hard

I’ve learned from experience that a deadline alone isn’t enough. You also have to give your deadline teeth .

Writing a book is hard. To make sure that you show up to the page and do the work you need to finish, you need to make it harder to not write.

How? By creating consequences.

I learned this from a friend of mine, writer and book marketing expert Tim Grahl .

“If you really want to finish your book,” he told me, “write a check for $1,000 to a charity you hate. Then give that check to a friend with instructions to send it if you don’t hit your deadline.”

“I don’t need to do that,” I told him. “I’m a pro. I have discipline.” But a month later, after I still hadn’t made any progress on my memoir, I finally decided to take his advice.

This was during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. So I wrote a $1,000 check to the presidential candidate that I most disliked (who shall remain nameless!), and gave it to a friend with instructions to send the check if I didn’t hit my final deadline.

I also created smaller consequences for the weekly deadlines, which I highly recommend. Here’s how it works:

Consequence #1 : Small consequence, preferably related to a guilty pleasure that might keep you from writing. For example, giving up a game on your phone or watching TV until you finish your book.

Consequence #2 : Giving up a guilty pleasure. For example, giving up ice cream, soda, or alcohol until you finish your book.

Consequence #3 : Send the $1,000 check to the charity you hate.

Each of these would happen if I missed three weekly deadlines. If I missed the final deadline, then just the $1,000 check would get sent.

After I put in each of these consequences, I was the most focused and productive I’ve ever been in my life. I finished my book in just nine weeks and never missed a deadline.

If you actually want to finish your memoir, give this process a try. I think you’ll be surprised by how well it works for you.

4. Decide What Kind of Story You’re Telling

Now that you’ve set your deadline, start thinking about what kind of book you’re writing. What is your story really about?

“Memoir is about something you know after something you’ve been through,” says Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project .

I think there are seven types of stories that most memoirs are about.

• Coming of Age. A story about a young person finding their place in the world. A great example is 7 Story Mountain  by Thomas Merton.
• Education. An education story , according to Kim Kessler and Story Grid, is about a naive character who, through the course of the story, comes to a bigger understanding of the world that gives meaning to their existing life. My memoir, Crowdsourcing Paris , is a great example of an education memoir.
• Love. A love story is about a romantic relationship, either the story of a breakup or of two characters coming together. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a great example of a love story memoir, as it tells the story of her divorce and then re-discovering herself and love as she travels the world.
• Adventure/Action. All adventure stories are about life and death situations. Also, most travel memoirs are adventure stories. Wild by Cheryl Strayed is a great example, and Crowdsourcing Paris is also an adventure story. (You can apply the principles from our How to Write Adventure guide here , too!)
• Performance. Performance memoirs are about a big competition or a competitive pursuit. Julie and Julia , Julie Powell’s memoir about cooking her way through Julia Child’s recipes, is a good example of a performance memoir. Outlaw Platoon , about the longest-serving Ranger platoon in Afghanistan, is another great performance story.
• Thriller. Memoirs about abuse or even an illness could fall into the crime, horror, or thriller arena. (Our full guide on How to Write a Thriller is here .)
• Society. What is wrong with society? And how can you rebel against the status quo? Society stories are very common as memoirs. I would also argue that most humor memoirs are society stories, since they talk about one person’s funny, transgressive view on society. Anything by David Sedaris, for example, is a society memoir.

For more on all of these genres, check out Story Grid’s article How to Use Story Grid to Write a Memoir .

Three Stories

Note that I included my memoir in two categories. That’s because most books, including memoirs, are actually a combination of three stories. You have:

• An external story. For example, Crowdsourcing Paris is an adventure story.
• An internal story . As I said, Crowdsourcing Paris is an education story.
• A subplot . Usually the subplot is another external story, in my case, a love story.

What three stories are you telling in your memoir?

5. Visualize Your Intention

One of the things that I’ve learned as I’ve coached hundreds of writers to finish their books is that if you visualize the following you are much more likely to follow through and accomplish your writing goals:

• Where you're going to write
• When you're going to write
• How much you're going to write

Here I want you to actively visualize yourself at your favorite writing spot accomplishing the word count goal that you set in step two.

For example, when I was writing Crowdsourcing Paris , I would imagine myself sitting at this one café that was eight doors down from my office. I liked it because it had a little bit of a French feel. Then I would imagine myself there from eight in the morning until about ten.

Finally, I would actively visualize myself watching the word count tracker go from 999 to 1,000 words, which was my goal every day. Just that process of imagining my intention was so helpful.

What is your intention? Where, when, and how much will you write? Imagine yourself actually sitting there in the place you’re going to write your memoir.

6. Who Will Be On Your Team?

No one can write a book alone. I learned this the hard way, and the result was that it took me five years to finish my memoir.

For every other book that I had written, I had other people holding me accountable. Without my team, I know that I would never have written those books. But when I tried to write my memoir, I thought, I can do this on my own. I don’t need accountability, encouragement, and support. I’ve got this.

To figure out who you need to help you finish your memoir, create three different lists of people:

• Other writers. These are people who you can process, with who know the process of writing a book. Some will be a little bit ahead of you, so that when you get stuck, they can encourage you and say, “I’ve been there. You’re going to get through it. Keep working.”
• Readers. Or if you don’t have readers, friends and family. These will be the people who give you feedback on your finished book before it’s published, e.g. beta readers.
• Professional editors. But you also need professional feedback. I recommend listing two different editors here, a content editor to give feedback on the book as a whole (for example, I recommend a Write Practice Certified Coach), and a proofreader or line editor to help polish the final draft. (Having professional editing software is smart too. We like ProWritingAid. Check out our ProWritingAid review .)

Just remember: it takes a team to finish a book. Don’t try to do it on your own.

And if you don’t have relationships with other writers who can be on your team, check out The Write Practice Pro. This is the community I post my writing in to get feedback. Many of my best writing friends came directly from this community. You can learn more about The Write Practice Pro here .

7. What Other Books Will Inspire You?

“Books are made from books,” said Cormac McCarthy. Great writers learn how to write great books by reading other great books, and so should you.

I recommend finding three to five other memoirs that can inspire you during the writing process.

I recommend two criteria for the books you choose:

• Commercially successful. If you want your book to be commercially successful, choose other books that have done well in the marketplace.
• Similar story type. Try to find books that are the same story type that you learned in step four.

For my memoir, I had four main sources of inspiration.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert; The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain; A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway; and Midnight in Paris , the film by Woody Allen.

I referred back to these sources all the time. For example, when I was stuck on the climactic scene in the memoir, I watched one scene in A Midnight in Paris twenty times until I could quote the dialogue. I still didn’t come up with the solution until the next day, but understanding how other writers solved the problems I was facing helped me figure out my own solutions for my story.

8. Who Is Your Reader Avatar?

Who is your book going to be for? Or who is the one person you’ll think of when you write your book? When the writing gets hard and you want to quit, who will be most disappointed if you never finish your book?

I learned this idea from J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote his novel The Hobbit for his three boys as a bedtime story. Every day he would work on his pages, and every night he would go home and read them to his sons. And this gave him an amazing way to get feedback. He knew whether they laughed at one part or got bored at another.

This helped him make his story better, but I also imagine it gave him a tremendous amount of motivation.

This Can Be You, Sort Of

I don’t think your reader avatar should be you. When it comes to your own writing, you are the least objective person.

There’s one caveat: you can be your own reader avatar IF you’re writing to a version of yourself at a different time. For example, I have friends who have imagined they were writing to a younger version of themselves.

Who will you write your memoir for?

9. Publishing and Marketing

How will you publish your book? Will you go the traditional route or will you self-publish? Who is your target market (check your reader avatar for help)? What will you do to promote and market your book? Do you have an author website ?

It might be strange to start planning for the publishing and marketing of your book before you ever start writing it, but what I’ve discovered is that when you think through the entire writing process, from the initial idea all the way through the publishing and marketing process, you are much more likely to finish your book.

In fact, in my 100 Day Book program, I found that people who finished this planning process were 52 percent more likely to finish their book.

Spend some time thinking about your publishing and marketing plans. Just thinking about it will help you when you start writing.

Start Building Your Audience Before You Need It

In the current publishing climate, most memoir agents and publishers want you to have some kind of relationship with an audience before they will consider your book.

Start building an audience before you need it. The first step to building an audience, and the first step to publishing in general, is building an author website. If you don’t have a website yet, you can find our full author website guide here .

(Building a website doesn’t have to be intimidating or time-consuming if you have the right guide.)

10. Outline Your Memoir

The final step of the planning process is your memoir outline . This could be the subject of a whole article itself. Here, I’ve learned so much from Story Grid, but if you don’t have time to read the book and listen to over 100 podcast episodes, here’s a quick and dirty process for you.

But First, for the Pantsers

There are two types of writers: the plotters and the pansters . Plotters like to outline. Pantsers think outlining crushes their creative freedom and hate it.

If you identify with the pantsers, that’s okay. Don’t worry too much about this step. I would still recommend writing something in this section of your memoir plan, even if you only know a few moments that will happen in the book, even recording a series of events might help as you plan.

And for you plotters, outline to your heart’s content, as long as you’ve already set your deadline!

Outlining Tips

When you’re ready to start outlining, here are a few tips:

• Begin by writing down all the big moments in your life that line up with your premise. Your premise is the foundation of your story. Anything outside of that premise should be cut.
• S eparate your life events into three acts. One of the most common story structures in writing is the three-act story structure. Act 1 should contain about 25 percent of your story, Act 2 about 50 percent of your story, and Act 3 about 25 percent.
• Act 1 should begin as late into the story as possible. In Crowdsourcing Paris , like most travel memoirs, I began the story the day I arrived in Paris.
• Use flashbacks, but carefully. Since I began Crowdsourcing Paris so late into the action, I used flashbacks to provide some details about what happened to lead up to the trip. Flashbacks can be overused, though, so only include full scenes and don’t info dump with flashbacks.
• Start big. The first scene in your book should be a good representation of what your book is about. So if you’re writing an adventure story (see Step 4), then you should have a life or death moment as the first scene. If you’re writing a love story, you should have a moment of love or love lost.
• End Act 1 with a decision. It is you, and specifically your decisions , that drive the action of your memoir. So what important decision did you make that will drive us into Act 2?
• Start Act 2 with your subplot. In Step 4, I said most books are made up of three stories. Your subplot is an important part of your book, and in most great stories, your subplot begins in Act 2.
• Act 2 begins with a period of “fun and games.” Save the Cat , one of my favorite books for writers, says that after the tension you built with the big decision in Act 1, the first few scenes in Act 2 should be fun and feel good, with things going relatively well for the protagonist.
• Center your second act on the “all is lost” moment. Great stories are about a character who comes to the end of him or herself. The all is lost moment is my favorite to write, because it’s where the character (in this case you ) has the most opportunity to grow. What is YOUR “all is lost” moment?
• Act 3 contains your final climactic moment. For Crowdsourcing Paris , this was the moment when I thought I was going to die. In a love story memoir, it might be when you finally work things out and commit to your partner.
• Act 3 is also where you show the big lesson of the memoir. Emphasis on show. Back in Step 1, you identified the lesson of your memoir. Act 3 is when you finally demonstrate what you’ve learned throughout the memoir in one major event.
• A tip for the final scene: end your memoir with the subplot. This gives a sense of completion to your story and works as a great final moment.

Use the tips above to create a rough outline of your memoir. Keep in mind, when you start writing, things might completely change. That’s okay! The point with your plan isn’t to be perfect. It’s to think through your story from beginning to end so that you’ll be prepared when you get to that point in the writing process.

Want to make this process as easy as possible? Get the memoir plan in a downloadable worksheet. Click to download your memoir plan »

That’s the end of the planning stage of this guide. Now let’s talk about how to write your first draft.

How to Write the First Draft of Your Memoir

If you’ve followed the steps above to create a memoir plan, you’ve done the important work. Writing a memoir, like writing any book, is hard. But it will actually be harder to not be successful if you’ve followed all the steps in the memoir plan.

But once you’ve created the “perfect” plan, it’s time to do the dirty work of writing a first draft.

In part two of our guide, you’ll learn how to write and finish a first draft.

1. Forget Perfection and Write Badly.

First drafts are messy. In fact, Anne Lamott calls them “shitty first drafts” because they are almost always terrible.

Even though I know that, though, any time I’m working on a new writing project, I still get it into my head that my first draft should be a masterpiece.

It usually takes me staring at a blank screen for a few hours before I admit defeat and just start writing.

If you’re reading this, don’t do that! Instead, start by writing badly.

Besides, when you’ve done the hard planning work, what you write will probably be a lot better than you think.

2. Willpower Doesn’t Work. Neither Does Inspiration. Instead, Use the “3 Minute Timer Trick.”

My biggest mistake when I began Crowdsourcing Paris was to think I had the willpower I needed as a professional writer and author of four books to finish the book on my own. Even worse, I thought I would be so inspired that the book would basically write itself.

I didn’t. It took not making much progress on my book for more than a year to realize I needed help.

The best thing you can do to help you focus on the writing process for your second draft is what we talked about in Step 4: Creating a Consequence.

But if you still need help, try my “3 Minute Timer Trick.” Here’s how it works:

• Set a timer for three minutes. Why three minutes? Because for me, I’m so distractible I can’t focus for more than three minutes. I think anyone can focus for three minutes though, even me.
• Write as fast as you can. Don’t think, just write!
• When the timer ends, write down your total word count in a separate document (see image below). Then subtract from the previous word count to calculate how many words you wrote during that session.
• Also write down any distractions during those three minutes. Did the phone ring? Did you have a tough urge to scroll through Facebook or play a game on your phone? Write it down.
• Then, repeat the process by starting the timer again. Can you beat your word count?

This process is surprisingly helpful, especially when you don’t feel like writing. After all, you might not have it in you to write for an hour, but anyone can write for three minutes.

And the amazing thing is that once you’ve started, you might find it much easier to keep going.

Other Tools for Writers

By the way, if you’re looking for the tools I use and other pro writers I know use, check out our Best Tools for Creative Writers guide here .

3. Make Your Weekly Deadlines.

You can’t finish your book in an all-nighter. That being said, you can finish a chapter of your book in an all-nighter.

That’s why it’s so important to have the weekly deadlines we talked about in Part 1, Step 2 of this guide.

By breaking up the writing process into a series of weekly deadlines, you give yourself an achievable framework to finish your book. And with the consequences you set in Step 3 of your memoir plan, you give your deadlines the teeth they need to hold you accountable.

And as I mentioned above, Scrivener is especially helpful for keeping track of deadlines (among other things). If you haven’t yet, check out my review of Scrivener here .

4. Keep Your Team Updated.

Having a hard time? It’s normal. Talk to your team about it.

It seems like when you’re writing a book, everything in the universe conspires against you. You get into a car accident, you get sick, you get into a massive fight with your spouse or family member, you get assigned a new project at your day job.

Writing a book would be hard enough on its own, but when you have the rest of your life to deal with, it can become almost impossible.

Without your team, which we talked about in Step 6 of your book plan, it would be.

For me, I would never have been able to finish one book, let alone the twelve that I’ve now finished, without the support, encouragement, and accountability of the other writers whom I call friends, the readers who believe in me, and most of all, my wife.

Remember: No book is finished alone. When things get hard, talk about it with your team.

And if you need a team, consider joining mine. The Write Practice Pro is a supportive encouraging community of writers and editors. It’s where I get feedback on my writing, and you can get it here too. Learn more about the community here.

5. Finally, Trust the Process.

When I walk writers through the first draft writing process, inevitably, around day sixty, they start to lose faith.

• They think their book is the all-time worst book ever written.
• They get a new idea they want to work on instead.
• They decide the dream to write a book and become a writer was foolish.
• They want to quit.

