how to write a memoir title in an essay

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

Zining Mok  |  January 29, 2024  |  32 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!

32 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 went to Egypt earlier this year. I aspire for my second book to document and tell the story of my travels of Africa, following the first – a memoir that led me to this post.

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!

Wow! This is such an informative post packed with tangible guidance. I poured my heart into a book. I’ve been a professional creative for years to include as a writer, mainly in the ad game and content. No editor. I wasn’t trying to make it as an author. Looking back, I think it’s all the stuff I needed to say. Therapy. Which does not, in and of itself, make for a coherent book. The level of writing garnering praise, but the book itself was a hot mess. So, this is helpful. I really put myself out there, which I’ve done in many areas, but the crickets response really got to me this time. I bought “Educated” as you recommended. Do you have any blog posts on memoirs that have something to say to the world, finding that “something” to say? It feels like that’s theme, but perhaps something more granular. Thanks for this fantastic post. If I had the moola, I would sign up for a class. Your time is and effort is appreciated. Typos likely on comments! LOL

thanks. God bless

I am a member of the “Reprobates”, a group of seven retired Royal Air Force pilots and navigators which has stayed in intermittent touch since we first met in Germany in 1969. Four of the group (all of whom are in their late seventies or early eighties) play golf together quite frequently, and we all gather for reunions once or twice a year. About a year ago, one of the Reprobates suggested posterity might be glad to hear the stories told at these gatherings, and there have since been two professionally conducted recording sessions, one in London, and one in Tarifa, Spain. The instigator of these recordings forwarded your website to his fellow Reprobates by way of encouragement to put pen to paper. And, I, for one, have found it inspiring. It’s high time I made a start on my Memoirs, thank you.

Thank you for sharing this, Tim! Happy writing!

Hi, I’m Jo. I’m finally jumping in and writing the memoir that has been running alongside me for at least the last 5 years. I’m terrified, of what I’m not 100% sure. The story won’t leave me alone and right now is the time to start my first draft. I’m approaching half way through what nature may call natural life on Earth, mid-life sounds strange to say. It just feels like the right time to document the journey thus far – especially the last decade. It’s been a radical time for transformation, internally and externally. I’m afraid but your post and these comments have helped.

Good luck on your memoir, Jo! I’m excited to hear more.

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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.

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• 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…
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• 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…
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• 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 […]
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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

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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How To Write a Memoir Essay That Readers Won't Forget

Declan Gessel

May 11, 2024

For those seeking guidance on how to write an essay on how to write an essay , the process can be daunting. It is a meticulous task that requires precision, clarity, and a keen understanding of the topic. The task is not easy, but with the right guidance, you can excel. In this guide, we will explore the necessary steps required to craft a brilliant memoir essay. 

Table Of Content

What is a memoir essay, 4 key elements of a memoir essay, how to choose a topic for your memoir essay, 4 memoir essay writing tips to keep your readers engaged, jotbot highlights 3 great memoir essays, write smarter memoir essay with jotbot — start writing for free today.

A memoir essay is a piece of writing that combines elements of personal narrative and essay writing. The term itself is derived from the French word mémoire, meaning memory or reminiscence. A memoir essay tells a true story that happened to the author. It allows the author to explore and share memories from their past, reflecting on the significance of those experiences as they relate to them now.

Limited Scope

Unlike an autobiography , a memoir essay focuses on a specific period of the author's life, a particular event, or a significant relationship. This limited scope helps to keep the narrative more centralized, allowing the author to deeply explore the emotions and consequences of those experiences within the context of the overall theme.

Essay Structure

A memoir essay uses an essay structure to introduce a central theme, develop the story, and offer reflections or insights. This structure can help the author to organize their thoughts and present their story in a way that is engaging and easy to follow. It also allows the author to weave in other elements, such as research or commentary, that can help to enrich the narrative.

Emotional Depth

A memoir delves into the author's feelings and thoughts related to the experience. By exploring the emotional depth of their memories, the author can create a more evocative and powerful narrative that resonates with readers on a personal level. This emotional depth can draw readers in and make them feel more connected to the author's story.

Universal Connection

While personal, a memoir essay aims to connect with readers by exploring broader human themes. By sharing their experiences and insights, the author can help readers to see themselves in the story, finding common ground and shared emotions that make the narrative more meaningful and impactful. 

This universal connection is one of the key strengths of a memoir essay, allowing the author to reach a wider audience and create a more lasting impact with their writing.

Difference between Memoir and Autobiography

A memoir is closely related to the nonfiction format known as autobiography, but the two forms are not identical. Most notably, an autobiography is a first-person account of its author’s entire life. Autobiographies are usually written by famous individuals, such as politicians, celebrities, or business leaders. 

In contrast, a memoir is a nonfiction work that is based on the author’s personal memories, feelings, and experiences. Memoirs are often focused on a specific time period, theme, or relationship in the author’s life. Autobiographies are longer than memoirs and cover a broader scope of the author’s life. Although memoirs and autobiographies are different, both of these genres are entertaining and informative.

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1. The Use of Vivid Description

When writing a memoir essay, it is crucial to go beyond just recounting events. The use of vivid description can transport readers into the heart of your story, making it a truly immersive experience. By incorporating sensory details, figurative language, and evocative imagery, you can bring your memories to life and create a lasting impact on your readers.

2. Bring Characters to Life with Dialogue

Dialogue is a powerful tool in memoir writing, allowing you to breathe life into your characters and drive the narrative forward. By capturing the nuances of speech, revealing hidden emotions, and using dialogue to move the plot forward, you can create dynamic and engaging interactions that resonate with your readers.

3. How to Use Reflection in Your Memoir Essay

Reflection adds depth and meaning to your memoir essay, allowing you to explore the significance of your experiences and connect them to broader themes. By analyzing the "why" behind the event, connecting it to universal themes, and using introspection to express your vulnerabilities, you can infuse your memoir with emotional resonance and personal insight.

4. Showcasing the Journey of Growth

A compelling memoir essay showcases your personal growth and transformation, illustrating how specific experiences or relationships have shaped you over time. By illustrating your growth through actions and choices, using contrasting scenes to highlight your evolution, and ending on a note of personal growth, you can create a powerful narrative arc that resonates with your readers.

Reflecting on pivotal moments and turning points in your life is essential when choosing a topic for your memoir essay. These moments could be triumphs, losses, love, or transformations that profoundly impacted you. Consider experiences that have shaped your identity, values, or worldview and stand out vividly in your memory.

Emotional Impact

Emotional resonance is key to engaging readers in your memoir essay. Reflect on moments that made you laugh, cry, or feel deeply. These emotional moments provide a window into your soul and allow readers to connect with your story on a personal level.

Personal Growth and Lessons Learned

Exploring personal growth arcs in your life is another vital aspect to consider when choosing a memoir essay topic. Reflect on how you have evolved as a person and the lessons that life has taught you through challenges, mistakes, or unexpected twists. Sharing your insights can inspire and resonate with readers who may be going through similar experiences.

