How to Write a Memoir
BLOG SESSION
July 2017
Good Morning Writers ~ We're back today to talk about another area of writing that some of you may have considered and need further information about. That specific area that we are going to discuss today is writing a Memoir.
The first question that will come to mind for those Writers that have never heard of the term, "Memoir", is what is it?
A Memoir is a narrative about your personal experience.
- A specific event that happened to you.
- A specific aspect of your life (for example, your relationship with your mother, your travel through Africa, your struggle to overcome a personal situation).
- A particular time period of your life.
- The impact on your own life of an outside event (for example, a war, an economic crisis, an unexpected death that affects your family, a life change due to the loss of a job, a fire that devastates your living arrangement.)
At this point in our Blog Session, if you have not reached for your Journal to take notes, please do because you will enjoy the following tips that you will gain from two memoirists.
Journal Notes
Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler are memoirists, teachers of memoir writing, and founders of the website: Womensmemoirs.com. Their collective memoir, Rosie's Daughters: The "First Woman To" Generation Tells Its Story, won an IPPY National Book Award in 2008.
Both Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler were members of my Website back in the day when we were all on Gather.com, which is no longer in existence. I am so very proud to see all that they have accomplished.
Both Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler were interviewed for the Website Creative Writing Now. I believe you will find their entire Interview, which is in several parts, to be quite helpful if you are interested in learning more about writing a Memoir.
I'd like to highlight Part 2 of their Interview here in this Blog Session primarily because it gets into the topic of Journal Writing. The following is an excerpt from the Website Creative Writing Now . . .
A Conversation with Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler: Journaling and Writing a Memoir
Kendra: For many people, memoir comes out of their journaling, but that isn’t 100 percent. Matilda and I, for example, are not journalers -- not for lack of respect or interest in the process, I just think I am not disciplined enough to do it. I’m too busy doing other things during the day. I don’t know, I don’t get to it. I respect people who do this, and I think they have a wonderful wealth of material to draw upon.
Matilda: I think that Kendra’s raising the correct distinction there, which is that journaling is an ongoing daily process, and people who journal tend to have one time in the day that they always write. Sometimes it’s when they first get up, and sometimes it’s late in the evening before they go to bed. And they have a journal, they write the date, and then they maybe only write a few sentences; maybe if something bigger has happened, they will write several pages. But it is a process almost of recording a life as it’s going by; whereas, memoir is always a sense of reflection.
For Part 1 of the Interview of Authors Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler, you can expect to find the following information . . .
What is a memoir? Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler discuss this question in Part One of the Interview about memoir writing.
Of Note: Distinction between a memoir and an autobiography:
Interview of Matilda Butler:
First of all, I would like to make a distinction between memoir and autobiography, because everyone gets a little confused on that. They really mean two quite different things, yet they are sometimes used interchangeably and it makes it really confusing.
An autobiography is the story of your life to date. It is usually chronologically based, and it starts with when you are young and all the things that happened to you along the way in your life.
Please visit the Website for the entire Part One Interview. (Click the link)
Learn more about writing a Memoir by visiting
the Website Creative Writing Now
Friends & Writers until our next Blog Session ~
Keep working on those Novels!
Peace, Love & Light,
René
© Copyright - René Allen - JULY 2017 - All Rights Reserved
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