A few do quit at this point.

But the ones who keep going discover that in just a few weeks they’ve figured out most of the problems in their book, they’re on their last pages, and they’re almost finished.

It happens every time, even to me.

If you take nothing else from this post, please hear this: keep going. Never quit. If you follow this process from start to finish, you’re going to make it, and it’s going to be awesome.

I’m so excited for you.

How to Finish Your Memoir

More than half of this guide is about the planning process. That’s because if you start well, you’ll finish well.

If you create the right plan, then all that’s left is doing the hard, messy work of writing.

Without the right plan, it’s SO easy to get lost along the way.

That’s why I hope you’ll download my Memoir Plan Worksheet. Getting lost in the writing process is inevitable. This plan will become your map when it happens. Click to download the Memoir Plan Worksheet.

More than anything, though, I hope you’ll never quit. It took me five years to write Crowdsourcing Paris , but during that time I matured and grew so much as a writer and a person, all because I didn’t quit.

Even if it takes you five years, the life lessons you’ll learn as you write your book will be worth it.

And if you’re interested in a real-life adventure story set in Paris, I’d be honored if you’d read Crowdsourcing Paris . I think you’ll love it.

Good luck and happy writing.

More Writing Resources:

• How to Write a Memoir Outline: 7 Essential Steps For Your Memoir Outline
• 7 Steps to a Powerful Memoir
• The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith
• Crowdsourcing Paris by J.H. Bunting

Are you going to commit to writing a memoir (and never quitting, no matter what)? Let me know in the comments .

Summarize your memoir idea in the form of a one-sentence premise. Make sure it contains all three elements:

• A character
• A situation

Take fifteen minutes to craft your premise. When you’re finished, share your memoir premise in the Pro Practice Workshop for feedback. And if you share, please be sure to give feedback to three other writers. Not a member? Join us .

Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

Work with Joe Bunting?

WSJ Bestselling author, founder of The Write Practice, and book coach with 14+ years experience. Joe Bunting specializes in working with Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, How To, Literary Fiction, Memoir, Mystery, Nonfiction, Science Fiction, and Self Help books. Sound like a good fit for you?

One of my book chapters has been accepted for publication, but I lack confidence in the accuracy of what I have written. I have completed the chapter, but I would appreciate your assistance in improving its quality.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

• 3 Rules to Write World-Changing Memoir - The Write Practice - […] Here are my three “rules” about how to write a memoir: […]
• 4 Essentials for Writing Memoir That Resonates With Readers - The Write Practice - […] How do you write memoir and tell a story that is compelling to you, but might not be to…
• 19 Tips on Writing Memoir from The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith - The Write Practice - […] Marion Roach Smith has solid advice on how to write your own stories. Let me share nineteen tips on…
• The One Secret to a Deeper Memoir - The Write Practice - […] if you’re wondering how to write a memoir, what if you interviewed people–friends, family, community members–about the events on…
• How to Unlock the Power of the Present Tense in Memoir - The Write Practice - […] Writing memoir in the present tense suits grief in ways that the past tense simply cannot provide. […]
• Read Memoirs to Understand Character Motivation - […] about you? Do you want to know how to write a memoir? Check out our complete guide, Write a…
• How to Satisfy Your Reader With a Great Ending - The Write Practice - […] you’re figuring out how to write a memoir or a novel, creating an ending that is satisfying for the…
• How to Write About Your Family… Without Getting Disowned - […] this it true, through writing my own memoir, I have come to find that we can handle these situations…
• Write a Great Memoir: How to Start (and Actually Finish) Your First Draft – Books, Literature & Writing - […] “When you’re getting started writing a memoir, don’t just start writing about the first thing you remember.Tweet thisTweet […]
• 10 Memoir Writing Prompts to Get You Started - […] to take the next step and learn how to write a memoir? Check out my complete guide, Write a…
• How to Write a Short Memoir Story : The Write Practice - […] Then, when you’re ready to write a full memoir, check out our complete guide, Write a Great Memoir: How…

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How to Begin Your Memoir: A Guide to Personal Storytelling

Last Updated: January 9, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was reviewed by Gerald Posner and by wikiHow staff writer, Finn Kobler . Gerald Posner is an Author & Journalist based in Miami, Florida. With over 35 years of experience, he specializes in investigative journalism, nonfiction books, and editorials. He holds a law degree from UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and a BA in Political Science from the University of California-Berkeley. He’s the author of thirteen books, including several New York Times bestsellers, the winner of the Florida Book Award for General Nonfiction, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. He was also shortlisted for the Best Business Book of 2020 by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 2,428 times.

A memoir is arguably the most personal type of story you can tell. It provides an intimate snapshot of your life and offers readers a unique insight into your past. So how do you start writing one? In this article, we’ll offer you comprehensive advice on how to make the opening of your memoir pop. Keep reading to keep your audience engaged from the very first page.

Things You Should Know

• Begin your memoir with a dramatic opening sequence that captures your reader’s attention and introduces the conflict of the story they’ll be reading about.
• Use humor and vivid imagery to build a relationship with your reader and make them feel immersed in your story from the first paragraph.
• A memoir tells the story of one specific period in your life, not your entire life story. Clarify what this specific event is within the first chapter.

Begin your memoir with a dramatic, personal moment.

• For example, Ron Kovic’s famous memoir Born on the Fourth of July begins with: “The blood is still rolling off my flak jacket from the hole in my shoulder.” He soon jumps back in time to explain how he got into this situation, but the reader is now invested because they know this intense moment will be coming soon.

Use humor to earn your audience’s trust.

• Irony - saying one thing and meaning the opposite (“There were storm clouds everywhere, thunder echoing at deafening volume, and unrelenting rain. It was a great day for a picnic.”)
• Incongruity - making an unexpected, illogical choice to surprise and delight the reader (“I opened the wine bottle to let it breathe, but it started hyperventilating.”)
• Self-deprecation - making fun of yourself to humanize yourself to the reader (“I looked at myself in the mirror and my reflection screamed in terror.”)
• Understatement - describing a dramatic situation in an intentionally nonchalant way to ease the tension (“The day my grandfather died was mildly unpleasant.”)
• Hyperbole - exaggerating something to emphasize a situation’s silliness or absurdity (“My little brother took the last Snicker’s bar so we have to put him down.”)

Set up a character arc in the first few pages.

• For example, in Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love , she begins the first chapter as a timid housewife who’s disillusioned in life and love. By setting her up this way, it’s all the more meaningful when she learns to find happiness, joy, and romance.

Establish a personal relationship with your reader.

• For example, you might say “I’ve never told anyone this. Here goes: I have a shrine to lizards in my bedroom. or “I’m writing you because I feel lost. If you feel lost too, keep reading.”

Use vivid imagery to put your reader in your shoes.

• For example, instead of “I heard footsteps and felt a tingle of joy because I knew my dad was home,” you might write “THUNK-THUNK! Footsteps echoed through the wood of our old 1930’s home. A tingle of joy pulsed through each vertebra in my spine. Dad was home!”

Write honestly and without a filter.

• For example, if you’re writing about yourself in high school, you probably wouldn’t describe your friends as “kindly, warmhearted souls who made worries disappear like tears in rain” (even if it sounds poetic). It’s okay to use terms like “chiller” or “dude” if that’s how you talk.
• One thing that causes most memoirists to censor themselves is fear of how the people in their life might react to seeing themselves in a story. If you need to, use a pseudonym and change their names to respect privacy. But don’t let that change how you tell your story!

Clarify what event your memoir is about early on.

• For example, if your memoir is about your experience in the military, you might want to open your book with a moment from your experiences overseas. If it’s your whacky journey to stand-up comedy, you might want to describe your first open mic.

Convey a tone and mood that matches the stories of your memoir.

• For an inspirational memoir , select stories about triumph and overcoming adversity: living through a natural disaster, finding faith and spirituality after feeling lost, or reconciling an estranged relationship after one of you made a mistake.
• For a comedic memoir , select stories about silly, awkward, and uncomfortable situations that lots of people may relate to: an outrageous family reunion, the awkwardness of middle school, or public humiliation.
• For a travel memoir , select stories in unique settings where it almost feels like the location itself is a character: a trip to Fiji where you can feel the sand between your toes, hiking in Yosemite under the lush green trees, the brassy jazz that echoes out of New Orleans.
• For a confessional memoir , select cathartic stories about taboos or secrets you haven’t told anyone before: struggles with addiction, behind-the-scenes details about your industry, family traumas you kept hidden.

Highlight potential themes in your first chapter.

• For example, if your memoir takes place at a picnic and the theme is teamwork, you could write about the friends at this lunch you felt you could confide in, the beehive you saw where all the bees worked as a community, or the beauty of the interlocking squares on the blanket.
• Use word choice to convey the theme too. For example, if your theme is teamwork, you might use adjectives like “harmony,” “synergy,” and “congeniality” to describe positive experiences and “loneliness,” “isolation,” or solitude to describe negative ones.

Avoid getting lost in irrelevant details.

• Think of a memoir like a story you’d tell to someone face-to-face. If someone asks “What was 8th grade like for you?” you probably wouldn’t go on a tangent about your dog, unless that dog played a key role in your 8th-grade year.

Write your memoir’s opening last.

Recognize that your memoir’s opening won’t be perfect at first.

• Once you’ve finished your first draft, avoid working on your memoir for 2-4 weeks. Give yourself space to replenish your creative juices for the rewrite.

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://www.mtnbrook.k12.al.us/cms/lib/AL01901445/Centricity/Domain/676/Narrative%20Hook.pdf
• ↑ https://examples.yourdictionary.com/common-types-of-humor-used-in-literature.html
• ↑ https://www.tlu.ee/~rajaleid/montaazh/Hero%27s%20Journey%20Arch.pdf
• ↑ https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/01/bad-memoir-writing-rules-for-doing-it-well.html
• ↑ https://www.austincc.edu/andreac/imagery
• ↑ http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/451S12/kowit-honesty.htm
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/resources/writing_instructors/creative_nonfiction_in_writing_courses/the_personal_memoir.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/writing_style/diction/tone_mood_audience.html
• ↑ https://www.delmar.edu/offices/swc/_resources/Literature/theme.pdf
• ↑ http://content.principia.edu/teaching-excellence/write-the-introduction-last/
• ↑ https://sites.temple.edu/izzyshabazzcwblog/2021/03/09/shitty-first-drafts-by-a-lamott/

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Guides • Perfecting your Craft

Last updated on Apr 14, 2023

How to Write a Memoir: Turn Your Personal Story Into a Successful Book

Writing a memoir can be a meaningful way to reflect on your life's journey and share your unique perspective with people around you. But creating a powerful (and marketable) book from your life's memories — one that can be enjoyed by readers across the world — is no easy task. 

In this article, we'll explore the essential ingredients that make up an impactful and commercially viable memoir and provide you with tips to craft your own.

Here’s how to write a memoir in 6 steps: 

1. Figure out who you’re writing for

2. narrow down your memoir’s focus, 3. distill the story into a logline , 4. choose the key moments to share, 5. don’t skimp on the details and dialogue, 6. portray yourself honestly.

Before you take on the challenge of writing a memoir, make sure you have a clear goal and direction by defining the following:

• What story you’re telling (if you’re telling “the story of your life,” then you may be looking at an autobiography , not a memoir),
• What the purpose of your memoir is,
• Which audience you’re writing it for.

Some authors write a memoir as a way to pass on some wisdom, to process certain parts of their lives, or just as a legacy piece for friends and family to look back on shared memories. Others have stronger literary ambitions, hoping to get a publishing deal through a literary agent , or self-publishing it to reach a wide audience. 

Whatever your motivation, we’d recommend approaching it as though you were to publish it. You’ll end up with a book that’s more polished, impactful, and accessible 一 even if it’ll only ever reach your Aunt Jasmine.

🔍 How do you know whether your book idea is marketable? Acclaimed ghostwriter Katy Weitz suggests researching memoir examples from several subcategories to determine whether there’s a readership for a story like yours.

Know your target reader

If you’re not sure where to start it doesn’t hurt to figure out your target audience 一 the age group, gender, and interests of the people you’re writing it for. A memoir targeted at business execs is a very different proposition from one written to appeal to Irish-American baseball fans. 

If you want a little help in asking the right questions to define your audience, download our author market research checklist below. 

FREE RESOURCE

Market Research Checklist

Find your ultimate target audience with our checklist.

Now that you know who you’re writing for, you need to clearly define which (yummy) slice of your life you want to share with them. 

When writing a memoir, there's always the temptation to cover broad periods of your life, from that time in first grade when Mrs. Taylor laughed at your painting, to your third divorce, and everything in between. But remember, this is not a biography. You should try to choose specific experiences or aspects of your life that form a red thread or a central theme. The narrower the focus, the better your memoir will resonate with others. 

For example, a memoir could be about the time you hiked the Appalachian Trail, became a Jiu-Jitsu master, or volunteered in a refugee camp. Naturally, anecdotes from other parts of your life may intertwine with your main narrative, but there needs to be a focused center to your book.

Not only will a narrower slice of life help you concentrate your efforts, it will also make it easier to shift the focus from your personal story to specific, relatable things you experienced , making it easier for readers to care and take something away from the book.

GET ACCOUNTABILITY

Meet writing coaches on Reedsy

Industry insiders can help you hone your craft, finish your draft, and get published.

A broader theme readers can relate to

Unless you’re a celebrity, you can’t expect people to just want to read your memoir 一 you have to give them a reason to carve time out of their busy schedule and sit with your book. People are drawn to stories that they can relate to or that teach them something about themselves and the world. 

So, before you get to writing, identify the broader themes behind your personal experiences and center the book around them. For example, a story about hiking the Appalachian Trail could be a story about spiritual growth. A book about learning Jiu-Jitsu may be about building confidence and overcoming fear. A memoir about working with refugees could be about cultivating empathy and overcoming structural inequality. 

These are themes that people from different ages, gender, and cultures can relate to. They will make your memoir much more universal. Figure out what readers can learn from your experiences, whether that’s something about resilience, trauma, parenting, self-discovery, or other, and center your book around that .    

💡 Listen to 3-time memoir author Paul Bradley Carr explain the importance of nailing your memoir’s focus from the get-go in this advice-packed Reedsy Live.

At this point, you’re probably fired up and stretching your fingers to start writing. But there are a few more steps to take to ensure you’re set up for success. 

Memory lane isn’t a straight path — it’s a winding road with many off-ramps and distractions. So before you start drafting, make a note of where you’re going by encapsulating your memoir in a sentence or two. Ask yourself: if I were to pitch it to a stranger on an elevator, how would I summarize it? The purpose of this exercise is to help you weave the main themes into a clear narrative arc, which is essential to turn your life into a captivating story. 

Here are some example loglines from famous memoirs for inspiration: 

Take some time with your logline and whittle your story down to its purest form. If it helps, start by writing what you think the back cover blurb will be. Then boil it down further and further, until you can finally pitch it in just a few sentences.

The logline is the North Star that will guide you as you start to collect the moments of your life to include in the book. 

Now that you have a direction and some central themes, it’s time to pick the best tales from your buffet of life experiences. It’s natural to look back at your life chronologically and select memories in a linear fashion, but really, what’s important is to pick the most meaningful moments, whether big or small, that propel your memoir forward.

For example, Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime is a collection of stories about growing up as a mixed-raced child in Apartheid South Africa. The book shares how Noah questioned his mother’s religious beliefs, spoke multiple languages to bridge cultural differences, made and sold CDs to escape poverty, and more. Each story is a different window into his world and how it shaped him, but all of them build on the book’s central themes of faith, identity, and resilience.