Universal Appeal

While your memoir essay is deeply personal, aiming for themes that resonate universally can make your story more relatable to a wider audience. Consider themes such as love and relationships, identity and self-discovery, resilience and overcoming adversity, journeys and travel, loss and grief, as well as career and passion pursuits. These themes can help your memoir essay connect with readers on a profound level.

Jotbot is your personal document assistant. Jotbot does AI note-taking, AI video summarizing, AI citation/source finder, it writes AI outlines for essays, and even writes entire essays with Jotbot’s AI essay writer. Join 500,000+ writers, students, teams, and researchers around the world to write more, write better, and write faster with Jotbot. Write smarter, not harder with Jotbot. Start writing for free with Jotbot today — sign in with Google and get started in seconds.

1. Identifying Your Narrative Core

When you're writing a memoir essay that truly captures readers' attention, it's crucial to identify the core of your narrative. This means delving into your life experiences to uncover the moments that truly define you. Here are some brainstorming strategies you can use to uncover your narrative core:

Thematic Exploration

Take a journey through the themes of your life, such as loss, friendship, or overcoming adversity. Identify specific moments that epitomize these themes and consider how they've shaped you.

Sensory Prompts

Recall vivid experiences by engaging your senses. Think about a specific smell, taste, or childhood object that brings back powerful memories. These sensory details will help you bring your story to life.

Turning Points

Reflect on pivotal moments that have significantly changed your life or your perspective. These moments often hold the key to understanding who you are and why you've become that way.

2. The Criteria for Choosing a Captivating Topic

Your memoir essay should be about more than just any story from your life. To truly captivate readers, you need to choose a topic that meets certain criteria. Here are some things to consider when selecting your story:

Choose an experience that evokes strong emotions in you. If you feel deeply about the story you're telling, your readers are more likely to as well.

Universality

Can readers connect with the story you're telling on a broader level? Look for experiences that resonate with the human experience and the emotions we all share.

Personal Significance

The best memoir essays tell stories that have had a lasting impact on the author. Consider the experiences that have shaped you, challenged you, or changed your life in meaningful ways.

3. How To Build a Memorable Narrative Persona

A key to writing a memoir essay that readers won't forget is to create a strong narrative persona. This persona is the voice through which your story is told, and it should be unique, engaging, and authentic. Here's how you can develop your narrative persona:

Identifying Your Voice

Take some time to analyze your natural writing style. Are you humorous, reflective, or descriptive? Understanding your personal tendencies will help you craft a narrative persona that feels true to you.

Building Your Narrative Voice

Consider the literary influences that have shaped your writing style. What authors or genres resonate with you? You can draw on these influences as you develop your narrative voice.

4. Crafting a Memorable Ending

Every great memoir essay needs a memorable ending. This is the final chance to leave a lasting impression on your reader, so make it count. Here are some strategies for crafting a memorable ending to your memoir essay:

Circle Back to the Introduction

Offer a sense of closure by connecting back to the beginning of your essay. This can create a sense of symmetry and completion that leaves your reader satisfied.

Reveal a Transformation

Show how the experience you've shared has shaped you into the person you are now. This transformation is often at the heart of a memoir essay and can make for a powerful ending.

A Lingering Thought

End your essay with a question or a thought-provoking reflection that will stay with your readers long after they've finished reading. This can prompt further contemplation and leave a lasting impact.

1. Eat, Pray, and Love by Elizabeth Gilbert 

(https://www.mwediting.com/memoir-topics-with-examples/) 

2. The Book “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed Essay 

(https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-wild-by-cheryl-strayed/)

3. Wild: a journey from lost to found by Strayed  

(https://archive.org/details/wildjourneyfroml0000stra)

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When writing a memoir essay, it is crucial to embrace vulnerability. Readers are drawn to stories that reveal the writer's true self and expose their raw emotions. By sharing personal tales and experiences with readers, writers can form deeper connections. It can be terrifying to share personal stories, but vulnerability is what makes memoirs compelling. Readers relate to vulnerability, and it encourages them to open up about their experiences. 

Embracing vulnerability in your memoir essay allows readers to connect with your story on an intimate level. When readers recognize themselves in your narrative, they are more likely to engage with your work on a deeper level. Vulnerability taps into emotions that are universal, enabling your readers to see themselves in your story. When writers embrace vulnerability, they create an emotional bond with their readers.

Overcoming Writer’s Block

Writer's block is a common challenge faced by memoir writers. It can be frustrating when you want to write but cannot find the words. When writer's block strikes, I use Jotbot to generate an outline for my memoir essay. Jotbot helps me organize my thoughts and ideas, which enables me to write more cohesively. With Jotbot, I can focus on specific sections of my memoir essay, allowing me to overcome writer's block.

Jotbot's AI essay writer helps me with sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation. When I struggle with a sentence, I use Jotbot to revise it. Jotbot helps me to write complete sentences and improve my grammar. I love how Jotbot helps me improve my writing skills. Writing my memoir essay with Jotbot allows me to concentrate on my writing and not worry about sentence structure or grammar.

Creating a Memorable Memoir Opening

When writing a memoir essay, the opening should grab the reader’s attention. A strong opening sets the stage for the rest of the essay. I like to begin my memoir essays with an anecdote or a compelling quote to draw readers in. By starting with a vivid image or a powerful statement, I can spark readers’ curiosity and make them eager to read more.

Jotbot assists me in creating an opening for my memoir essay that hooks readers from the beginning. Jotbot helps me to generate a catchy introduction that sets the tone for the rest of the essay. With Jotbot , I can create a memorable opening that captivates readers and compels them to continue reading. Jotbot allows me to focus on crafting an engaging narrative instead of struggling to find the right words for the introduction.

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Last updated on Apr 06, 2021

21 Memoir Examples to Inspire Your Own

Writing a memoir is a daunting endeavor for any author: how do you condense your entire life story into a mere couple hundred pages? Of course, you'll find plenty of online guides that will help you write a memoir by leading you through the steps. But other times that old adage “ show, don’t tell ” holds true, and it’s most helpful to look at other memoir examples to get started. 

If that’s the case for you, we’ve got you covered with 21 memoir examples to give you an idea of the types of memoirs that have sold well. Ready to roll up your sleeves and dive in? 

The autobiographical memoir

The autobiographical memoir — a retelling of one’s life, from beginning to present times — is probably the standard format that jumps to most people’s minds when they think of this genre.

At first glance, it might seem like a straightforward recount of your past. However, don’t be deceived! As you’ll be able to tell from the examples below, this type of memoir shines based on three things: the strength of the author’s story, the strength of the story’s structure, and the strength of the author’s voice.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. The woman who Toni Morrison said “launched African American writing in the United States,” Angelou penned this searing memoir in 1969, which remains a timeless classic today.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Less of a singular memoir than a collection of humorous anecdotes framed around his life as a transplant to Paris, the star of this book is Sedaris’ dry voice and cutting humor.

A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby. Chacaby’s remarkable life — from growing up abused in a remote Ojibwa community to overcoming alcoholism and coming out as a lesbian as an adult — is captured in this must-read autobiography.