Look for moments of high emotion

When you’re mining your memory for stories, look for those with moments of high emotion and meaning. Whether it was a funny, sad, or embarrassing memory, the ones that shaped who you are and how you see the world tend to be the most emotionally charged.

To discern the gems from mediocre stories, consider working with a professional editor and take advantage of their editorial wisdom. 

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Now close your eyes, and dig deep into your memories to repaint your stories on the blank page as colorfully (and accurately) as possible. 

To make your memoir deeply engaging, experiment with different storytelling techniques and use sensory details, actions, and dialogue, as opposed to explicitly stating what you did or how you felt. This falls into the classic writing advice of ‘ Show, don’t tell .’

When revisiting your memories, be thorough in your research and try to collect as many details as possible: 

• Read back your journal entries (if you kept one) to see how you felt in the moment.
• Get your hands on photos or videos from that period in your life (either digital or analog.)
• Interview your family members, friends, and other people relevant to your story.
• Revisit locations and settings from the past that you plan on writing about.
• Look up anything that can be verified or fact-checked (e.g. dates, social media posts, or world news.)

Once you've collected the raw material, organize these memories in a way that makes sense for you. Being systematic in your research will pay serious dividends when you actually start working on your manuscript.

You’re allowed some creative license with dialogue

One thing that is particularly important to get right is dialogue. Obviously, you don't have to write dialogue exactly as it happened — our memories are fallible after all. However, you do need to accurately capture the essence of what was said (and how). As long as you’re faithful to what happened (or at least honest about how you experienced it) you can take some liberties with the precise wording. 

To write believable dialogue, take inspiration from your favorite writers, or take our free course below for tips. 

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😱 Inevitably, when you write about other people there’s always a risk of portraying them in a way they don’t appreciate. As general advice, tell them you’re writing this story, or prepare to lose some relationships. And if you’re really pushing some boundaries, discuss it with your lawyer! 

Next, it’s time to look inwards and flesh out a compelling and relatable protagonist: you!  

The best memoirs read like novels, which means they hinge on the protagonist’s voice and personality 一 their quirks, values, and goals, and how they rise to life’s challenges. Just as in a novel, your memoir needs a relatable protagonist that undergoes some change.

It takes a good dose of courage to portray yourself as a multidimensional character 一 one with both strengths and weaknesses, one who sometimes wins and sometimes loses. 

Do background work on yourself

To infuse a dose of humanity to your own character, you’ll have to do the background work as if you were a character in a novel. Take note of everything from your physical appearance, cultural background, psychological traits, and more. This exercise will help you bring to surface details about your personality that you’d otherwise look over, and depict a much more well-rounded protagonist. To facilitate the process, use our free character development template which will guide you with specific prompts and questions.  

Reedsy’s Character Development Template

A story is only as strong as its characters. Fill this out to develop yours.

Define your character’s arc

Additionally, it's helpful to define your own character's arc 一 how you’ve matured through the life experiences highlighted in the memoir. There are specific steps you can follow to define your personal hero's journey , but among other questions, you’ll have to answer: 

• What inciting incident set you on a journey?
• What were the obstacles you encountered?
• Which mentors helped you along the way?
• What were the lessons you needed to learn?
• How have you changed as a result?

These questions will help you strengthen your memoir’s narrative, hooking the readers in like the best novels do. 

To give an example, Cheryl Strayed's journey in Wild begins after the death of her beloved mother and other family problems, which lead her on a path of self-destruction, culminating in a divorce and addiction to heroin. Having reached the bottom, she decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail for three months in order to find herself. The path is filled with challenges 一 from her hiking inexperience, to losing her boots, to fellow hikers warning her that it's not safe to go on alone. Through resilience (and some help) she is able to overcome her physical and emotional challenges, find forgiveness and rediscover her inner strength. 

Take inspiration from Wild and other memoirs, and deconstruct how your own experiences might fit into these all-important story elements. 

You now have all the ingredients: a specific memoir topic that touches on universal themes (as summarized by your logline), a selection of vivid and relevant memories, and a multidimensional character with an interesting story arc. It’s time to put it all together by outlining the structure of your memoir, which is exactly what we’ll cover in our next post.

15 responses

CourtneySymons says:

11/01/2018 – 15:26

This was exactly the article I needed today! I've just begun a new career path as a ghostwriter and am finding it difficult to find learning resources (conferences, courses, books, networks of ghostwriters, etc.). If any readers have advice on where I should be looking or who I should be talking to, I would be forever grateful! Thanks so much!

M. Thomas Maxwell says:

11/01/2018 – 15:28

I had no intention of writing a book but encouraged by my grandson I embarked on a story telling venture that led to Grandfather's Journal, www.captaintommaxwell.com. It truly is a series of life stories shared with my grandson. Published by Westbow press in 2015 I used many Reedsy tips and am very pleased with the results.I have since encouraged others to consider doing the same. It took over a year and was a pleasant experience.

Don Karp says:

11/01/2018 – 16:06

As a self-published memoir writer, I read this with appreciation. I do not agree with all that's said here. For example, "2. Do Your Research." Of course certain events--those experienced publicly by a large number of people--need to be accurate. But even the word, "memoir," says it's about memory, not accuracy. This is one of the major differences from an autobiography which does require research. I looked up the dictionary definition and got confirmation on this. Perhaps you need to re-examine this and get it right?

↪️ Reedsy replied:

11/01/2018 – 17:00

I would agree that memoirs are indeed based on memory — and in some way that's why historians are often forced to question the reliability of memoirs as a primary source. I would say, however, that modern readers to expect memoirs to be as factually-correct as possible. Editors at publishers will go to great pains to ensure that — or face a public backlash. If you say anything in a memoir that can be disproved by a basic google search will seriously compromise your relationship with a reader. The other benefit with research is that it can do a lot to jog your memories. Unreliable recollections can often be set straight once you remind yourself of certain facts. Thanks for commenting!

↪️ Don Karp replied:

11/01/2018 – 17:28

Thanks for your response. This brings up two points for me. First, what is more powerful, a memory of an experience or the actual experience? Different people interpret the same experience differently. Second, what do you propose to do with the dictionary definition of "memoir?" Since the word is based on memory and not research, perhaps you can suggest some alternate word form?

↪️ The Red Lounge For Writers replied:

05/12/2018 – 08:14

I think looking at the idea of the 'voice of innocence' and the 'voice of experience' could really help with this distinction between fact and memory. As writers of memoir, we are expected to write what we remember. We can do this using the voice of innocence, and use the voice of experience to write about the factual context.

Stu Mountjoy says:

11/01/2018 – 21:48

A group I used to attend, on a Friday, started people off with the basic exercise of writing a story about one thing that happened to you, and I did one about a race at school. I am always impressed by the first page I read of Alan Alder's bio (actor in M*A*S*H TV series) - "Hi I'm Alan Alder, and when I was six, my mother tried to kill my father." - wow.

31/01/2018 – 10:15

Alda's a great writer — "Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself" is such a fantastic name for a memoir too.

Robbie Cheadle says:

31/01/2018 – 04:48

A very useful and interesting post on writing a memoir.

31/01/2018 – 10:14

I'm glad you like it Robbie :)

The Red Lounge For Writers says:

05/12/2018 – 08:10

All great advice. Memoir is probably my favourite genre to read, and some of my favourite books are memoirs. I'm of the opinion that everyone has a story to tell; it's just a matter of figuring out how to do it really well.

James Soil says:

15/07/2019 – 13:16

Thank you very much I just finished my Memoir titled Addicted it will be out this summer after reading this article I feel much better about it I pretty much did what the article says.

Izaura Nicolette says:

04/08/2019 – 04:50

Self-published Author, Izaura Nicolette. 'Within The Mountains: A Mormon Reform School Experience.' Published January, 2019. Seeking legit Publishing House or Agent. I still have not received any royalties due to publishers being fraudulent. I want to speak publicly about my memoir. Hundreds to thousands can back me up. This is a true story. I hold too close to my heart. Hoping to heal by sharing this experience, and opening door for many others.

Magzley says:

08/08/2019 – 02:14

Can I *breathe* life into my story instead?

Cassandra Janzen says:

20/12/2019 – 04:35

Very helpful, thank you!

Comments are currently closed.

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How to Start Writing a Memoir: 14 Tips for Starting Your Memoir

by Nate Methot | Jun 17, 2022 | Creative Writing

If you’re thinking about writing a memoir, you should be prepared to do a lot of self-reflection. Memoir writing is much more challenging than journaling or simply writing down your life’s story in chronological sequence. Having recently published a memoir and debut book of my own― A Life Derailed: My Journey with ALS ―there are a lot of practical steps to memoir writing that I learned in the process. For one thing, memoir writing requires that you ask yourself a lot of questions, and learn how to honestly answer them (we’ll get to that). 

In this article, we’ll explore some of the essential questions you should ask yourself as you dive into the rewarding journey of writing your memoir. I’ll also share some practical tips you can leverage to help improve your writing process. You don’t need to have all the answers to these questions from the start, but they will certainly get your writing juices flowing!

1) Why should you write a memoir?

This may seem like a rudimentary question to ask yourself upon making the decision to write a memoir, but it’s a crucial one. Memoir writing can be an arduous and emotionally draining project, and you’ll need to incorporate overarching themes throughout the story to help your readers connect the dots between the scenes of your life. You can’t effectively create overarching themes without fully cross-examining yourself about why you want to write your memoir in the first place. 

Why do you think readers will be interested in your story? What do you want to say? Not every memoir has to be heavy and dramatic, but themes are a must. Your memoir shouldn’t be a bunch of random stories your friends find entertaining; they need to fit together in some way.

The first sentence of the Preface of my book is, “I never thought I’d write a book.” But, of course, I never thought I’d be diagnosed with ALS at the age of 27. I’ve had a unique experience and perspective that provided the basis for my memoir. So ask yourself: What do I have to say?

2) Should you read memoirs to draw inspiration?

You absolutely should! Reading comparative memoir titles―whether bestsellers or obscure indies―can be tremendously helpful by offering guidance on how you might structure your story. You will undoubtedly absorb elements of memoir craft without even knowing. 

As you read memoirs for inspiration, keep this checklist in mind:

• Read each memoir as a writer and creator. Understand that each tiny aspect of the story happened by a series of intentional decisions. 
• Read the preface and keep it in mind: this is the author telling you about their process. 
• Take note of scenes that impact you most. As you write your story, refer back to your notes. If you get writer’s block anywhere throughout the memoir writing process, refer back to your notes for a possible solution.

Both before and during the writing process of my book, I read a number of memoirs. I took note of the details, the front and back covers, chapter breakdowns, and grammatical choices. I meticulously observed the author’s voice, themes, and style throughout each. From Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime and Andre Agassi’s Open , to Dr. J.D. Remy’s Ballad of a Sober Man and Christina Crosby’s A Body, Undone , I gained useful craft techniques from each.

3) Where should your memoir begin, and where should it end up?

A memoir is not an autobiography; it should begin with a story central to its theme. Think of the most important moment in your story and how it might grab the reader’s attention from the start. It may not make sense to be purely chronological in the telling, so keep your audience in mind. If it’s difficult to follow, you might lose some portion of the effect.

My memoir does not begin with that most obvious scene: “that Wednesday morning at the hospital.”―my diagnosis. Perhaps I should have. But I did find a way to grab attention from the start. Allow yourself to be creative with how you organize the scenes throughout your memoir. You may not know exactly where your memoir will end, but you’ll certainly find out as your story unfolds.

4) How can you get started with writing?

Focus on the trees and the forest will come. There is no wrong place to start writing―start with whatever you want. Inevitably, you will begin with something easy to write and as you move forward, you’ll come to more difficult topics or scenes. 

When I began making a record of some of my personal stories in my head, I had little picture of what the final product would be. I only considered each piece on its own. As my stories piled up, I listed ideas for more, slowly filling out the beginnings of an outline. I quickly found that my ideas beget ideas, and the more time I spent writing (and in my own head), the more work I marked for the future.

5) How can you stay organized while writing a memoir?

Taking notes and outlining are just a couple of the best practical things you can do to stay organized during memoir writing. As you dive deeper into your memories, you’ll most certainly recall scenes from your life that you forgot about, so it’s crucial that you take notes of those instances and add them to your outline before you forget. You can also use your outline to keep track of progress and see the big picture.

The outline I used for my memoir helped me to see an entire book in a numbered list on a few pages. I could easily see the order of each section, making it easy to add or remove something without losing sight of the bigger picture. 

6) Is the idea more important than the work?

Record your ideas before they’re gone! This could be just a few notes or a pass at the entire piece. Don’t make the all-too-easy mistake of thinking the idea is the only thing that matters. You have a long way to go. 

I often found myself feeling satisfied after merely recording an idea during the memoir writing process. The idea may feel like a revelation, however, writing it out might be much more of a grind than expected. You may also find that it doesn’t quite fit into the larger picture of your memoir. Keep in mind that your ideas are important, but the work you’ll undoubtedly put in is just as important.

7) Should each scene be perfect before moving to the next?

No first draft of your memoir is going to be perfect. Remember that you’re writing a first draft of each section only. It might not feel like only a first pass, but you likely will find out later how much work it still needs. Stay positive! Without exploring your ideas on the page, you’d have nothing. 

In the editing process, I often found out that I’d gotten my point across, but in an awkward and uninspired way. I might need to go back and rewrite that last sentence, for example. I learned that despite my frustrations at a glaring lack of eloquence, getting the gist of my thoughts down was indeed the first step, without which there could be no second.

8) Should you work on your memoir every day?

You don’t have to, but it certainly helps! I found habits are important. Just as writing begets writing, a day off quickly turns into three―or five. I kept the progress bar relatively low, but made sure to get something done every day. With little goals, I kept myself motivated rather than frustrated.

Track your progress; measure your accomplishments. Keep moving forward. If you’re like me, try not to feel satisfied after only a small amount of work; keep going. If you’re more of a grinder, feel free to finish as much as possible in a sitting. Keep your writing sessions to a set time, though, or you may experience memoir writing burnout!

9) What if your memoir doesn’t pan out how you expected?

Try to accept that not everything you write will come together as you’d imagined in your memoir. It’s impossible not to get frustrated over time wasted on things that end up in the trash, but you might also find that the unexpected ends up better than what you originally had in mind.

I wrote a number of finished pieces that aren’t in my book, and had ideas that were never fulfilled. Spending hours or days on a thought that seemed to carry such promise, only to never get there, can be a difficult pill to swallow. I had to remind myself not to dwell on these minor failures and move on to the next task at hand.

10) Can your memoir include your thoughts and feelings?

A memoir doesn’t have to only show the reader, it can speak to them directly as well. What makes a memoir compelling isn’t usually the retelling of events, but getting inside the head of the author. Don’t spend so much time setting the scene; tell the reader what you were thinking at the time.

The best advice I received from my editor was to put more of myself in the writing. Make the reader feel what you felt. It’s a powerful tool that will draw people in and make them feel close to you as the author.

11) What if every scene isn’t your favorite?

Get over it.

I wish I could say that I read through my memoir and every line and every page is my favorite. But that’s not―nor could it ever be―the case. That’s not the measuring stick I used for my work. What I can say about each piece I included―that is, the actual measuring stick―is that it provided something unique to the overall story. If I felt that wasn’t the case, I had to consider its removal.

Just accept that not every scene will be your favorite, but they will be necessary in making your memoir a cohesive whole.

12) How will you know what to include?

Stay on theme, eliminate redundancies, and leave out irrelevant stories (no matter how interesting you might think they are). Your memoir does not need to cover everything that happened from “Time A” to “Time B.” It should be telling a story, so stay in that lane.

Everything I wrote for my memoir was in some way connected to its subtitle, My Journey with ALS. There were a number of themes that came off of that, and I provided some background on myself and the people around me, but (I hope) there was nothing superfluous in my book.

This goes back to the overarching theme of your memoir. Make sure the scenes you include are tied into that theme.

13) Can you embellish a little in your memoir?

I tried to write in a matter-of-fact style when recounting memories in my memoir. If I’d exaggerated details, I’d have lost the most important aspect of my memoir: authenticity.

Though you may be proud of a particular story or detail, try to stay earnest in the telling. It may feel like a fine line, but boastful writing is just as sure to turn off the reader as it would induce eye rolls in person.

14) How authentic should you be?

Don’t force your writing to fit into a particular box or follow a particular pattern that feels forced. Regardless of all of the how-to articles and writing advice columns you may read, your memoir needs to be  you.  It should feel and sound like you from beginning to end. When your friends and family read it, they should have no doubt that it’s yours. What’s the point of writing a memoir if you neglect to pour your entire heart and soul into it?

I told my story the way that I wanted. I took in some craft and writing advice, of course, but I’ve said proudly (though, technically, incorrectly), that every word is my own. I wrote for myself, and held nothing back; I couldn’t do it any other way.

I hope you found these memoir writing tips helpful! If you would like to get a copy of  my new memoir and debut book, check out my official website .

Nate Methot has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration – Finance from the University of Vermont. He worked for five years at a securities broker/dealer before an ALS diagnosis forced him to give up full-time employment. Two years into his new, wholly foreign and unusual life, he began to record thoughts, stories, and frustrations on a blog called, appropriately, Whatever I Want to Say. In the summer of 2020, about ten years after his symptoms began, he started writing down his experiences in earnest. His resulting memoir, A Life Derailed: My Journey with ALS, was published in June, 2022. Visit his official website at natemethot.com .

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How to Start a Memoir? Examples from 9 Best Memoirs

Last Updated on September 24, 2022 by Dr Sharon Baisil MD

Introduction

It is crucial to create a powerful opening to impact the reader from page one when writing a memoir based on your own experience. So begin your biography with a dramatic hook piques the reader’s interest. They’ll stick with you throughout the book if you can keep their attention from the beginning.

Studying to be an archeologist is comparable to learning to write a memoir. Not only must you go digging for relics from the past and sift through the sands, but you must also put it all together and figure out the plot. To help you tell a compelling story based on your own life, we will describe the nine best memoir examples to create our practical guide on how to write a memoir.

What is a memoir?

A memoir is a book that describes a significant aspect of the author’s life from their perspective. While it’s often associated with autobiography, there are a few crucial distinctions. First, the author also wrote an autobiography , although the tale spans their lives. It primarily focuses on facts, the who-what-when-where-why-how of their entire lives’ lives, despite being subjective.

Autobiography vs. Memoir

We stretch the rules of an autobiography to define a memoir . Memoir writers attempt to retell a significant occurrence in their lives by picking a pivotal moment. The author’s emotions and ideas drive the story. The author has more freedom here since she is telling a tale as she recollects it, rather than what others may prove or deny, and thus her memoirs still include all the specifics of the event.

Since they concentrate on facts, autobiographies are more formal than memoirs. Since they often include plain language and chronological narration, autobiographies frequently recount events similar to or precisely how they occurred. To ensure accuracy, the facts are double-checked.

Top 10 tips on how to start a memoir

A memoir should offer an opening that is strong, interesting, and true from the beginning to the end of the first chapter. Here are some tips for starting your memoir if you’re starting as a writer:

1 – Hook readers right from the first lines

From the first page, an excellent memoir keeps your attention.  Eat, Pray, Love  begins with an intimate scene from Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling book. She’s hoping a guy across from her will kiss her, but he’s much younger. She leaves the backstory and negative aspects for later and starts her globetrotting journey of self-discovery with a scene that grabs the reader’s interest. The book documents her life following a terrible divorce and heartache, but she leaves the past behind her and moves on with her life.

2 – Use an AI to implement ‘The Hero’s Journey steps quickly

The belief that all stories follow a similar pattern led to the creation of the hero’s journey. A hero’s journey, with obstacles and triumphs, is the pattern that comprises this pattern. Writers may create fascinating tales that connect with readers by understanding the hero’s journey. We recommend using  AI templates  to quickly structure your memoir based on the three elements of ‘The Hero’s Journey. 

This AI tool not only offers the ‘Hero’s  Journey Recipe ‘ created by its community members but can be effectively used with different templates to create a compelling story. Since there are three stages in the Hero’s Journey archetype, you can use the  Blog Post Intro  template and the  Sentence Expander  template for the ordinary world. 

Then, Creative Story templates can be used to create a unique world around the story. And, for the last Return stage of the Hero’s Journey, you can use the  Blog Post Conclusion Paragraph  template. 

3 – Don’t forget to bring out emotions

A narrative should attempt to elicit emotion in the reader by approaching a subject with the human element in mind. From the heart, write your initial pages . Use language that resonates on an emotional level with individuals.

4 – Start your memoir with dramatic moments

Begin your memoir on a high note with a dramatic moment. Later, you may return to the occurrence for further information, but a tasty taste of what is to come can keep the reader interested. Think of a dramatic beginning that might tease a critical turning point in the tale.

5 – Be honest and build trust with the readers

A memoir is a personal non-fiction work you’ll share with strangers. Begin by pretending you’re telling a secret to the reader that you’ve never told anybody else. Tell your tale in this way from the start. By beginning with a confidante, this strategy establishes trust and builds relationships.

6 – Lead with humor

Even when he recounts some of the saddest periods in his childhood, reading a David Sedaris book is impossible to do without laughing. So lead with humor, even if your memoir is about a more serious topic. The reader will react to various emotions, and they won’t want to be sad for the duration of the novel.

7 – Make it relevant

A narrative is centered on one occurrence when you tell it to someone else face to face. Take the same starting place with your memoir. Your whole life story is captured in your autobiography. Memoirs have a narrow scope, centered around a period or theme from the writer’s life. If they don’t fit your tale, you should eliminate them because there are a million tiny details and life experiences that might be intriguing on their own.

8 – Think like you’re writing a fiction

While a memoir is based on your experiences, it should also include the narrative aspects that make fiction enjoyable. Establishing yourself as the primary character, developing the setting, planting the source of conflict, and teasing out the primary theme are essential to remember when presenting your argument. To string out a narrative, the reader understands how to follow and build a tale structure with a powerful beginning, middle, and finish.

9 – Show your personality

You are implying to the reader that what you’re describing is an accurate portrayal of your own life from your standpoint while writing a memoir. If you’re telling tales about other people and family members who may recall things differently, it’s simple to censor yourself. For instance, you might change their names or use initials to stay true to your narrative while respecting their right to privacy. Remember to provide an honest tale, but you alone can decide what stays and goes.

10 – No need to write chronologically!

The ideal starting point may be challenging to come by when you sit down to write. Remember that you don’t have to register in chronological order if writer’s block is holding you back from your initial chapter. Come back to your beginning after you finish your first draft and start writing the part of the story that most inspires you. You’ll find the perfect opening while writing your novel.

9 Best Memoir Examples to get Inspiration from!

How do you compress your entire life story into a few hundred pages while writing a memoir? It’s a difficult task for any author. But, of course, you can use the internet to get help writing your memoir by following guidelines. Yet, other times, the old saying “display, don’t tell” is accurate, and looking at different biographies can be beneficial. 

We’ve got nine memoir examples to give you an idea of the types of memoirs that have sold well if that’s the case for you. Are your sleeves ready to be rolled up? 

1 – A Million Little Pieces by James Frey 

This book sparked controversy when it was disclosed that many of the events were made up, and one critic described it as “the War and Peace of Addiction.” (In case you’re wondering, we do not recommend deceiving your readers.)

2 – Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau went into the forest in July 1845 and stayed there for two years, two months, and two days. The result of this was the famous memoir.

3 – When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi 

Paul Kalanithi penned a remarkable book that answers the impossible question of what makes life worth living when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer at age thirty-six.

4 – The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking describes the sadness Didion felt in the year after her husband’s death, and it is now considered a classic book on grief.

5 – Educated by Tara Westover

The relevance of education is perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from this remarkable memoir. This book tells the story of how the author overcame her upbringing and worked mountains in search of knowledge. It is about a family of religious survivalists in rural Idaho.

6 – Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl 

The tales in this book shed light on topics and motifs that would repeatedly appear in Dahl’s most beloved works: a love for sweets, a mischievous streak, and a fear of authority figures. In addition, they evoked his schoolboy days in the 1920s and 30s.

7 – Paper Lion by George Plimpton

In 1960, the Detroit Lions teamed up with author George Plimpton to investigate whether a regular guy could play professional football. His response was no, but he could convey a personal narrative of a squad from within the locker room because of his training camp experience.

8 – Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

McCourt’s book covered the finer points of his upbringing in squalid Dublin and was the first to win the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

9 – Native Country of the Heart by Cherrie Moraga

The mother is a California native who grew up picking cotton. A passionate queer Latina feminist daughter. This groundbreaking Latinx memoir about a mother-daughter relationship explores the devastating impact of Alzheimer’s disease by weaving past and present.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44580668-the-expedition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoir

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/teacher_and_tutor_resources/writing_instructors/creative_nonfiction_in_writing_courses/the_personal_memoir.html

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/12/25/the-book-of-my-life

https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/outline

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/14/the-naked-truth-how-to-write-a-memoir

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How to Start a Memoir: 10 Steps for Sharing Your Story 

POSTED ON Oct 6, 2023

Written by Nicole Ahlering

None of us get through life unscathed, but the good news is we can turn our biggest obstacles (and triumphs!) into a story that inspires others. If you’re ready to write your first memoir , we’re here to help. 

In this primer, we’ll go over exactly how to start a memoir. These are the steps that will get you to your complete first draft , so buckle up and let’s get started.

This guide to starting a memoir is broken down by:

Step 1: brainstorm your memoir’s topic.

Lots of important things have happened in your life, but you can’t write about them all in one book. Start by making a list of all the potential topics for your memoir. 

As you brainstorm memoir ideas , consider what themes in books or message you’d like to convey with your book. Do you want to provide hope and inspiration for others, tell a beautiful story of finding love, or something else? 

Remember that the topics you come up with should be emotionally significant, unique to you and meaningful to your readers. 

Related: The Six-Word Memoir: An Exercise on Short, Powerful Stories

Step 2: Select the topic you’re going to write about

Now comes the hard part: choosing which topic you’re going to write about! Start by eliminating any ideas you don’t love so you’re left only with the ones that inspire you. As you navigate this decision-making process, it's essential to be aware of memoir writing do's and don'ts .

Next, it’s time to apply a few screening questions. Of the topics you’ve selected, which ones are likely to make the most impact on your readers? Remove any that don’t satisfy that criteria. 

With your remaining list of topics, consider which one you’re most likely to finish a book about. Hint: its likely the topic you’re most passionate about, have the most information and resources to write, and feel you’re able to complete in a reasonable time. 

Step 3: Flesh out your topic 

Now that you’ve got your memoir’s topic selected, it’s time to add some context. This is a great time to make a mind map , which is a visual representation of connected ideas. 

To do it, start with your memoir’s topic in the center of the page. Then create branches radiating outward with all the memories, lessons and takeaways that will support your story. 

Take time to understand the connection between each of the elements on your mind map and make notes accordingly. This will help you tremendously as you begin to write your memoir. 

Step 4: Group your mind map into themes

Now that you’ve figured out which of your mindmap ideas are the most connected to one another, you can group them into themes. Examples might include coming of age, family ties, loss and grief or cultural identity. 

Each of these grouped themes will act as a chapter in your book. Yep, you’ve already figured out your chapters !

Step 5: Make a mini mindmap for each chapter

You’re not done with the mind maps quite yet. Now you’re going to make one for each chapter you’ve created. 

Just like before, put your chapter theme in the center of your page, then draw branches off of it identifying the interconnected ideas, events and topics that support it. 

Once you’ve done this, you have the outline for your memoir! Get it all on one page to guide you as you write. 

Step 6: Select a working title for your book

We know what you’re thinking: it’s already time to choose the title for your book? Sort of. You’ll want to choose a working title, which is a—possibly temporary—title that reflects the content of your book. 

Why do this now? It’s a great way to inspire you and help you hone in on the purpose of your memoir, similar to writing the thesis statement at the start of an essay. 

We have a title generator to help you with this process. All you need to do is tell us a little bit about the memoir you’re writing. 

Step 7: Create a writing routine 

You’re likely excited to write your memoir right now, and that’s great! But the reality is you’ll have lulls where you’re not so interested in writing. 

This is a totally normal part of writing your book, and not something to fear. Especially if you have a writing routine !

A good routine will give you the inertia you need to get through those low-motivation days, so you’ll always get one step closer to creating something you're proud of.

A writing routine is a very personal thing and can vary widely by the writer. But here are some general tips: 

• Set clear goals for how much you want to write every day. Try not to stop before you reach that goal.
• Choose the hours during which you will write and make sure you’re at your desk (or kitchen table, or wherever!) writing during that time. No excuses.
•  Create a space that feels comfortable and inspirational for you to write in. It should be free of distractions and stressors. 
• Include a warm-up ritual. Sometimes it’s hard to dive straight into writing a book, but it's easy to spend ten minutes scribbling down literally every thought that comes into your mind. This is a great way to get the juices flowing and is meant to be messy! Only you will see it. 
• Set up a rewards system for yourself. Don’t wait until you finish your memoir to celebrate. Take yourself out for a fancy coffee or something else enjoyable each time you finish a chapter. This keeps morale high!

Step 8: Find an accountability buddy

Even with a solid outline and writing routine in place, your devotion to your memoir may wax and wane through the writing process. This is where an accountability buddy comes in. 

Having someone to check in and share your progress with creates just the right amount of positive pressure to help you get the job done. 

When you find your buddy, talk about how often you’ll check in, how you’ll communicate and what your goals are. Don’t forget to be honest about your progress here; your buddy should be someone who encourages you when you’re falling behind, not judges you. 

Step 9: Start writing your memoir

The moment is finally here! It’s time to sit down and actually start writing your memoir. The first day can be intimidating, so follow these steps for a smooth liftoff: 

• Remind yourself of your intention for writing your memoir. Do you want to change the way a certain industry functions? Make a specific type of person feel less alone? Keep this in mind as you begin your journey. 
• Review your outline , so you know what you’re writing!
• Make sure you’ve established your goal word count for the day. (And don’t stop until you hit it.)
• Don’t worry about perfection, or anything close to it. The first draft of your memoir is about getting your thoughts on paper, not writing something that’s ready to publish. 

After you’ve finished writing for the day, take a moment to reflect on how the process went. Is there anything you’d like to change for next time? If so, make note of it. Also, make sure you know when you plan to sit down next to continue writing. 

After that, go celebrate! You’ve started your memoir. 

Step 10: Know how to get unstuck

Feeling periodically stuck while writing your memoir happens. If you find yourself overwhelmed, confused or otherwise blocked in your writing process , start by taking a small break. 

While too long of a break may derail your process, a few days away from your memoir can help clear your mind and let you see things from a new perspective. This is a good time to read (or re-read) other author’s books that inspire you. 

Make sure to take good care of yourself during this time. Move your body, eat well and do things you enjoy. 

When you come back to your book, you can try a few different approaches: 

• Skip to a different chapter than the one you were working on previously. 
• Explore various memoir writing prompts to boost your creativity.
• Change the environment you’re working in. 
• Use a different writing medium (like pen and paper instead of a computer). 

Remind yourself that in this stage of the process, judgment-free writing is key. Don’t worry about being perfect. Simply focus on getting words on the page. 