The “experience” memoir

One of the most popular memoirs that you’ll find on bookshelves, this type focuses on a specific experience that the author has undergone. Typically, this experience involves a sort of struggle, such as a bitter divorce, illness, or perhaps a clash with addiction. Regardless of the situation, the writer overcomes it to share lessons learned from the ordeal.

In an "experience" memoir, you can generally expect to learn about:

• How the author found themselves facing said experience;
• The obstacles they needed to overcome; and
• What they discovered during (and after) the experience.

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. Faced with the prognosis of terminal cancer at the age of thirty-six, Paul Kalanithi wrote an unforgettable memoir that tackles an impossible question: what makes life worth living?

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. An account of drug and alcohol abuse that one reviewer called “the War and Peace of addiction,” this book became the focus of an uproar when it was revealed that many of its incidents were fabricated. (In case you’re wondering, we do not recommend deceiving your readers.)

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. Adapted in 1999 into a critically acclaimed film starring Angelina Jolie, Girl, Interrupted enduringly recounts the author’s battle with mental illness and her ensuing 18-month stay in an American psychiatric hospital.

The “event” memoir

Similar to the “experience” memoir, the “event” memoir centers on a single significant event in the author’s life. However, while the former might cover a period of years or even decades, the “event” memoir zeroes in on a clearly defined period of time — for instance, a two-month walk in the woods, or a three-week mountain climb, as you’ll see below.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau. In July of 1845, Henry David Thoreau walked into the woods and didn’t come out for two years, two months, and two days. This is the seminal memoir that resulted.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer. The controversial account of the 1996 Everest disaster, as written by author-journalist Krakaeur, who was climbing the mountain on the same day that eight climbers were killed.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. Immortalized as one of the classic books about mourning, The Year of Magical Thinking recounts the grief Didion endured the year following the death of her husband.

The “themed” memoir

When you look back on your own timeline, is there a strong theme that defines your life or ties it all together? That’s the premise on which a “themed” memoir is based. In such a memoir, the author provides a retrospective of their past through the lens of one topic.

If you’re looking to write this type of memoir, it goes without saying that you’ll want to find a rock-solid theme to build your entire life story around. Consider asking yourself:

• What’s shaped your life thus far?
• What’s been a constant at every turning point?
• Has a single thing driven all of the decisions that you’ve made?

Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. Throughout an up-and-down upbringing complete with a debilitating battle with depression, the single consistent thread in this author’s life remained football and Arsenal F.C.

Educated by Tara Westover. If there’s one lesson that we can learn from this remarkable memoir, it’s the importance of education. About a family of religious survivalists in rural Idaho, this memoir relates how the author overcame her upbringing and moved mountains in pursuit of learning.

Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth. Now best known for its BBC adaptation, Worth’s account of her life as a midwife caught people’s imagination with its depiction of life in London’s East End in the 1950s.

The family memoir

In a family memoir, the author is a mirror that re-focuses the light on their family members — ranging from glimpses into the dysfunctional dynamics of a broken family to heartfelt family tributes.

Examples of this type of memoir

Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat. A love letter to her family that crosses generations, continents, and cultures, Brother, I’m Dying primarily tells the intertwined stories of two men: Danticat’s father and her uncle.

Native Country of the Heart by Cherrie Moraga. The mother is a self-made woman who grew up picking cotton in California. The daughter, a passionate queer Latina feminist. Weaving the past with the present, this groundbreaking Latinx memoir about a mother-daughter relationship confronts the debilitating consequences of Alzheimer's disease.

The childhood memoir

A subset of the autobiographical memoir, the childhood memoir primarily focuses (spoiler alert!) on the author’s childhood years. Most childhood memoirs cover a range of 5 - 18 years of age, though this can differ depending on the story.

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. The groundbreaking winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, McCourt’s memoir covers the finer details of his childhood in impoverished Dublin.

Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl. Evoking his schoolboy days in the 1920s and 30s, the stories in this book shed light on themes and motifs that would play heavily in Dahl’s most beloved works: a love for sweets, a mischievous streak, and a distrust of authority figures.

The travel memoir

What happens when you put an author on a plane? Words fly!

Just kidding. While that’s perhaps not literally how the travel memoir subgenre was founded, being on the move certainly has something to do with it. Travel memoirs have been written for as long as people could traverse land — which is to say, a long time — but the modern travel narrative didn’t crystallize until the 1970s with the publication of Paul Theroux’s Great Railway Bazaar and Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia .

In a travel memoir, the author isn’t the star of the show: the place is. You can expect to find these elements in a travel memoir:

• A description of the place
• A discussion of the culture and people
• How the author experienced the place and dealt with setbacks during the journey

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Proof that memoirs don’t have to tell catastrophic stories to succeed, this book chronicles Gilbert’s post-divorce travels, inspiring a generation of self-care enthusiasts, and was adapted into a film starring Julia Roberts.

The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux. A four-month journey from London to East Asia (and back again) by train, this is the book that helped found the modern travel narrative.

The celebrity memoir

The celebrity memoir is just that: a memoir published by a celebrity. Though many celebrity memoirs are admittedly ghostwritten, the best ones give us an honest and authentic look at the “real person” behind the public figure.

Note that we define “celebrity” broadly here as anyone who is (or has been) in the public spotlight. This includes:

• Political figures
• Sports stars
• Actors and actresses

Paper Lion by George Plimpton. In 1960, the author George Plimpton joined up with the Detroit Lions to see if an ordinary man could play pro football. The answer was no, but his experience in training camp allowed him to tell the first-hand story of a team from inside the locker room.

Troublemaker by Leah Remini. The former star of TV’s The King of Queens tackles the Church of Scientology head-on, detailing her life in (and her decision to leave) the controversial religion.

It’s Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong. This is a great lesson on the way authors often write books to create their own legacy in the way they see fit. As history confirmed, Armstrong’s comeback success wasn’t entirely about the bike at all.

Now that you know what a memoir looks like, it’s time to get out your pen and paper, and write your own memoir ! And if you want even more memoir examples to keep being inspired? We’ve got you covered: here are the 30 best memoirs of the last century .