Final thoughts on how to start a memoir

Writing your first memoir isn’t always easy, but it is worth it! If you have a message you want to share with the world, we want to make sure that happens. At SelfPublishing.com, we’re standing by to help you write your memoir every step of the way, just schedule a book consultation to get started. 

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How To Write a Memoir: Examples and a Step-by-Step Guide 

• December 4, 2023

Introduction

A memoir provides the author an opportunity to share one’s life experiences. This genre focuses on a central theme, rather than recording every life event. Memoirs help the readers gain insights.

The elements of a memoir, which help to communicate the narrative of the author’s life are:

• An emotional journey: The author goes through some type of emotional evolution over time. It helps the readers identify the struggle. Cheryl Strayed’s book “Wild” talks about how she survived the trauma of losing her mother.
• Obstacles: Overcoming an obstacle builds tension in the memoir which hooks the audience with the story. “Prozac Nation” by Elizabeth Wurtzel is an example of the same.
• Point of view: Memoirs are always narrated in the first person like I/we/ my language. This makes it subjective and personal.
• Theme: A memoir is knitted together by a common topic, lesson or premise. The theme is not the author’s life as a whole. It is a set of experiences that are critical moments of life.
• Truth: The most highlighted element in a memoir is the truth. The readers trust the memoirist that they would write the truth and if the latter violates that, it could be scandalous both on the personal and professional front.
• Voice: Voice is the specific style of the author. The way they express their thoughts, their word choices, and their storytelling approach comes under this. Upon completing a memoir, readers should have a distinct idea of the author’s voice.

This article will be the push you need to learn how to write a memoir.

• What is a memoir?

What is the difference between a memoir and an autobiography?

Examples of memoirs: for inspiration, a step-by-step guide to memoir writing, what is a memoir.

A memoir is an offshoot of creative nonfiction and it is a genre itself. To be a memoir, a piece of writing must be: nonfictional, based on a true life incident and written from one’s perspective. A memoir should approach a story, keeping in mind the human element. Evoking emotions and leading with a laugh should be the goal of a good memoir.

The first step in how to write a memoir is to behave as if you are sharing a secret with the reader that hasn’t been narrated before. Although it is nonfiction, it primarily focuses on facts like when-who-where-how of their life’s timeline. The author chooses a pivotal life event and tries to recreate it through storytelling. The word ‘memoir’ comes from the French word ‘mémoire’ or memory.

Based on the following grounds, an autobiography and a memoir can be distinguished:

• Structure: Autobiographies are mostly comprehensive because they narrate one’s life as a whole. They are chronological as well. On the other hand, a memoir curates a list of personal experiences to serve a bigger picture and is not necessarily chronological.
• Scope: Autobiographies don’t put stress on a life event or incident, while a memoir highlights specific times in the author’s life. It can be understood through an example of a CV and one single resume. The former is more like an autobiography and the latter represents a memoir.
• Style: An autobiography focuses on events, while a memoir prioritizes the author’s personal experience of those events. A memoir can go beyond the expectations of formal writing. This means that a memoirist can use fiction writing techniques as well to perfectly capture their stories.
• Philosophy: An autobiography emphasizes facts while a memoir is dependent on memories. Due to the unreliable nature of memories, a memoirist puts stress on emotional truth rather than facts.
• Audience: Readers prefer autobiographies to learn about the author’s journey. Since memoirs are more personal and intimate, the readers pick up this genre to experience a story built around specific themes.

The next section will serve as inspiration on how to write a memoir by focusing on how the famous ones were written.

The following books are great places to know how to start a memoir and to understand how to write a memoir:

• The Year of Magical Thinking: It deals with Joan Didion’s year of mourning over her husband’s demise. The book is certainly the best when it comes to grief. The writing is lucid, starting from the first page to the last.
• Just Kids: Patti Smith’s memoir is a classic coming-of-age bildungsroman. The book covers her move to New York and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. She has beautifully captured the energy of downtown New York in the late sixties and seventies.
• When Breath Becomes Air: Written by Paul Kalanthi, a young surgeon who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The book is poignant and teaches us to cope with some of the most difficult human experiences. It highlights fatherhood and mortality.
• In the Dream House: Carmen Maria Machado’s book revolves around relationship abuse, and it is extremely candid and innovative.
• Running in the Family: Michael Ondaatje returns to Sri Lanka after spending twenty-five years in the United States to sort out his family’s past. It should be taken into account that the book was sold to readers as a ‘fictional memoir’.

Reading these famous memoirs might serve as memoir writing tips that work better than guides.

• Generate memoir writing ideas: Choosing one memory that feels the most emotionally thrilling should be the aim. Starting is the hardest, but once you get a theme and start brainstorming, you have given a form to your memoir.
• Begin drafting: Beginning with the event that one cannot stop thinking about, is the key. The motto of drafting is gaining momentum. Starting with an emotionally charged incident provides that drive we require for that burst of creative energy.
• Engage the reader from the first word: A classic example would be Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Eat, Pray, Love’. It makes us glued to her story. Giving details and creating suspense should be the priority.
• Building trust with the reader: As we know, a memoir is a deeply intimate non-fiction book that one is going to share with the world. Hence, the author needs to build that trust with the readers.
• Opening with a dramatic moment: Sharing an exciting glimpse of what one is going to expect is a great way to start a memoir and keep the audience engaged. The pivotal moment in the story should be coming at first, coupled with vivid and sensory details.
• Keeping it relevant: Memoirs have a narrow scope, which is centred around a period of one’s life. Going with the flow should be the aim of a good memoir. One should avoid including unnecessary details and engaging in hyperbole.
• Be honest: Staying true to one’s narrative while respecting their right to privacy. You might include family members of yours, but it is important to hide or change their names. Only an author decides what needs to be edited and should deliver an honest story.
• Bringing out the emotions: A memoir should also approach a story which should connect with the reader on an emotional level. Using language which is lucid and simple is the key. Also, readers should be able to resonate with the writing.
• Writing the opening last: If you are experiencing writer’s block, remember that a memoir doesn’t have to be chronological. Therefore, it might be better to save the opening for last. Start by writing the part of the story that inspires you the most. In the course of writing, you’ll eventually discover the perfect opening and know exactly how to write a good memoir.

All in all, memoirs are specially written to share one’s personal experiences on a deeper and emotional level. It is different from an autobiography on many grounds, as we have discussed earlier. Lee Gutkin remarked once that memoirs are said to be true stories, which are well told and executed. So, what are you waiting for? You know how to write a memoir. Time to turn your dreams into reality!

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How to Write a Memoir Essay

October 12, 2023

What is a Memoir Essay?

A memoir essay is a form of autobiographical writing that focuses on a specific aspect of the author’s life. Unlike a traditional autobiography, which typically covers the author’s entire life, a memoir essay hones in on a particular event, time period, or theme. It is a deeply personal and reflective piece that allows the writer to delve into their memories, thoughts, and emotions surrounding their chosen subject.

In a memoir essay, the author aims to not only recount the events that took place but also provide insight into the impact and meaning of those experiences. It is a unique opportunity for self-discovery and exploration, while also offering readers a glimpse into the author’s world. The beauty of a memoir essay lies in its ability to weave together personal anecdotes, vivid descriptions, and introspective reflections to create a compelling narrative.

Writing a memoir essay can be both challenging and rewarding. It requires careful selection of memories, thoughtful introspection, and skillful storytelling. The process allows the writer to make sense of their past, gain a deeper understanding of themselves, and share their unique story with others.

Choosing a Topic for Your Memoir Essay

Selecting the right topic is crucial to write a good memoir essay. It sets the foundation for what you will explore and reveal in your personal narrative. When choosing a topic, it’s essential to reflect on your significant life experiences and consider what stories or themes hold the most meaning for you.

One approach is to think about moments or events that have had a profound impact on your life. Consider times of triumph or adversity, moments of exploration or self-discovery, relationships that have shaped you, or challenges you have overcome. These experiences can provide a rich foundation for your memoir essay.

Another option is to focus on a specific theme or aspect of your life. You might explore topics such as identity, family dynamics, cultural heritage, career milestones, or personal beliefs. By centering your essay around a theme, you can weave together various memories and reflections to create a cohesive narrative.

It’s also important to consider your target audience. Who do you want to connect with through your memoir essay? Understanding your audience’s interests and experiences can help you choose a topic that will resonate with them.

Ultimately, the topic should be one that excites you and allows for introspection and self-discovery. Choose a topic that ignites your passion and offers a story worth sharing.

Possible Memoir Essay Topics

• Childhood Memories
• Family Dynamics
• Life-altering Events
• Overcoming Societal Expectations
• Love and Loss
• Self-discovery and Transformation
• Lessons from Nature
• Journey from Darkness to Light
• Triumphing Over Adversities
• Life’s Defining Moments

Outlining the Structure of Your Memoir Essay

Writing a memoir essay allows you to share your personal experiences, reflections, and insights with others. However, before you start pouring your thoughts onto the page, it’s essential to outline the structure of your essay. This not only provides a clear roadmap for your writing but also helps you maintain a cohesive and engaging narrative.

First, consider the opening. Begin with a captivating introduction that hooks the reader and establishes the theme or central message of your memoir. This is your chance to grab their attention and set the tone for the rest of the essay.

Next, move on to the body paragraphs. Divide your essay into sections that chronologically or thematically explore different aspects of your life or experiences. Use vivid descriptions, anecdotes, and dialogue to bring your memories to life. It’s crucial to maintain a logical flow and transition smoothly between different ideas or events.

As you approach the conclusion, summarize the key points you’ve discussed and reflect on the significance of your experiences. What lessons have you learned? How have you grown or changed as a result? Wrap up your memoir essay by leaving the reader with a memorable takeaway or a thought-provoking question.

Remember, the structure of your memoir essay should support your storytelling and allow for a genuine and authentic exploration of your experiences. By outlining your essay’s structure, you’ll have a solid foundation to create a compelling and impactful memoir that resonates with your readers.

How to Write an Introduction for Your Memoir Essay

The introduction of your memoir essay sets the stage for your story and captivates your readers from the very beginning. It is your opportunity to grab their attention, establish the tone, and introduce the central theme of your memoir.

To create a compelling introduction, consider starting with a hook that intrigues your readers. This can be a surprising fact, a thought-provoking question, or a vivid description that immediately draws them in. Your goal is to make them curious and interested in what you have to say.

Next, provide a brief overview of what your memoir essay will explore. Give your readers a glimpse into the key experiences or aspects of your life that you will be sharing. However, avoid giving away too much detail. Leave room for anticipation and curiosity to keep them engaged.

Additionally, consider how you want to establish the tone of your memoir. Will it be reflective, humorous, or nostalgic? Choose your words and phrasing carefully to convey the right emotions and set the right atmosphere for your story.

Finally, end your introduction with a clear and concise thesis statement. This statement should express the central theme or message that your memoir will convey. It serves as a roadmap for your essay and guides your readers in understanding the purpose and significance of your memoir.

By crafting a strong and captivating introduction for your memoir essay, you will draw readers in and make them eager to dive into the rich and personal journey that awaits them.

Write the Main Body of Your Memoir Essay

When developing the main body of your memoir essay, it’s essential to structure your thoughts and experiences in a clear and engaging manner. Here are some tips to help you effectively organize and develop the main body of your essay:

• Chronological Structure: Consider organizing your memoir essay in chronological order, following the sequence of events as they occurred in your life. This allows for a natural flow and a clear timeline that helps readers understand your personal journey.
• Thematic Structure: Alternatively, you can focus on specific themes or lessons that emerged from your experiences. This approach allows for a more focused exploration of different aspects of your life, even if they did not occur in a linear order.
• Use Vivid Details: Use sensory details, descriptive language, and engaging storytelling techniques to bring your memories to life. Transport your readers to the settings, evoke emotions, and create a vivid picture of the events and people in your life.
• Show, Don’t Tell: Instead of simply stating facts, show your readers the experiences through engaging storytelling. Use dialogue, scenes, and anecdotes to make your memoir more dynamic and immersive.
• Reflections and Insights: Share your reflections on the events and experiences in your memoir. Offer deeper insights, lessons learned, and personal growth that came from these moments. Invite readers to reflect on their own lives and connect with your journey.

By organizing your main body in a logical and engaging manner, using vivid details, and offering thoughtful reflections, you can write a compelling memoir essay that captivates your readers and leaves a lasting impact.

Reflecting on Lessons Learned in Your Memoir Essay

One of the powerful aspects of a memoir essay is the opportunity to reflect on the lessons learned from your personal experiences. These reflections provide deeper insights and meaning to your story, leaving a lasting impact on your readers. Here are some tips for effectively reflecting on lessons learned in your memoir essay:

• Summarize Key Points: In the conclusion of your essay, summarize the key events and experiences you have shared throughout your memoir. Briefly remind readers of the significant moments that shaped your journey.
• Identify Core Themes: Reflect on the core themes and messages that emerged from your experiences. What did you learn about resilience, love, identity, or perseverance? Identify the overarching lessons that you want to convey.
• Offer Personal Insights: Share your personal insights and reflections on how these lessons have influenced your life. Were there specific turning points or moments of epiphany? How have these experiences shaped your beliefs, values, or actions?
• Connect to the Reader: Make your reflections relatable to your readers. Explore how the lessons you learned can resonate with their own lives and experiences. This allows them to connect with your story on a deeper level.
• Offer a Call to Action: Encourage readers to reflect on their own lives and consider how the lessons from your memoir can apply to their own journeys. Pose thought-provoking questions or suggest actions they can take to apply these insights.

By reflecting on the lessons learned in your memoir essay, you give your readers a chance to contemplate their own lives and find inspiration in your personal growth. These reflections add depth and impact to your storytelling, making your memoir essay truly memorable.

Crafting a Strong Conclusion for Your Memoir Essay

The conclusion of your memoir essay is your final opportunity to leave a lasting impression on your readers. It is where you tie together the threads of your story and offer a sense of closure and reflection. Here are some tips to help you craft a strong conclusion for your memoir essay:

• Summarize the Journey: Remind your readers of the key moments and experiences you shared throughout your essay. Briefly summarize the significant events and emotions that shaped your personal journey.
• Revisit the Central Theme: Reiterate the central theme or message of your memoir. Emphasize the lessons learned, personal growth, or insights gained from your experiences. This helps reinforce the purpose and impact of your story.
• Reflect on Transformation: Reflect on how you have transformed as a result of the events and experiences you shared. Share the growth, self-discovery, or newfound perspectives that have shaped your life.
• Leave a Lasting Impression: Use powerful and evocative language to leave a lasting impact on your readers. Craft a memorable phrase or thought that lingers in their minds even after they finish reading your essay.
• Offer a Call to Action or Reflection: Encourage your readers to take action or reflect on their own lives. Pose thought-provoking questions, suggest further exploration, or challenge them to apply the lessons from your memoir to their own experiences.

By crafting a strong conclusion, you ensure that your memoir essay resonates with your readers long after they have finished reading it. It leaves them with a sense of closure, inspiration, and a deeper understanding of the transformative power of personal storytelling.

Editing and Proofreading Your Memoir Essay

Editing and proofreading are crucial steps in the writing process that can greatly enhance the quality and impact of your memoir essay. Here are some tips to help you effectively edit and proofread your work:

• Take a Break: After completing your initial draft, take a break before starting the editing process. This allows you to approach your essay with fresh eyes and a clear mind.
• Review for Structure and Flow: Read through your essay to ensure it has a logical structure and flows smoothly. Check that your paragraphs and sections transition seamlessly, guiding readers through your story.
• Trim and Refine: Eliminate any unnecessary or repetitive information. Trim down long sentences and paragraphs to make your writing concise and impactful. Consider the pacing and ensure that each word contributes to the overall story.
• Check for Clarity and Consistency: Ensure that your ideas and thoughts are expressed clearly. Identify any confusing or vague passages and revise them to improve clarity. Check for consistency in tense, tone, and voice throughout your essay.
• Proofread for Errors: Carefully proofread your essay for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Pay attention to common mistakes such as subject-verb agreement, verb tenses, and punctuation marks. Consider using spell-checking tools or having someone else review your work for an objective perspective.
• Seek Feedback: Share your memoir essay with a trusted friend, family member, or writing partner. Their feedback can provide valuable insights and help you identify areas for improvement.

By dedicating time to edit and proofread your memoir essay, you ensure that it is polished, coherent, and error-free. These final touches enhance the reader’s experience and allow your story to shine.

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Memoir coach and author Marion Roach

Welcome to The Memoir Project, the portal to your writing life.

How to Write A Memoir in Essays

Sorting the Stories — Memoir as Essay Collection

by Linda Styles Berkery

When I told a friend that I was taking a memoir-writing class, she replied, “Your life just isn’t that interesting.” Obviously she was thinking autobiography , not understanding memoir . I ignored her comment and continued to write about the small threads of wisdom I’ve learned.

After many edits, additions, and subtractions, I had built a wardrobe. I had a collection of fourteen personal essays—each one told through the lens of a dress. A Little Black Dress —learning compassion as illustrated by growing up in a funeral home. Memory Gown —naming mistakes as illustrated by a trip to the ER. Red Mini —seeing individuals as illustrated by teaching third grade. Ordinary dresses can bring out profound lessons.

Since all the writing pieces were in essay format, I adjusted Marion Roach Smith’s famous writing math, It’s about X as illustrated by Y to be told in a Z , and made a chart. To my Z factor, (essays) I added color and noted the dress: a turquoise paisley print, a navy maternity dress, an orange Hawaiian muumuu, a yellow sundress from 1941, a blue velvet jumper.

Each essay could stand alone, yet a book kept coming to mind. It was not enough to say I have a collection of “dress stories” of different length and various moods. I had more work to do. Although my structure would not be typical of a book length memoir (Act 1, Act 2, Act 3), even memoir as an essay collection must have an overall arc—a roof overhead, not just dress threads running through. Yes, memoir can be an essay collection, but it still needs structure and order.

I printed each story individually and laid them across my living room carpet. I knew which essay to put first and which would be last, but the other twelve? Originally I was tempted to group them. These three relate to my father’s WWII stories—put them together. Two had childhood dresses. My husband was mentioned in this group. But nothing really worked until my wonderful editor, Robyn Ringler, passed along tips she had learned from her own writing coach.

“Mix them up,” Robyn suggested. “Vary the word count. Don’t try to force the order, but pay attention to the emotions and lessons in the stories. Then, after you collect everything in the order you think might work, read the last paragraph of one story and the first paragraph of the following story and see if that works. You might need to do that process a few times.”

Robyn was right. I did arrange the essays a few times. But since these were, after all, dress stories, I got creative. If I had a photo of the dress, or a scrap of material from the dress, I stapled it to the printed page. Clearing a closet rod, I hung each essay from fourteen skirt hangers and started arranging them for a book. (Don’t try this at home.) I moved them and moved them until I could see a lovely rainbow arc for the entire collection.

When I was finally comfortable with the flow, I released my dress stories from their hangers and returned to the computer to cut and paste the individual essays into one long document. More edits. Moving paragraphs. Breaking up stories into parts. Adding just a bit more here and there. Writing an introduction and a final note to the reader. Two years after I wrote the first “dress story” for a memoir class, the book was published as Reflections: A Wardrobe of Life Lessons. Memoir, like a classic great dress, never goes out of style.

From the Introduction:

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.

—Helen Hayes

At ten, I wasn’t the moody middle child wanting to be noticed, as much as the one who always seemed to notice. I was the sorter of stories, the keeper of traditions. Reaching up, or out, or down, I saw invisible threads that joined people together. I still do. Now, at seventy, I’m connecting more strands. And dresses are coaching my memory.

Three hard white suitcases live under my bed. I yank out the middle one and plop it on the blue star quilt. I’m not loading it up for a trip; it’s already full. I know what’s inside: dresses, scraps of fabric from dresses, and old photos. Clicking on the double locks feels like opening a black box of flight recordings. Messages vibrate from crinkles and creases, stains and frills. Memories rise from cotton, velvet, and silk—fibers from my journey through life.

Wisdom remains on the fold of one dress. I smooth a wrinkle and kindness appears. When I trace my pinky over white lace, I remember letting go. Hope is in there too, along with judgment, loss, compassion, forgiveness…a wardrobe of memories just waiting to be unpacked. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” I agree. But sometimes a life lesson can also be worn as a dress.

  Excerpt from a middle essay:  Navy Maternity

My first maternity outfit was a long-sleeved navy blue dress from Sears that I bought for my father’s wake and funeral. I wore it again on Father’s Day and then buried it under the lilac bush in my childhood backyard, watering the ground with my tears. The words from a homily echoed in my head. Ritualize where you are now . That’s what I was doing—dressing a wound by burying a dress…

The moment I stepped out of that dress, I felt different. Lighter. Aware. I was carrying a new life—had been all along—but now I could finally breathe. I glanced in the mirror and saw myself as a mother-to-be. I shoved the dress in the bag and tossed it in the car. The dress was easy to remove, but not the grief. Shifting my focus to new life, I decided to take one small step.

The following week, on my final day of teaching elementary school, I drove to my childhood home only two blocks away. I pulled the navy maternity dress from the white plastic bag. My mother was at work. But I didn’t need her. I knew where my father’s garden tools were kept. I grabbed a shovel and began digging in the dirt near the lilac bush—Dad’s favorite bush. It didn’t take long to scoop a hole big enough to bury a death dress…

Excerpt from the final essay: Dressing for a Reunion

At the Hyatt Regency Hotel near Dulles Airport, I’m wearing the same tri-colored dress that I wore for my 50 th  high school reunion in 2016—it’s mostly blue, with bands of black and white. I call it my past-present-future dress. The dress is making an encore appearance in 2017 at a different reunion tonight.  Can it really be called a reunion if we’ve never met?  My husband tells me to hurry. We exit the elevator and enter a full dining room. The celebration begins.

Arms reach across the table to shake my hand. A shoulder nudges close. I feel a tap on my back. Legs move toward me. Fingers clasp. Another arm extends around my waist. Then hugs, so many embraces and tears. I am aware of my middle-ness. I am a quiet middle child, in the middle of a loud story. I am in the middle of history, in the middle of generations, in the middle of Danish fishermen and American flyers. I’m standing in the middle of memory and expectation because I did what middle children do best—I made connections…

Author’s bio: Linda Styles Berkery holds an M.A. from Russell Sage College. Linda taught third grade, led retreats and worked in parish ministry. Her writings on faith/life have been published in various magazines, blogs and books. Her new book is Reflections: A Wardrobe of Life Lessons. 

HOW TO WIN A COPY OF THE BOOK I hope you enjoy Writing Lessons. Featuring well-published writers of our favorite genre, each installment takes on one short topic addressing how to write memoir. It’s my way of saying thanks for coming by. Love the author featured above? Did you learn something in the how-to? Then you’ve got to read the book. And you can. I am giving away one copy, and all you have to do to win is leave a comment below about something you learned from the writing lesson or the excerpt. I’ll draw winners at random (using the tool at random dot org) after entries close at midnight on May 15, 2019. Good luck!

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Related posts:

• Writing Lessons: Picking Small Topics To Write About
• Writing Lessons: Finding Time to Write
• Writing Lessons: How to Write About A Difficult Subject, by Bette Lynch Husted

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Reader interactions.

Amy Laundrie says

April 14, 2019 at 7:37 am

I found this extremely helpful. I’m a columnist for “The Wisconsin Dells Events” and am searching for a way to connect my “Slice of Life” columns into a second memoir. My first, “Laugh, Cry, Reflect: Stories From a Joyful Heart” includes pieces on nature, my pet ducklings, antidotes about my teaching career, and family stories. I appreciate the tips on how memoirists should make sure the last paragraph of one piece ties in with the first paragraph of the next and I think using dresses as a uniting metaphor was brilliant. I’m eager to read your book.

April 14, 2019 at 10:50 am

Dear Amy, I appreciate your kind words. I had a lot of fun using dresses as a thread through the essays. I would love to read your own slices of life columns. Marion has helped all of us go small. Linda

Susan Davies says

April 14, 2019 at 8:05 am

I love this concept! I have been so stuck in my writing, feeling overwhelmed. I had contemplated this approach but was so unsure….this lesson just gave me that push! Wish me luck! Thank you for your lessons! I enjoy them so much!

April 14, 2019 at 10:54 am

Susan, This is great news. I found all the writing lessons to be so helpful in my own work and I am honored that sharing my experience can help nudge you today. It is so good to give back. My editor, Robyn Ringler shared these tips from her own writing teacher so we are helping each other to gain movement. Linda

Laura McKowen says

April 14, 2019 at 8:09 am

Your content is so very helpful, Marion. About nine months ago, I read your book, and then I was on one of your calls. What I learned helped me focus, organize, and finish my manuscript for my first book, a memoir about sobriety. I sent it to my publisher last week. :) Thank you!

April 14, 2019 at 10:57 am

Marion’s content has always been so helpful to me too. Congratulations on completing your story.

David Sofi says

April 14, 2019 at 8:10 am

Excellent lesson and piece by Ms. Berkery. Especially resonating was the bit about Robyn’s advice from her writing coach. I will have that posted on my Writing Wall. I also tingled with her modification of The Algorithm (That is my personal emphasis of Marion’s lesson, it is so insightful and meaningful.)

Linda Berkery says

April 14, 2019 at 8:31 am

Marion’s writing math made each essay possible and I held it in mind throughout the entire book. Robyn RIngler’s advice pulled the entire collection together. Thank you for your comments.

Careen says

April 14, 2019 at 8:14 am

I want this book! Not only for its content, but because it illustrates the principles Marion puts forth.

April 14, 2019 at 11:34 am

Careen, I hope you continue to find help from the writing lessons and the wisdom from Marion. I surely did. Linda

Ginger Hudock says

April 14, 2019 at 8:16 am

This was wonderful post! The book would be something I could relate to because my age (61) and the metaphor of dresses. This is a great and doable way to structure a book as a series of essays. It seems much more doable for me. I am comfortable writing blog posts and magazine articles, but the thought of a long book is overwhelming sometimes.

April 14, 2019 at 11:01 am

Ginger, I am with you on the thoughts of a long book. It seemed too much for me. I was so happy to find that a series of essays was a reachable goal and Marion gave good feedback when I shared that I was attempting to do just that – she reminded me that I still needed an overall arc in order to print them together as a book. I hope you continue.

April 14, 2019 at 8:30 am

Breaking up the writing into smaller, more manageable pieces seems to tame the bigger writing project, sticking to the algorithm in each section. I loved seeing the process of finding the structure of the book, which is my biggest challenge.

April 14, 2019 at 11:40 am

Dear Beth, Smaller pieces worked so well for this collection. And yes, with each essay I made sure to follow the writing math. I kept asking myself what is this about ? Although told through the lens of a dress, it wasn’t about the dress… it was about a universal theme. Thank you for your thoughts. Linda

April 14, 2019 at 8:35 am

I can’t tell you how often I used Marion’s book and notes from her course as I was completing this book. Such good advice.

Elizabeth says

April 14, 2019 at 8:38 am

I flipped through my closet in my mind – many ideas there for essays, including the ban on trousers for women in my high school in the sixties, and the godawful bloomers for gym class. Thank you!

April 14, 2019 at 11:09 am

Oh Elizabeth, Our minds must run similar. There is a story about those gym “dresses” from my first P E class at Russell Sage College. And oh yes, a mini dress from my teaching days, when women were not allowed to wear pants, but COULD wear a mini dress three inches above the knees. Keep flipping through your closet in your mind. Clothing is so rich to draw out the memoir essays. Thank you for your post. Linda

Ruth Crates says

April 14, 2019 at 8:59 am

I continue to look for a way to write my memoirs. Essays might be a good fit for me. I love how Linda used an unlikely subject…. dresses – to relate her life experiences. If I don’t win the book, I will buy it…I loved the exerpt about burying her grief. We can all relate to that.

April 14, 2019 at 4:30 pm

Dear Ruth, I do hope that you will continue to write memoir. I found that essays were a perfect length. Mine ranged from about 800 to 1200 words in the book. Some had several parts but each one could be read alone which helped me continue. I am happy whenever someone considers the book, the proceeds are going to assist a local thrift store, called ReStyle, from Unity House in Troy. When we have some book signings we are also inviting readers to donate a gently used dress. So my unlikely thread of dresses is really being put to good use. Linda

April 14, 2019 at 4:34 pm

Isn’t it amazing how an idea can take off in so many directions! A wonderful way to help others.

April 14, 2019 at 4:40 pm

If you are in the Albany-Troy area look for several benefit book signings on the Facebook page: Reflections: A Wardrobe of Life Lessons

Cynthia C says

April 14, 2019 at 9:04 am

Incredibly helpful hearing about the writing process! I love reading how these authors make decisions about how the final product will look.

April 14, 2019 at 4:36 pm

Cynthia, I always loved reading the writing lessons from Marion’s posts. I was fascinated with the whole process of structure. Linda

Cassandra Hamilton says

April 14, 2019 at 9:41 am

Great post. I appreciate Linda Styles Berkery sharing her process. By breaking her subject into essays she was able to work ideas in smaller sections. I like how when she focused on the larger piece, the book, she turned to a visceral and visual method: hanging up her essays, each represented by a dress, to sort and rearrange until she felt they were right. I would think the photos of the dresses also evoked in her thoughts and feelings and helped her to pack her writing with vivid descriptions. I’m inspired with her process and how she cleverly teased us with snippets of her new work. Thank you!

April 14, 2019 at 4:44 pm

Dear Cassandra, Thanks for your comments. You are right about the visual part. It really helped me to organize the flow of the essays and the overall arc of the book. (And at one point when I realized that I didn’t have a green dress – it brought up a life lesson from an old memoir of a green gym dress!) Linda

Cheryl Hilderbrand says

April 14, 2019 at 10:08 am

Since the excerpts offered here resonated so strongly, I can’t wait to read the rest of the book. Is it just women our age who grew up with dresses who are so emotionally connected to fabric, and tucks, and gathers? A quilt made from childhood dresses keeps me warm, but I worry that I should put it away so that it’s scrapbook, memory-spurring nature can be preserved. The advice from Ms. Berkery’s editor was something I needed to hear . Thank you Marion, Linda, and Robyn.

April 14, 2019 at 4:49 pm

Dear Cheryl, I do think that dresses meant a lot more to us than they do to the next generation. My own adult daughters rarely wear dresses, but they still have emotional and memories attached to clothing. My husband saved his race t-shirts and had them made into a quilt! He no longer runs, only walks due to an injury, but that quilt hangs over his couch reminding him of all those races. Robyn Ringler’s insights (my editor for the book) were so valuable in getting this collection to print. I am glad to pass her advice along. Linda

Jen Chambers says

April 14, 2019 at 10:17 am

I find this very helpful- it solidifies a concept that I’ve been working on for some time of using essays as memoir in my own work. Using a literal thread to hold the narrative together made a great metaphor here. I am intrigued by the structural ideas and hope to get the book!