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Writing the Memoir (Moxley): Tips for Writing the Memoir

• Introduction

Tips for Writing the Memoir

• Annotated Memoirs
• Describing a Person
• Describing a Place
• Sample Topics and Essays

I.  How to Begin

A. You can start in medias res , in the middle of an anecdote, for example, that will build a character or an emotion; this "story" should not last more than one paragraph before your first-person "essay" voice needs to emerge in some direct message or reflection to your reader that then establishes your focus:  

   My mom woke me at the regular time that morning, but the strange tone of her voice told me that something was wrong. As I shook off the covers and rubbed my eyes, she quietly told me to get dressed and come into the kitchen, that she had some bad news to tell me. I began to brace myself for a shock-- I was sure that my dog had died. Soon my brothers and I were sitting on the couch together, fearing the worst, and my mother told us what was wrong. "Boys, your Aunt Rhonda is dead." (from “Aunt Rhonda”)

   Or you can start in the middle of an action , one that will set up an upcoming paragraph that will establish your focus:

I was unafraid of falling as I Ieapt from rock to rock along the quarry rim in an acid January wind; our hike had taken us along the track of a shallow, rocky stream—rather it had taken me down the middle of the stream, by whatever dry protrusions would support my seven-year-old frame.  I was proven; I was sure-footed.  I knew the place of each of my limbs and kept my balance. For the others, the footpath sufficed. My mother and father climbed with considerable effort; Greg Waugh, my godfather, led his wife Susan and sons, Daniel and Stuart, with an energy near my own.  He was tall, seeming one among the trees; the depth of the woods reflected his narrow form, but for a grey leather jacket and fading jeans, in a few thousand sapling pines and leafless oaks.  He spoke deliberately, with a rasp in his voice.  His force of being pulled the rest along.  (from “Foxwright”)

B. Start with some self-reflection that immediately establishes the focus of your essay and your voice:

Incidents, or rather accidents, as I have found, work their ways into our lives, pushing a childish, fantasy-infested state of life (we all have known) into a state of awareness much higher. Death is one concept which particularly seems to evoke what would be emotion in the disguise of confusion in the inexperienced child. The suicide of my cousin is a misfortune which, alongside the other deaths I confronted in my childhood, was thrown into the back of my mind, receiving no particular consideration in contrast to the immediate thoughts of my mind: baseball cards, birthdays, toothfairies, pogs, ice cream, and so on. Not until last night did I actually resurface the loss of my cousin Patrick. I asked myself why. Particular scenes emerged. An adoption, a seemingly parentless childhood, a divorce, but most notably, a hated father. (from “The Responsibility of the Living”)

C.   Begin with a general description of the time-frame of your memoir to create setting, atmosphere, and the mindset of the person you were at the time of this memory:  

The winter I was thirteen years old, I killed twelve squirrels, two rabbits, and a quail.  I considered this tally impressive because I wasn’t allowed into the woods with a gun until my father got home from work at 4:30, which left less than an hour of shooting light.  That was the year my father finally agreed to take me deer hunting.  He woke me the morning of Opening Day by calling my name the one time he said he would.  I pulled on a pair of long underwear, two pairs of jeans, and four or five pairs of socks.  I shoved my feet into a cheap pair of two-toned, zip-up boots my mother had bought at Pic-N-Pay.  Before I had been awake ten minutes, we were headed in my father’s Volkswagen for the steep, laurelled ridges of Green River Cove, the next county over, the magic country where deer lived. (from Tony Earley’s “Deer Season, 1974")

D.  Begin by getting in your reader’s face, focusing on your subject from the opening line (note the use of anecdote and dialogue to build this fast start):  

For the last three years Mamie had been in a nursing home in my hometown, right around the corner from my mother’s house.  All day long, over and over, she would cry “Momma, Papa” and talk with people four generations gone.  The last time I saw her, tiny and shriveled in her bed, completely blind and almost wholly deaf, she took my hand and said, “Is that the boy?  My boy always was a rascal.”  In her final lucid moment she whispered to my mother, “Put me in the ground next to Percy and close the gate behind you.  I want to go home.”  She was weeping when she died. (from Willie Morris’s “Weep No More, My Lady”)

II.  How to Proceed

  A.  Try to put distance between you and the event, even it happened last summer.  If possible, imagine a forty-year-old thinking back on the events in your essay. This technique will help you to establish your voice, one that is objective yet passionate, observant, and pleasantly self -derisive.

  B.   In one or two nights, write your memoir non-stop in what some call a “fast write,” without questioning your organization, style, or grammar.  Let the whole memory get out onto the page; let one thing lead to another (you’ll find buried memories waiting to be excavated).  At some point you will sense that you have enough written to stop and begin crafting the essay with your audience in mind.

  C.  Keep your audience in mind.  You are writing for a national audience, not people in west Nashville .  That means that you have to enjoy describing what Belle Meade Boulevard  suggests about social class, what Franklin  means to the white-flight South, what the Nashville  skyline looks like. If you insure your reader can see what you are picturing, the essay will achieve a universality because your readers can picture their own streets in yours.

   D.  After you have finished your non-stop “fast write,” determine your focus (or purpose).  Keep that focus in mind always.  If your essay is about the death of a pig, and your father is there for the death of this pig, don’t get off the track and turn the piece into a father-son essay, unless of course that’s what you want.

E.  After you’ve written some 4-5 pages of disorganized memory, begin to divide it up, determining a good place to start and whether you are going to have “parts” to the essay.  In most 4-5 page essays, there are no breaks in the writing; however, your paragraphing will signal certain transitions in time or thought or realization.

F.  By end of the first part (1-3 paragraphs), make sure your “voice” is distinct.  In the sample essays you should note how the writers create their voices to be wryly ironic, or comfortably self-mocking, or satirical, or detached-but-soon-to-become-sympathetic.  Creating “voice” is hard to teach; you have to read your own work aloud to make sure it sounds the way you want it to sound.

III.  Ways To Get the Most Out of the Memory and To Build Your Memoir

  Once you have set up the focus and are into the essay, there are a number of strategic “tricks,” or formulas, you can use to keep your essay immediate and urgent.

A.  Every place that you mention gets a sentence or two of description. Before any character in your essay can do anything, he or she has to be somewhere in which to do it.  Obviously, some places get more attention than others. Use physical details, concrete imagery, and figurative language. Avoid abstractions; think SDT ( Show, Don’t Tell ).  See Describing a Place for some help.

B.  Every character you mention needs to be described, some characters in more detail than others. A main character will require some specific detail.  Focus on the telling details of their physical description (size, shape, particular body parts, clothes, etcetera, anything that suggests what kind of person they are). "The clothes make the man" is a cliche that holds true in all writing. Again, think SDT.   See Describing a Person for some help.

C.  Let some characters talk. Set up a scene or two that showcases their characteristic phrasing.  A character's directly quoted words should do only one thing: create character. That's it.  Avoid long exchanges of dialogue unless you are using some local-color expressions to build a character or community.

D.  Build in flashbacks to create character, especially in an essay that is about a person, deceased or alive.

E.  One huge tip:  I ntersperse whole sentences of self-reflection or, when appropriate, social commentary .  Feel free to digress after an anecdote or in various places in your memoir to comment on your foibles, your family's quirks, your society, whatever. These moments create your voice, a voice that should be discriminating, incisive, wry, ironic, humorous, and plausible.

F.  Don’t fear being “personal” and somewhat confessional, showing the flaws in your own past self that, as the essay proceeds, usually leads to some realization that justifies your writing about this event, tragic or comic as it may be.  You, the writer, should be invoked by nearly every line. (In fiction, typically the writer is absent, and the story is all that matters.  In non-fiction, the writer is always present.)

G.  Humor is a key element to all essays, even darker ones.

H.  Remember always that you are the wise man in the essay, someone who is imparting some wisdom of existence to your audience. This wisdom could reveal itself in a memoir that playfully makes fun of your own naivete or in a serious piece about suicide.

IV.  About Style and Grammar

A.  Observe the rules of sentence structure unless you find a strategic place to use a rhetorical fragment.

B.   Write in conversational, not formal, English.  For example, feel free to end a sentence with a preposition:  “Going shirtless around the house was something my grandmother wouldn’t put up with.”   Or write “Like I said . . . ,” instead of the proper “As I said . . . .”

C.  Avoid such formal transitions as “however,” “thus,” “moreover,” and “therefore.”

D.  Use colloquial language wherever appropriate.

E.  Use the first person.

F.  Write in whatever tense is appropriate.

G.  Use contractions.  

H.  Use many paragraphs, even one-line paragraphs, for effect and delivery.

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Blogs / Non-fiction / How to Write a Memoir: 10 Tips for Sharing Your Story

Perfect Your Storytelling

How to write a memoir: 10 tips for sharing your story.

What happens when a writer wants to tell a true story about themselves? They become the protagonist and fill the chapters with scenes from their own lives. They share their personal character arc and the life lessons it imparts. That is a memoir.

What is a Personal Memoir?

The term memoir comes from the French word “mémoire,” which means memory or remembrance, reflecting the personal and reflective nature of the genre. 

Memoirs can cover a wide range of topics, from childhood memories to professional accomplishments, and they often include emotional and introspective insights from significant moments, relationships, and events.

Memoir vs. Autobiography

A memoir focuses on a small slice, an event or series of related events, sometimes bound by theme, that have occurred in the writer’s life. They deliver a message. 

An autobiography is the whole pie. It’s a linear, usually chronological accounting of a person’s entire life, typically written by someone with fame or prominence. For example, someone who has a high profile within their realm or beyond like a movie star, a politician, an athlete, or even a criminal.

While we all like to think we’ve led interesting lives, it’s unlikely that interest would prevail beyond our circle of family and friends. But everyday people have tales that can and should be told.

What to Include in a Memoir

When deciding what to write about, consider the 5 W’s: Who/What/Why/Where/When. 

Who Am I Writing About? 

The obvious answer is you. Who makes up your cast of characters?  Friends, enemies, lovers, relatives, co-workers, your favorite teacher from sixth grade, the cop who arrested you, or the doctor who treated your cancer? 

What Statement Am I Making?

Being able to reduce your book’s point to a statement, belief, or argument gives you focus and helps you evaluate it for its potential resonance. If you’re looking for revenge by sharing someone’s dirty laundry, it’s best to rethink your strategy. 

A story about bringing someone else down rarely wins over the hearts of your readers. But if you want to illuminate the biggest life lesson you gleaned from your experiences to help others, by all means, write about it.

Why Am I Writing?

From an external standpoint, your “why” may involve recognition, validation, and income. These are all valid reasons. 

The internal “why” may be harder to pinpoint. It could range from wanting to share what you’ve learned, to spare people from suffering like you did, to telling a story that touches people and helps them understand their own lives better. 

Providing knowledge, comfort, encouragement, and inspiration to others appeals to our human need of finding meaning in the things that happen to us.

External Reasons:

• Gain notoriety
• Document family history
• Capture memories
• Establish my writing presence

Internal Reasons:

• Tell a personal story
• Discover the meaning of life
• Share knowledge
• Provide inspiration
• Validate myself as a writer
• Get healing through telling my story

Where Did My Story Take Place?

Even if you grew up in Chicago, you can’t take for granted that everyone knows what it’s like to experience life in the Windy City. 

A small town in Texas or a quaint village in the English countryside also require enough description for your reader to feel like they’re experiencing it with you, the beauty, the horror, and the quirks.

When Did This Happen?

Anchoring your story in a time frame is important for your reader. Whether you’re a child of the 70s or Generation Z, when your story takes place is important and you need to place your readers in that time. Were you a child, a college student, or about to retire? 

Writing a memoir does not involve inventing a world or characters out of thin air. It should be based on truth. However, truth is the eye of the beholder. 

Picture a crime scene. Police interview the witnesses. Each gives a different account. Why? They might be standing in different locations so what they could see varied from the others. Their perspectives may differ because one witness thinks the victim resembles the neighborhood bully from their childhood. Another thinks every stranger is a criminal. Their life experiences shape the way they view everyday occurrences. 

As we recall the events of our life, many things can color our memories like trauma, illness, prejudices, and even the simple passage of time. What did our memory choose to keep and why? This doesn’t mean we are being untruthful, rather, it is simply our version of the truth that we’re telling. Don’t feel constrained by your perspective. Embrace it.

How to Start a Memoir

Write what comes to mind. You can decide later what you’ll keep and what you’ll cut. Try to keep it related to the specific event, situation, or experience. Many memoir writing coaches suggest simply tapping into memories and writing them down. 

Some people like to write a long, detailed account of events while others jot down a few lines. Some like to produce snippets in chronological order while others write whatever comes to mind. What’s most important is to have enough content to choose from when forming your story. This doesn’t mean writing your life story. (Save that for when you’re making the talk show circuit celebrating your worldwide success.) 

Once you’re ready to write your first draft, begin by writing a simple summation of your story, just like you would for a novel. Develop a one-sentence premise of your memoir. Remember, make it about one specific situation and what you learned from it. 

If you’re having trouble, imagine writing a skeleton blurb for a novel. Who is the protagonist? You! What shook your world up? How did you respond? In what ways did your life change after going through this situation? 

Different Types of Memoirs

Now that you’ve gotten started, decide what kind of story you’re telling. Here are the more common types of memoirs:

• Traditional Memoirs: These are retrospective, recounting significant life events and providing a comprehensive exploration of the author’s experiences and emotions.
• Childhood Memoirs: These transport readers back to the author’s formative years, capturing innocence, challenges, and the profound impact of early experiences, tapping into the universal human longing to understand one’s roots.
• Coming-of-Age Memoirs: These navigate the tumultuous waters of adolescence, exploring themes of self-discovery, forming one’s identity, and the trials of growing up.
• Transformative Journey Memoirs: These delve into pivotal moments or journeys that changed the author’s life, resulting in personal transformation through travel, self-discovery, or overcoming adversity.
• Historical Memoirs: These intertwine personal experiences with historical events. Using a backdrop of wars, revolutions, cultural shifts, or other significant periods, authors share their perspectives using a unique lens through which readers can understand historical events.
• Confessional Memoirs: These are deeply personal and often raw stories revealing intimate details, vulnerabilities, and struggles, inviting readers into their emotional landscapes.
• Educational Memoirs: These combine personal stories with lessons learned. Authors share wisdom and insights gained from their experiences, aiming to offer inspiration or guidance to others.
• Retrospective Memoirs: These look back on a specific time or event in the author’s life, offering reflections, insights, and a sense of newfound understanding and closure.
• Thematic Memoirs: These memoirs weave together different stories and events from the author’s life to illustrate a central theme, such as love, loss, or betrayal. 
• Chronological Memoirs: These tell the story from start to finish, providing a linear narrative of the author’s journey for that portion of their life.