April 14, 2019 at 5:18 pm

Dear Jen, Thank you for your comments. I hope you continue to use essays as memoir. It really helped me to keep going.. I could focus on one essay at a time. Indeed I kept them in separate folders on my computer until I recognized how to make “dress stories” into a literary closet collection. Best regards,’ Linda

Debbie Morris says

April 14, 2019 at 10:28 am

I’ve had an idea brewing for years now, and this style has opened up a completely new way to join them yet keep them separate. I thoroughly enjoy the teachings here as well as that wonderfully inspiring sampling of essays. I feel energized, thank you!

April 14, 2019 at 6:03 pm

Dear Debbie, Thanks for the comments. I hope this idea keeps brewing and maybe finds a similar outlet. Linda

Barbara Womack says

April 14, 2019 at 10:38 am

I love this concept and have been inspired to use a similar approach in my own (somewhat stalled) writing.

I can’t wait to read this book!

April 14, 2019 at 6:06 pm

Dear Barbara, I am glad to hear about your writing. I wish you well on the journey and am happy that you found this approach to be helpful. Linda

Ann Hutton says

April 14, 2019 at 10:44 am

Excellent! I’m sharing this with a memoir writing group I facilitate. Meanwhile, I call out a “Yes!” to visually laying out your pages to really SEE what you’ve got and how it might fit together. Once I taped 260 pages to three walls in an empty office in order to look at the structure of a memoir manuscript. That’s when I realized that I did indeed have a beginning, middle, and ending! And looking for repetitions or other glaring mistakes was easier this way, rather than trying to read through pages on a computer screen.

Many thanks!

LInda Berkery says

April 14, 2019 at 6:11 pm

Dear Ann, Wow that must have been some wall sight! Yes, I think we sometimes need a visual way to keep us moving forward. Glad that worked for you and thank you for the comments. Best to your writing group. If you send me a personal message on Facebook page for the book. I will send you my “chart” with all the essays. My editor used that page for a talk she was giving on memoir writing. Linda

Merrie Skaggs says

April 14, 2019 at 10:49 am

Linda’s wardrobe structure is brilliant. I learned that I might be able to include an essay I wrote about my dad in my memoir. Also, Linda’s words spoke to me on several levels, or with various threads as she might say. I am still in the unraveling stage of my memoir writing and relish the connections since I am a Marion disciple, have seen my 70th birthday, and taught third grade. I learned much from your charming writing and the lessons you shared. Thank you, Linda, and thank you to our guru Marion. I’m not going to wait to win your book; I plan to buy it, read it, and learn from it now. “. . .bury a death dress. . .” My heart strings are still vibrating.

Linda Styles Berkery says

April 14, 2019 at 11:13 am

Dear Merrie, I am so happy to meet another over 70 writer of memoir. My father’s journey through his WWII experience rescued in the North Sea by Danish fishermen and as a POW is another thread through the collection. The proceeds from this book are also being used to help ReStyle, the thrift store run by Unity House in Troy, NY – my hometown. So buying the book supports a great cause. Thank you. Linda

Carol Gyzander says

April 14, 2019 at 11:00 am

I love the connecting device of the dresses! The first essay excerpt was interesting, but then I found myself curious about how it would be used in the next…and the next…

April 14, 2019 at 4:53 pm

Carol, I am so glad that you found yourself curious about the dresses used and the lessons they told. Sometimes I found myself pondering how a certain dress or saved piece of fabric could bring out so many memoires. What was going on? – You start writing and then you find more and more life experiences coloring the page. Linda

Jan Duffy says

April 14, 2019 at 11:15 am

Thank you Marion for another excellent post. The idea of basing a series of personal essays on a collection of dresses is so good. As I was reading the excerpts I felt as though I was Linda’s alter ego, experiencing every emotion that she did. Good work, I hope I can be as successful in my writing endeavors.

marion says

April 14, 2019 at 2:31 pm

Dear Jan, You are most welcome. Isn’t this a lovely, helpful post? Linda did an excellent job with this and with the book. I am delighted to see you here. Please come back soon. Best, Marion

Thank you Jan and Marion for your kind remarks. Several readers have commented that they felt they were standing right with me as they read. So we touched universal topics – close to our hearts. Linda

Karen Elizabeth Lee says

April 14, 2019 at 11:42 am

Thank you for writing this piece. I have been struggling with structure for my memoir for almost a year! writing short pieces as that is how it seems to be unfolding but then questioning myself – “Is this the right or acceptable format?” “Can I do it this way?” Your insight gives me the courage to follow this path – the essay path – to see where it will lead me! thank you.

April 14, 2019 at 4:57 pm

Dear Karen, I never started out to write a book or a collection. I just began with one essay of a brown plaid dress – a short piece for a writing assignment. I casually remarked, “I could probably write a lot more essays through the lens of a dress…” and I received such encouragement to continue. See where the short pieces lead you. Perhaps you have a collection rather than a traditional memoir book. Blessings for your good work. I am happy that this piece could encourage you. Linda

Cheryl A Kesling says

April 14, 2019 at 2:19 pm

Thank you, Linda, for sharing your story. I’m a 72-year-old struggling writer working on a memoir since 2014. It seems life keeps flying in front of me to the point of building a wall too high to see over. I’ve journaled, keeping track of unimaginable tragic moments and survival. I’ve written words on paper for a critique group but never seems to hit the mark, or at least to my satisfaction. Maybe I’m too hard on myself. Your memoir essay structure is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time but I know that each essay needs a reason or a lesson learned, and that is been my problem. Knowing what lessons I’ve learned is hard to put on paper when one holds back emotions. I’m sure reading your book would be helpful. Maybe making a chart as you did from Marion’s math and color coding for different periods ( as told in a Z- the essay) and using one metaphorical object to push the essays along is the answer for me as well. Thank you again.

April 14, 2019 at 5:06 pm

Dear Cheryl, Thank you for your heartfelt comments. Some essays (lessons) needed space and time before I could write about them. We all tend to be hard on ourselves. Keep writing. and Keep journaling. I found that going back to journals and circling some key memoires allowed me to move toward an essay. But journal writing is different than writing for print and I had to allow some pieces to stay in a journal and not try to force them to be an essay. But making the chart using X, Y, and Z was the most important formula I learned from Marion.

Etty Indriati says

April 14, 2019 at 3:11 pm

I love the excerpt of Linda’s book as it reflects the “what it is about” in Marion’s online course The Memoir Project that I took; and Linda cleverly wrote her book into chapters of personal essays. It makes me want to read the whole book! It is also inspires me to not giving up writing a memoir.

April 14, 2019 at 5:09 pm

Dear Etty, Marion’s outline is a wonderful way to start. I hope you can read the whole book and please don’t give up writing memoir in whatever form it takes. I think reflecting through writing is a blessing. Thank you for the comments. Linda

iliana says

April 14, 2019 at 7:23 pm

Linda, thanks so much for sharing aspects of your writing process! Cut and paste, and I really mean printing the pages, cutting where needed and rearranging, gluing them on another blank page, was my graduate advisor’s way of writing and editing articles, reports and proposals. That’s how I wrote my thesis too, hands on, feeling it. Looking at a dress as a metaphor, so clever! Looking forward to reading your book :)

April 14, 2019 at 7:36 pm

Seems like I did something like that old fashioned cut and paste on my TYPED thesis back in the day. Thanks for your kind remarks. Linda

KRISTA L RUSKIN says

April 14, 2019 at 7:28 pm

OMG. I’ve been struggling with not having lived “an important life” and yet wanting to write a memoir for my kids. My father died when I was 31. I often wished I had received more lessons from him and had them for my kids. In recording my own, 20 years later, on the upside of my life lessons, I’m hoping they see the possibilities for their lives even in The dark days. The idea of writing bits and and pieces of varying length and letting them tell me how to structure the book is liberating. Thank you!

April 15, 2019 at 9:00 pm

Dear Krista, I am happy that you can see your life as memoir worthy as it surely is. My father died when I was 26 and yet his influence is strongly felt in this collection. I wish you all the best for your writing. Linda

Lisa Sonora says

April 15, 2019 at 8:43 am

So many take aways here!

I haven’t read all of the comments, but skimmed, so hope to offer something not shared yet.

First, that you ignored your friends comment about writing about your life.

Then… using Marion’s algorithm for each of the essays (described in the second paragraph) —brilliant!

I too, am a student of Marion, and have been so STUCK on trying to figure out the algorithm for my memoir.

Your piece gave me the idea to look closer at the individual pieces within the book and trying to name what those are really about.

I just love the image of you hanging up your essays like dressed in the wardrobe, and laughed out loud at “don’t try this at home”. Because, yeah, I would try that at home — it make sense to give the writing some physical form that relates to the subject to help see it differently.

Congrats on the publication of your book, Lynda — I cannot wait to read it!

April 15, 2019 at 9:07 pm

Dear Lisa, Thank you for such great comments. Yes, hanging up those dress stories was crazy but a fun way to really see them in place. And it was wonderfully refreshing too. We often need to trust our own instincts sometimes more than the voices of dear but sometimes bossy friends! Best to you for your own writing. Linda

Cathy Baker says

April 15, 2019 at 8:47 am

I love everything about this post as I’m working on a book with mini-memoirs on our building my future writing studio, Tiny House on the Hill. After reading this post, I might consider having fewer chapters with a higher word count. I always learn so much from you, Marion, as well as those you coach. Thank you!

April 15, 2019 at 9:09 pm

I love the idea of mini-memoirs! Great! Thanks for your comments. I have also learned so much from Marion and her writing posts. Linda

Tammy Roth says

April 15, 2019 at 11:51 am

I’m always looking for clever ideas of arranging memoir topics and this is just brilliant. Thank you for sharing the process.

April 15, 2019 at 9:14 pm

Dear Tammy, Arranging those memoir essays was made easier using Robyn’s advice along with Marion’s wisdom. I was honored to share the process with so many interesting writers. Thank you for your comments. Linda

April 16, 2019 at 8:35 pm

Oh my! This came at the most perfect time. I am trying to write a memoir and it keeps running through my mind that I should try doing it in essays. I lost my son to suicide, so it’s about grief, hope, and faith. I loved what Robyn shared with you about connecting the last paragraph of one to the beginning of the next. The excerpts are wonderful. I can’t wait to read the book. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.

April 16, 2019 at 9:01 pm

Dear Faith, I am glad that Robyn ‘s idea might help you find your way through a collection of essays. She suggested the last paragraph and the first one should flow for the reader but they can still stand alone as individual essays. I wish you blessings in your writing. Linda

Naomi Johnson says

April 16, 2019 at 10:51 pm

I LOVED the wonderful advice from her editor, while she was still working out the overarching structure: “pay attention to the emotions and lessons in the stories . . .. Then . . . read the last paragraph of one story and the first paragraph of the following story and see if that works.”

Lovely, indeed!

April 17, 2019 at 7:00 pm

Thank you for your comments. Robyn Ringler and Marion offer such valuable suggestions. And I am grateful. Linda

Melanie says

April 17, 2019 at 2:49 pm

I’m in the process of structuring my next book now. I was right there, with descriptions of white suitcases containing “…fabrics from my journey through life.” I could hear the crinkle of crinoline, and I was reminded of one of my absolute favorite couplets by Joni Mitchell: “Everything comes and goes, marked by lovers and styles of clothes…” As I enjoyed all the other places the piece had taken me, I asked myself, “Do I have milestones (like these dresses) that mark the milestones of my life?” And I realized, I DO! I am a songwriter, so of COURSE, every milestone has a song! Thanks, Marion & Linda for such beautiful and inspiring work.

April 17, 2019 at 5:23 pm

You are most welcome, Melanie. Please come back soon. Best, Marion

April 17, 2019 at 7:06 pm

Thank you for your comments and the great quote! Love it. And nice for me too as my maiden name was Styles. I am glad that you found yourself asking questions about your own milestones.

Teresa Reimer says

April 20, 2019 at 9:12 pm

What a wonderful idea to hang each story and it’s inspiration on a clothes hanger. Organization and expanding on the theme! Can’t get much better than that.

April 22, 2019 at 6:15 pm

Teresa Thanks for your comments. Yes it was definitely different but fun! Linda

Donna P says

April 29, 2019 at 11:36 am

Dear Linda,

Your ideas, along with Marion’s brilliant advice, strike a real chord with me. I, too, have been struggling with the concept of essays within a memoir. Due to health issues, I have not given my book as much attention lately. I’m going to paste this article to my forehead to keep it top of mind! Truly inspirational at a time when I really needed it. Thanks to you and to Marion. I will definitely buy the book.

April 29, 2019 at 12:34 pm

Dear Donna, Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Marion’s advice really helped me stay focused on each individual essay. And I am so happy to know that sharing my experience making a collection of essays could help you move your own writing along. Best to you for your writing. Linda

Gail Gaspar says

Essays in the form of a wardrobe of dresses, yes. I am wondering if my memoir will take the form of essays unified by a theme (I adore metaphors) and you have illustrated how it can done. As a coach, I am happy you listened to your inner voice and not to the friend who remarked, “Your life just isn’t that interesting.” I appreciate how you show, don’t tell, about what each dress represents. The image of your dress stories hanging in your closet is an excellent reminder of how creative and expansive the writing process can be – when we allow it.

Laurie says

May 1, 2019 at 3:10 pm

Marion – This is my first visit to your blog and site. So much info! Thank you! I too am working on a memoir that right now is a collection of stories. This truly resonated with me as I am stuck as to how to pull them together into a book. Linda – your insights and suggestions couldn’t have been more on target. I have already printed them out and moved them about – but I think I need to write a few more – and then piece them together – reading the last para / first para – and adding bits as you suggested. I LOVED reading the excerpt of the book – what a wonderful way to tie the stories together by the dresses. As a writer – I loved that creative idea to tie it all together – and as a reader – each except you shared – I could apply to my own life and my own past closet of dresses! Well done! I would be tickled to win the book and read more!

May 1, 2019 at 5:47 pm

Dear Laurie, Thank you for your thoughtful remarks. Finding Marion’s blog and site is certainly a real gift. I was fortunate to take a class when she was teaching in Troy before everything went online. But look how many more people can be reached. I am delighted that you could relate to the dress stories and find memories arriving from your own closet. I loved making the book a collection/ wardrobe of stories. All the best to you with your own memoir. Linda

May 2, 2019 at 11:52 am

What a lovely way to seamlessly piece together a book! I’m in awe of your process and inspired by the concept! I’ve always struggled to let go of certain garments because of the memories associated with them. Now I understand why: Not only does each one offer a memory, but you’ve proven each one tells a story. I can’t wait to visit your story-closet and read more!

May 2, 2019 at 8:59 pm

Dear Susan, Thank you for your kind remarks. I hope you do visit my “story-closet” as well as peek at some life lessons from your own wardrobe. Linda

Maggie Yoest says

May 3, 2019 at 10:57 am

I am new to memoir writing and have been encouraged by Susan and Marion. Hopefully, as I stay with this, some of the fear will dissipate and the courage to share myself and my view will grow. Thank you both!

May 3, 2019 at 4:00 pm

Maggie, I hope you continue with memoir. Marion is a wonderful guide. Linda

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How to Write a Memoir Essay

Table of Contents

How to Write a Memoir Essay (Writing Guide)

• Start instructions
• Main part writing
• Conclusion writing
• Memoir example

Every individual has a past and a story to tell about childhood to adulthood experiences. Memoirs offer you the chance to express yourself through the rough or smooth ride of the memories. Hence, memoir essay writing simply is a chronological account of one’s life. A memoir closely relates to a biography but they slightly differ. A biography is the narration of someone’s life history and the person telling the story is not the author. On the other hand, the author of the record gives an account of his personal experience over a specific event encountered in his life. In this case, a memoir never covers all the noteworthy events of a person’s life.