Within each of these types of memoirs, there is an external story and an internal story. The external story focuses on the events themselves, such as surviving war, abuse, or tragedy. The internal story reflects the growth of the character in response to those events.

What to Write a Memoir About

Consider these things when writing your memoir:

• Who is your book for: Having a target audience will help you focus on the message you want to share.
• Write with honesty and authenticity : Being vulnerable can make your story more relatable and compelling. Only you know what it was like to take your journey. Tell it with the emotion of the triumphs and challenges you experienced.
• Show, Don’t Tell : Though it might tempt you to merely lay out the events in a journalistic way, strive to show what happened with dialogue, vivid descriptions, and sensory details. Bring to life the people, places, and events as you experienced them.
• Character Development : Even if you are the only character in your story, you need to show who you are to your readers. Develop yourself and others in your memoir with depth, showing motivations, strengths, weaknesses, and growth.
• Prose : Pay attention to the craft of writing. Most memoirs are written from a first-person point of view in order to establish a connection with readers. It is possible to write from a third-person point of view, but it may create a more objective or detached perspective. It may be suitable if your story involves more than just you as the protagonist, such as siblings whose experiences are intertwined. You’ll also decide which tense to use. Be consistent. Watch your pacing and narrative flow.

What Is Good Memoir Structure?

While a memoir involves writing about personal events and recollections, the story still requires the same solid story structure as a novel. 

It’s true that in a novel there can be three points of view—the author, the perspective from which the story is told, and the main character or protagonist who lives the story. 

In memoirs, these three are one and the same. This presents a critical lesson: a memoirist must determine what they know and how they should reveal it to the reader.

Another important point to consider is that of truth. Remember that one person’s account may vary from another and yet remain truthful due to varying perceptions. You may not remember the exact words exchanged in a conversation, but the gist of the message should remain.

Memoir Writing Tips

Before getting to the structure, consider these tips:

• Narrow your focus: Remember, you’re not writing an autobiography. You’re focusing on one moment or series of moments around a theme.
• Write about more than the story: Yes, the focus is on an event or related events, but consider the other players—the characters, the time, and the setting. Share interesting facts about them in your writing to bring vivid details to life.
• Use fictional elements: While your memoir is a true story, you can and may need to embellish it, depending on how vivid your memory is. When focusing on other characters, locations, and dialogue, create intriguing details about them to evoke emotions in your readers. This will not compromise the integrity of your story; it will keep your reader mesmerized.
• Be careful with pacing: Determine the rhythm of your story. Some events may need more detailed exploration, while others can be summarized to maintain the flow.
• Have a narrative arc: Your memoir should have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Memoir Structure

It makes sense to approach your memoir’s structure like that of a novel. It needs the following components:

• Opening Image: Start with a compelling hook or scene that establishes the setting, time, and key characters.
• Setup/Exposition: These scenes show what your ordinary world is like, setting the tone before changes come. It helps to establish what’s at stake for you.
• Inciting Incident: Introduce the main conflict that sets your story into motion. What happens that shakes up your world and causes you to react?
• Plot Point 1: At this stage, you know what your goal is, but you’re not thrilled about chasing it. Since you’re in reactionary mode, your actions may not be related to achieving the goal.
• Middle: The middle marks the point where you become proactive to the goal. This means you’ve learned the rules, and you can now make plans to go after the goal. No longer just accepting your fate, you’re finding the strength to deal with the obstacles in your path. How do you grapple with the challenges, make decisions, and demonstrate personal growth?
• Plot Point 2: It is the low point in your story where it seems all is lost. Have your efforts to reach your goal resulted in failure or brought more hardship? Were you lacking knowledge or had incorrect information that led you to make unwise choices?
• Climax: This is where you achieve (or fail to achieve) your story’s goal. The tension, conflict, and emotional upheaval reach their peak in this scene and offer your reader the payoff to the story’s promise. This is your moment of triumph, crisis, self-realization, or transformation.
• Resolution: Wrap up by reflecting on lessons learned, personal growth achieved, and the impact of the events on your life. You may offer insights or wisdom gained from your experiences.

Memoir Examples

Here are some highly regarded books which offer guidance on writing memoirs:

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

Mary Karr, a celebrated memoirist, shares her wisdom and experience in this book, offering theoretical insights and practical advice on crafting compelling memoirs while reflecting on her writing journey.

Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art by Judith Barrington

This book provides a comprehensive guide to writing memoirs, covering topics such as memory, structure, voice, and revision.

Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir by Sue William Silverman

Sue William Silverman draws upon her own personal and professional experience to provide a practical guide for transforming life into words that matter. 

The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life by Marion Roach Smith

This concise and engaging book emphasizes the importance of storytelling and personal voice in memoir writing.

Your Life As Story by Tristine Rainer

Tristine Rainer fills her book with examples from renowned writers and demonstrates techniques for crafting character portraits, remembering forgotten memories, unifying a story with thematic conflict, and employing fictional devices such as dialogue and humor.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

A classic offering advice on writing and life, encouraging writers to take it one step at a time and to find humor in the process. It’s a valuable resource for writers of all genres.

Naked, Drunk, and Writing: Shed Your Inhibitions and Craft a Compelling Memoir or Personal Essay by Adair Lara

Lara guides writers through the process of writing their stories with authenticity and courage, helping them to craft a narrative that resonates with readers.

Great Memoirs to Read

If you want to be inspired, here are some critically acclaimed memoirs to read:

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Walls’ memoir chronicles her unconventional upbringing by deeply dysfunctional parents, exploring themes of resilience, family, and forgiveness.

Educated by Tara Westover

This memoir tells the story of Westover’s self-transformation from growing up in a strict, isolated household in rural Idaho to eventually pursuing higher education at Cambridge and Harvard.

The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr

Karr’s memoir offers a candid and often humorous account of her turbulent childhood in East Texas, marked by her dysfunctional family and her own struggles with addiction.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

This memoir is a touching tale of growing up Korean-American, dealing with family bonds, cultural identity, and grief.

H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald

Part memoir, part nature writing, MacDonald’s book explores her experience of grief and healing following her father’s death, intertwined with her journey of training a goshawk.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier 

A testament to the resilience of the human spirit, Beah’s story of his transformation from an innocent child to a child soldier during Sierra Leone’s civil war recounts his harrowing experiences.

Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp

A powerful narrative of Knapp’s love affair with alcohol, her struggle with addiction, and her courageous path to recovery.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Gilbert explores themes of spirituality, love, and the quest for inner peace on a year-long journey of self-discovery following a divorce.

Conclusion on Writing a Memoir

Writers are passionate about telling the stories they’ve created in their minds. Memoir writers have lived their stories and want to share their messages of hope and inspiration or perhaps experience a catharsis of their own. In any case, memoir is a valuable genre worth considering for any writer.

Essay Papers Writing Online

Learn the art of crafting a captivating and reflective memoir essay to chronicle your life’s journey.

Our lives are an endless journey, a unique tapestry of experiences, emotions, and memories woven delicately together. Each person’s story is a precious gem, waiting to be discovered and shared. As we traverse through the chapters of life, we often encounter moments that leave an indelible mark on our souls. These moments become the heart and soul of our memoir – a testament to our existence, a testament to the human experience.

But how do we transform these fragments of our lives into a captivating memoir essay? How do we effectively convey our thoughts, emotions, and the essence of our being? Crafting a memoir essay is an art, an alchemy that blends vulnerability with profound self-reflection, and the result is a narrative that resonates deeply with readers.

Embracing the role of a storyteller, a memoirist opens the gates to their inner world, revealing their triumphs, struggles, and intimate moments with raw honesty. This profound act of self-disclosure leads to a connection that transcends time, culture, and personal differences. By bravely sharing their truths, memoirists allow readers to step into their shoes, to walk a mile in their journey, and to gain new perspectives on life’s intricacies.

However, crafting a memoir essay goes beyond mere storytelling. It requires a delicate balance between presenting accurate accounts of one’s experiences and infusing them with the illuminating power of reflection. It’s not just about relaying events; it’s about capturing the essence of those events, extracting meaning and wisdom from the tapestry of our existence. Through introspection, we can uncover the underlying themes, lessons, and personal transformations that emerge from the chaotic symphony of our lives.

As we embark on the journey of writing a memoir essay, we embark on a voyage of self-discovery. It is a process of peeling back the layers of our experiences, examining the emotions that have shaped us, and finding the courage to confront the truths that reside in the depths of our being. It is through this voyage that we unlock the potential to touch the hearts and minds of our readers, to inspire and leave an indelible mark that transcends the boundaries of time.

Discover the Power of Your Personal Narrative

Explore the incredible potential of your own unique life story through the art of storytelling. Your personal narrative is an invaluable tool that can inspire, educate, and empower both yourself and others. By sharing your experiences, perspectives, and lessons learned, you can connect with others on a deeper level and create a lasting impact.

Through the power of words, you have the ability to transport your readers to different times and places, allowing them to live vicariously through your experiences. Your personal narrative holds the potential to ignite their imagination, evoke strong emotions, and provoke thoughtful reflection.

Memoir writing is not merely a chronological retelling of events; it is a transformative journey that enables you to uncover hidden truths, gain insights, and find meaning in your own life. By delving into your memories and organizing your thoughts on paper, you can gain a new perspective and a deeper understanding of yourself and your personal journey.

Moreover, your personal narrative has the power to bridge gaps and foster connections. By sharing your unique story, you can create a sense of belonging, empathy, and understanding among individuals who may have had vastly different experiences. Your story can challenge stereotypes, break down barriers, and promote dialogue and inclusivity.

Writing your personal narrative is both a creative and introspective endeavor. It allows you to not only connect with others but also to connect with yourself. Through the process of self-reflection and self-expression, you can unearth hidden passions and talents, find healing and closure, and ultimately discover the strength and resilience within yourself.

So, embrace the power of your personal narrative. It is a gift that only you can share with the world. Write your story, be authentic, and let your voice be heard. You never know whose life you may touch, inspire, or change through the power of your words.

Uncover the unique story within you and explore its transformative potential

Discover the hidden narrative embedded within your own experiences and explore how it can shape and transform your perspective on life. Each individual possesses a story waiting to be told, a tale that is distinctly their own. By delving into the depths of your personal history, you embark on a journey of self-discovery that can have a profound impact on your growth and personal development.

Through the process of introspection and reflection, you uncover the significant moments and encounters that have shaped you into the person you are today. By exploring the details of these experiences and examining their impact, you gain a deeper understanding of yourself and your place in the world. Your unique story holds the power to transform not only your own life but also the lives of others.

As you delve deeper into the layers and intricacies of your narrative, you may find unexpected connections and themes that resonate with a broader audience. Your story has the potential to touch the hearts of others who have had similar experiences or who can relate to the emotions you have felt. By sharing your journey, you create a space for empathy, understanding, and connection.

Uncovering the unique story within you allows you to realize the resilience and strength you possess. It is through sharing your vulnerabilities and triumphs that you inspire others to embrace their own journeys and find their own transformative potential. Your story becomes a source of empowerment for not only yourself but also for those who are fortunate enough to hear it.

So, take the time to explore your personal narrative, to discover the unique story that lies within you. Embrace the transformative potential that awaits as you share your experiences, insights, and lessons learned. Your story has the power to inspire, enlighten, and impact others. Unleash its power and let it guide you on your path of self-discovery and growth.

Craft Your Memoir Essay with Care

When it comes to creating your memoir essay, it’s essential to approach the process with thoughtfulness and precision. Writing a memoir is not simply about recounting the events of your life; it’s about capturing the essence of your experiences and sharing them with others in a meaningful way.

As you embark on the journey of crafting your memoir, take the time to reflect on the significance of your story. What themes and emotions are at its core? What lessons have you learned? By understanding the deeper meaning behind your experiences, you can ensure that your memoir resonates with readers on a profound level.

Another crucial aspect of crafting your memoir essay is the use of vivid and evocative language. The goal is to transport your readers into your world, allowing them to see, hear, feel, and experience everything alongside you. Utilize sensory details, imagery, and powerful metaphors to bring your story to life.

While it’s important to be honest and authentic in your memoir, it’s equally crucial to consider the impact your words may have on others. Be mindful of the people who are a part of your story and consider their perspectives. Strive for fairness and compassion as you navigate the delicate balance between truth and sensitivity.

Lastly, structure and organization are key components of a well-crafted memoir essay. Consider how best to arrange your narrative, whether it be chronologically, thematically, or through a series of vignettes. Experiment with different structures to find the one that best serves your story and engages your readers.

In conclusion, crafting a memoir essay requires careful attention to detail and a deep understanding of the story you want to tell. By approaching the process with care, you can create a memoir that not only captures your unique experiences but also resonates with readers on a profound level.

Tips and techniques to create a compelling and authentic memoir

Discovering the art of crafting a compelling and authentic memoir is an endeavor that requires equal parts reflection and storytelling prowess. To convey your unique journey and experiences in a memoir that captivates readers, it’s important to consider a few key tips and techniques.

By implementing these tips and techniques, you can create a memoir that not only captures your unique story but also engages and resonates with readers. Remember to stay true to yourself, trust your voice, and be open to the transformative power of sharing your life experiences through the art of memoir writing.

Find Your Writing Voice

Discovering your unique writing voice is essential when it comes to writing a compelling memoir essay. It is the distinctive tone, style, and perspective that set your storytelling apart and create a deep connection with your readers. When you find your writing voice, it brings authenticity and authenticity to your words, allowing your story to resonate with others.

One way to find your writing voice is by exploring different writing styles and experimenting with various techniques. Try reading memoirs written by different authors and notice how each one has their own distinct voice. Pay attention to the use of language, sentence structure, and the overall tone of the piece. Reflect on what resonates with you and consider incorporating elements of those styles into your own writing.

Another way to find your writing voice is by embracing vulnerability and being true to yourself. Your voice is a reflection of who you are, your experiences, and the emotions that shape your story. Don’t be afraid to share your thoughts, fears, and insecurities in your writing. Honesty and authenticity are powerful tools that can help you connect with your readers on a deeper level and make your story more relatable.