Five Techniques to Start a Memoir Essay

• Have a clear concept of what you intend to write about. Narrow your focus to a specific event that was pertinent to your life or a given circumstance.
• Inform the audience of the purpose of writing the memoir. Each person writes for specific and passionate reasons with a target people group in mind.
• Give a preview of the event that entices the reader. Let the tension build to make the person reading want to follow on to the end.
• Engage the audience through captivating words.
• Avoid chronological analysis of the occurrence as this dilutes the script’s value to the reader.

Writing the Body Paragraphs

In this section, you narrate the occurrences and factors surrounding the specific account. Expound on how this particular event influences your present life either negatively or positively. It can be a conflict that builds up to be a problem but in the end becomes the opportunity for the success of the narrator. Be creative to include other factors that would add value to your paper.  However, be honest and tell the truth as the purpose of such a script serves to share personal experiences that impact people’s lives.

Factors to consider while outlining your memoir under this part include:

• Have in mind your reader and show rather than tell the insights of your circumstances
• Employ fiction elements
• Exhibit character and conflict in an emotional way
• Be specific to detail and build on the details
• Create a unique memoir scenario and avoid predictability in the text before a conclusion

Since everybody has diverse life happenings, tell your story in style and let the reader identify with you. Significantly, find the right slant to describe your story, and the body paragraphs will definitely flow. Nonetheless, types of outlining a memoir such as before and after, the whirlpool, chronological, character studies, and the narrative track exist. Moreover, create sustainable tension that shapes the overall story. The narrator chooses which structure best suits his description taking into consideration the pros and cons. A good memoir composition aims at enlightening the audience rather than exalting oneself as a victim or hero in a given context.

The Conclusion

You have to outline the changes made due to the event encountered. The audience needs to understand how you have handled and dealt with the conflict or character under analysis in the body context. Also, indicate your present stage of life as a result of the described events. Let there be a connection from the introduction to the main body.

A Memoir Example

It was dark in chilly weather. The sky was bright with the moon gazing down at me as I sat down on the bench outside, away from the noisy party celebrations. Friends and family had occasioned my 21st birthday with glamor and a joyous mood was in the air. As I sat staring at the glittering stars, childhood memories flashed through my mind.

On my tenth birthday, ululations and circumcision songs characterized the night. It was a day to transit from childhood to womanhood. The culture dictated so and my loyal parents were all excited to see me undergo and subdue the pain to adulthood. Now, I was old enough to be married and enrich them. I was property, very valuable and my virginity had to be sewn to maintain my value.

Nonetheless, my age mates were going through the same thing. False courage, I had to subscribe to it to avoid mockery. Three weeks after the practice there was a groom set for me, a 60-year-old man. I wouldn’t stand that so I had to run for my life.

The escape landed me in good hands, I now had access to education that has built my life into who I am. My rebellion was for a good course. Otherwise, poverty, poor health, and hard labor on farms would be my story. Tears trickled as I recalled the event and how many young innocent girls undergo the same. Backward traditions that violate human rights, especially that of the girl-child should be completely shunned. Presently as we celebrate, my parents acknowledge the step I took, though it brought shame to them eleven years ago.

Writing the Memoir (Moxley): Annotated Memoirs

• Introduction
• Tips for Writing the Memoir
• Annotated Memoirs
• Describing a Person
• Describing a Place
• Sample Topics and Essays

Writing About Your Parents' or Grandparents' Past

• "Granny's Bridge"
• Explanation and Assignment

Writing about Animals

• "Of Cows and Men"

Writing About Mortality

• "Death of a Pig"

Writing About Grandmothers and Grandfathers

• "Living With My Grandmother"

Writing About a Place

• "Uncle John's Farm"

Writing About Holidays

• "Christmases Gone"
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• Last Updated: Jan 18, 2024 11:10 AM
• URL: https://libguides.montgomerybell.edu/memoir

Breaking Up Can Be Easier If You Have a Ritual

I n his song “Hearts and Bones,” Paul Simon, describing the dissolution of his marriage to Carrie Fisher, sang, “You take two bodies and you twirl them into one . . . And they won’t come undone.” The pomp and pageantry of love and commitment—whether that of a traditional wedding or a conventionally romantic night out with red roses and candles—looms large in our collective imagination. These rituals offer couples emotional generators to affirm their shared reality and identity. But rituals can also provide opportunities for much-needed transitions when ending relationships, whether we call it breaking up, divorcing, or separating.

Can couples craft new rituals to help them decouple—to acknowledge that their once-shared reality is now fragmented?

This is precisely where Ulay and Marina Abramović found themselves in the spring of 1986, despite their cosmic connection and shared birthdays. They had just performed a show together at the Burnett Miller Gallery in Los Angeles. The show, for her, was symbolic of their love and their artistic vision. It represented what she describes in her memoir, Walk Through Walls , as “creating this third element we called that self— an energy not poisoned by ego, a melding of male and female that to me was the highest work of art.”

Ulay, on the other hand, felt their performances and interactions with the spectators afterward were becoming routine. The business and networking aspect of their art had become a habit he wasn’t sure he wanted to cultivate. Whereas Abramović was ready to embrace the life of a world-famous art star—with its requisite duties and attendant inconveniences—Ulay longed to live a more itinerant and anarchist existence. Instead of attending celebrity parties and art pavilions, he was eager to return to his nomadic life traveling across Europe in a van.

“Oh, you know how to deal with people,” he told Abramović while she worked the room at the show’s after-party. “I’m just going to have a walk.” During his lengthy absence, Abramović later found out that Ulay was cheating on her with a beautiful young gallery assistant. It was (another) tale as old as time.

How do two people who have spent more than a decade making work about becoming inextricably linked find a way to call it off? The artists did the most reasonable thing they could think of doing given the circumstances: they devised their own unique ritual for breaking up. They decided to take the better part of a year to walk the Great Wall of China together —each starting from an opposite end of its 13,171 miles—and meet in the middle to say goodbye. The project—initially called The Lovers and conceived of as a kind of wedding—had turned, over years of waiting and broken trust, into a meditation on their incompatibility and separation. On March 30, 1988, after close to a decade of cutting through bureaucratic red tape from the Chinese Communist Party, the artists were finally granted permission to perform their walk. Abramović started at the Bohai Sea, a part of the Yellow Sea, which sits between China and Korea. Over months of trekking, she walked the more treacherous path through eastern China’s elevations and along parts of the path that had been destroyed to only shards of crumbling rock and stone under Mao’s Communist diktats. She and her guides had to walk hours from the wall each night just to reach the villages where they slept.

Ulay set out 700 miles to the west in the Gobi Desert. While Abramović had the mountains to conquer, much of Ulay’s journeys took him through hundreds of miles of desert dunes. Instructed to lodge in the nearby villages and hostels, he characteristically broke the rules and spent many of his nights sleeping under the stars on the broken stones of the Great Wall. Both of them invested extreme effort in putting their bodies in motion to prepare for the moment of meeting again and severing all ties to each other.

After each walking for 90 days and covering around twelve and a half miles a day, the artists reunited on a stone bridge in Shaanxi Province. Ulay arrived first and sat down to wait. Abramović eventually approached toward the end of the day. They looked at each other as they had once done so many years ago in that Amsterdam airport, and they embraced. They then parted ways and did not speak again for 22 years.

Read More: This Is the Best Way to Break Up With Someone, According to Experts

Ulay and Abramović might be an extreme example, but we can still glean guidance from them when facing our own breakups. Colleen Leahy Johnson, an expert in the psychological impact of divorce, uses the wonderful phrase “socially controlled civility” to describe how former couples can move past their acrimony by engaging in patterned, symbolic ceremonies—that is, rituals—that help them to keep their emotions in check. One divorcing couple chose to have their dissolution ceremony in their church and created reverse vows: “I return these rings which you gave me when we married, and in so doing I release you from all marital responsibilities toward me. Will you forgive me for any pain I have caused you?” The ceremony was so moving that one attendee later had an epiphany: “Too often I see a ritual as an ending to a process without realizing at the same time it is a new beginning.”

The philosopher and public intellectual Agnes Callard crafted her own, unique new beginning. She now lives with her ex-husband, Ben Callard, a fellow philosopher, as well as her former graduate student, now husband, Arnold Brooks, in one household. The three adults have shared domestic and caretaking duties with their three children—two from her marriage with Callard and one from her current marriage with Brooks. Because she and her ex-husband are still close, the two of them celebrate their divorce every year with their own unique ritual. “Happy Divorciversary to us! This is a big one: #10,” she wrote on her Twitter feed with a picture of her beaming next to Ben. They went out to dinner and savored the joys of growing old together—over a decade of successful divorcing is nothing to sneer at. “Remember kids, marriages come and go but divorce is forever so choose your exes wisely,” she quipped on social media.

The equanimity of the domestic situation of these three might be hard for many people to emulate, but luckily there’s a ritual for less amicable former couples, too: the “annivorcery.” An investment banker named Gina noted, “I’ve been divorced for three years, and each year I throw a big party to celebrate my separation. I make my ex look after the kids while I invite all my best single boyfriends and girlfriends.”

Paul Simon felt that once couples were twirled into one, there was no undoing the bond. And moving on from meaningful relationships is, for sure, one of the hardest transitions we have to make in our lives. Given the pain involved, it’s no wonder that people have devised so many different means of moving on. Think of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s stated plan to engage in “conscious uncoupling” when announcing their divorce. The pair met with some ridicule, but in its essence, conscious uncoupling is a guided ritual that helps couples let go of each other without burning bridges. Though, in a pinch, a little fire can help as well—we could simply borrow from Taylor Swift’s relationship-ending ritual of striking a match on the time she spent with her ex, who’s now “just another picture to burn.”

Excerpted from THE RITUAL EFFECT: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions , copyright © 2024 by Michael Norton, PhD. Reprinted by permission from Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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NPR defends its journalism after senior editor says it has lost the public's trust

David Folkenflik

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust.

NPR's top news executive defended its journalism and its commitment to reflecting a diverse array of views on Tuesday after a senior NPR editor wrote a broad critique of how the network has covered some of the most important stories of the age.

"An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an audience that reflects America," writes Uri Berliner.

A strategic emphasis on diversity and inclusion on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, promoted by NPR's former CEO, John Lansing, has fed "the absence of viewpoint diversity," Berliner writes.

NPR's chief news executive, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff Tuesday afternoon that she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner's assessment.

"We're proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories," she wrote. "We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world."

NPR names tech executive Katherine Maher to lead in turbulent era

She added, "None of our work is above scrutiny or critique. We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole."

A spokesperson for NPR said Chapin, who also serves as the network's chief content officer, would have no further comment.

Praised by NPR's critics

Berliner is a senior editor on NPR's Business Desk. (Disclosure: I, too, am part of the Business Desk, and Berliner has edited many of my past stories. He did not see any version of this article or participate in its preparation before it was posted publicly.)

Berliner's essay , titled "I've Been at NPR for 25 years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust," was published by The Free Press, a website that has welcomed journalists who have concluded that mainstream news outlets have become reflexively liberal.

Berliner writes that as a Subaru-driving, Sarah Lawrence College graduate who "was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother ," he fits the mold of a loyal NPR fan.

Yet Berliner says NPR's news coverage has fallen short on some of the most controversial stories of recent years, from the question of whether former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, to the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19, to the significance and provenance of emails leaked from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden weeks before the 2020 election. In addition, he blasted NPR's coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

On each of these stories, Berliner asserts, NPR has suffered from groupthink due to too little diversity of viewpoints in the newsroom.

The essay ricocheted Tuesday around conservative media , with some labeling Berliner a whistleblower . Others picked it up on social media, including Elon Musk, who has lambasted NPR for leaving his social media site, X. (Musk emailed another NPR reporter a link to Berliner's article with a gibe that the reporter was a "quisling" — a World War II reference to someone who collaborates with the enemy.)

When asked for further comment late Tuesday, Berliner declined, saying the essay spoke for itself.

The arguments he raises — and counters — have percolated across U.S. newsrooms in recent years. The #MeToo sexual harassment scandals of 2016 and 2017 forced newsrooms to listen to and heed more junior colleagues. The social justice movement prompted by the killing of George Floyd in 2020 inspired a reckoning in many places. Newsroom leaders often appeared to stand on shaky ground.

Leaders at many newsrooms, including top editors at The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times , lost their jobs. Legendary Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron wrote in his memoir that he feared his bonds with the staff were "frayed beyond repair," especially over the degree of self-expression his journalists expected to exert on social media, before he decided to step down in early 2021.

Since then, Baron and others — including leaders of some of these newsrooms — have suggested that the pendulum has swung too far.

Author Interviews

Legendary editor marty baron describes his 'collision of power' with trump and bezos.

New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger warned last year against journalists embracing a stance of what he calls "one-side-ism": "where journalists are demonstrating that they're on the side of the righteous."

"I really think that that can create blind spots and echo chambers," he said.

Internal arguments at The Times over the strength of its reporting on accusations that Hamas engaged in sexual assaults as part of a strategy for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel erupted publicly . The paper conducted an investigation to determine the source of a leak over a planned episode of the paper's podcast The Daily on the subject, which months later has not been released. The newsroom guild accused the paper of "targeted interrogation" of journalists of Middle Eastern descent.

Heated pushback in NPR's newsroom

Given Berliner's account of private conversations, several NPR journalists question whether they can now trust him with unguarded assessments about stories in real time. Others express frustration that he had not sought out comment in advance of publication. Berliner acknowledged to me that for this story, he did not seek NPR's approval to publish the piece, nor did he give the network advance notice.

Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues are responding heatedly. Fernando Alfonso, a senior supervising editor for digital news, wrote that he wholeheartedly rejected Berliner's critique of the coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, for which NPR's journalists, like their peers, periodically put themselves at risk.

Alfonso also took issue with Berliner's concern over the focus on diversity at NPR.

"As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity," Alfonso says. "These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done."

After this story was first published, Berliner contested Alfonso's characterization, saying his criticism of NPR is about the lack of diversity of viewpoints, not its diversity itself.

"I never criticized NPR's priority of achieving a more diverse workforce in terms of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I have not 'denigrated' NPR's newsroom diversity goals," Berliner said. "That's wrong."

Questions of diversity

Under former CEO John Lansing, NPR made increasing diversity, both of its staff and its audience, its "North Star" mission. Berliner says in the essay that NPR failed to consider broader diversity of viewpoint, noting, "In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans."

Berliner cited audience estimates that suggested a concurrent falloff in listening by Republicans. (The number of people listening to NPR broadcasts and terrestrial radio broadly has declined since the start of the pandemic.)

Former NPR vice president for news and ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin tweeted , "I know Uri. He's not wrong."

Others questioned Berliner's logic. "This probably gets causality somewhat backward," tweeted Semafor Washington editor Jordan Weissmann . "I'd guess that a lot of NPR listeners who voted for [Mitt] Romney have changed how they identify politically."

Similarly, Nieman Lab founder Joshua Benton suggested the rise of Trump alienated many NPR-appreciating Republicans from the GOP.

In recent years, NPR has greatly enhanced the percentage of people of color in its workforce and its executive ranks. Four out of 10 staffers are people of color; nearly half of NPR's leadership team identifies as Black, Asian or Latino.

"The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of America and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not?" Lansing, who stepped down last month, says in response to Berliner's piece. "I'd welcome the argument against that."

"On radio, we were really lagging in our representation of an audience that makes us look like what America looks like today," Lansing says. The U.S. looks and sounds a lot different than it did in 1971, when NPR's first show was broadcast, Lansing says.

A network spokesperson says new NPR CEO Katherine Maher supports Chapin and her response to Berliner's critique.

The spokesperson says that Maher "believes that it's a healthy thing for a public service newsroom to engage in rigorous consideration of the needs of our audiences, including where we serve our mission well and where we can serve it better."

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.