Additionally, it’s important to trust yourself and have confidence in your writing. Everyone has a unique story to tell, and your voice is valid and valuable. Write from the heart and trust your instincts. Avoid comparing yourself to others, as this can hinder your ability to fully embrace your own voice. Remember that your story is unique and deserves to be told in your own words.

In conclusion, finding your writing voice is a journey of self-discovery and exploration. It requires experimentation, vulnerability, and trust. Embrace your unique perspective, be true to yourself, and allow your voice to shine through in your memoir essay. By doing so, you will create a powerful and compelling narrative that will captivate your readers and leave a lasting impact.

Explore different styles and techniques to express your true self in writing

Discovering your true self and expressing it through writing is a deeply personal and powerful experience. There are countless styles and techniques that can be used to convey your unique story and capture the essence of who you are.

One approach to expressing your true self in writing is through the use of vivid and evocative language. By carefully selecting your words and crafting descriptive sentences, you can paint a vivid picture in the minds of your readers, allowing them to experience the emotions and sensations that you felt during the events of your life.

Another technique to express yourself authentically in writing is through the use of personal anecdotes and stories. Sharing specific memories and experiences can provide insight into your character, values, and beliefs. By weaving these stories into your memoir essay, you can create a stronger connection with your audience and allow them to relate to your unique journey.

Additionally, experimenting with different literary styles can help you find the best way to express your true self. Whether you prefer a straightforward and factual approach or a lyrical and poetic style, exploring different writing techniques can uncover new ways to convey your thoughts and emotions.

An essential aspect of expressing your true self in writing is honesty and vulnerability. By being open and transparent about your experiences, thoughts, and feelings, you can create a genuine connection with your readers. This vulnerability allows them to empathize with your story and encourages them to reflect on their own lives.

Ultimately, exploring different styles and techniques to express your true self in writing is a personal journey. It requires self-reflection, experimentation, and a willingness to share your authentic self with the world. Embrace the process and allow your true voice to shine through your memoir essay.

Structure Your Memoir for Maximum Impact

Crafting a well-structured memoir is crucial in order to captivate readers and convey your unique story effectively. How you organize your memoir can greatly impact how it resonates with readers, allowing them to fully immerse themselves in your experiences and emotions. In this section, we will explore various techniques and strategies to structure your memoir for maximum impact.

• Chronological Order: One common approach to structuring a memoir is to organize events in chronological order. This allows readers to follow along with the progression of your life story, from the beginning to the end. By presenting events in the order they occurred, you can create a sense of anticipation and build tension as the story unfolds.
• Thematic Structure: Alternatively, you can choose to structure your memoir thematically. This involves organizing your story around specific themes or topics that are relevant to your experiences. For example, if your memoir focuses on overcoming adversity, you can group events and anecdotes that highlight your journey of resilience and personal growth.
• Flashbacks and Foreshadowing: Incorporating flashbacks and foreshadowing can add depth and complexity to your memoir. Flashbacks allow you to delve into past events that shaped your story, providing context and insight into your character’s development. Foreshadowing, on the other hand, hints at future events or outcomes, creating suspense and keeping readers engaged.
• Emotional Arc: Consider structuring your memoir based on the emotional arc of your story. This involves carefully mapping out the emotional highs and lows throughout your narrative, ensuring that they are effectively conveyed to your readers. By capturing the full range of emotions you experienced, you can create a more impactful and relatable memoir.

Remember, the structure you choose should align with the overall message and purpose of your memoir. Experiment with different approaches and find the one that best showcases your story and resonates with your readers. A well-structured memoir has the power to leave a lasting impact and inspire others with your unique journey.

Guide your readers through your narrative with a well-structured framework

Effectively leading your readers through your memoir essay requires a carefully constructed framework that provides a clear path for them to follow. By organizing your story in a logical and coherent manner, you can ensure that your readers stay engaged and connected to the narrative.

One way to achieve this is by establishing a strong introductory paragraph that captures the attention of your audience. Use vivid language and compelling storytelling techniques to pique their curiosity and set the tone for the rest of the essay. This introductory paragraph should serve as a guidepost, signaling to the reader what lies ahead and captivating their interest from the very beginning.

Once you have successfully engaged your readers, it is important to maintain their interest by presenting your story in a well-organized structure. Consider the key events and experiences that shaped your narrative and arrange them in a logical order, either chronologically or thematically. This will help your readers to follow your story and understand the development and progression of your experiences.

As you guide your readers through your memoir essay, it is essential to provide sufficient context and background information. This may involve explaining the significance of certain events, introducing important characters, or providing historical, cultural, or personal context to enhance understanding. By offering these details, you can ensure that your readers fully comprehend the nuances and complexities of your story.

In addition to a well-structured framework, it is crucial to consider the emotional journey of your readers. The use of descriptive language, sensory details, and emotional appeal can help readers connect on a deeper level with your story. By evoking their emotions, you can create a more impactful and memorable reading experience.

In conclusion, guiding your readers through your memoir essay with a well-organized framework is essential for capturing and maintaining their attention. By crafting an engaging introduction, organizing your story in a logical manner, providing context, and appealing to the emotions of your readers, you can create a narrative that captivates and resonates with your audience.

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10 memoir title ideas and why they work so well

Sometimes, memoir titles come to you in a flash of inspiration, sometimes they need to be painfully extracted, one tortuous word after another. Sometimes, titles come before books. Sometimes, they only make themselves known to you after you’ve finished writing.

In this article, we’re going to review a range of memoir titles, and give you some prompts for coming up with memoir title ideas for your own books.

Good memoir titles should entice or intrigue the reader, evoke a sense or spirit of the book, and give readers a hint as to the tone of the story they’re going to read. A good memoir title can help sell a book, a bad one can sink it.

So how do you come up with a good memoir title for your book?

Good memoir titles come in many shapes and sizes

From snappy single-word memoir titles, to fragments of phrases, and snippets of conversation, there is no one-size-fits-all. There are occasional trends towards certain types of title – single-word titles ( Becoming, Arranged, Ghosted, Educated ) have been big, but the autobiography and memoir market has space for all kinds of titles. So don’t worry about trying to fit your title into a particular style.

To help you think up the best and most appropriate title for your memoir, here are some good memoir titles, grouped into types, drawn from books published in the last few years.

Single word memoir titles

There’s a trend for single word memoir titles, like Educated (Tara Westover), Toast (Nigel Slater), Redeemable (Erwin Jones), Stumped (Richard Harrison) and the most famous one-word memoir title of recent times, Becoming by Michelle Obama.

If you’re considering single word memoir titles, consider using active verbs like fighting, running, winning to give that sense of action and forward motion.

The ‘I told you I could eat a frog’ type memoir titles

Fragments of speech drawn from your manuscript can make for interesting titles.

One of my favourite examples of this approach is No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy (Mark Hodkinson). It’s a very elegant example of how a few carefully chosen words can really sum up the ethos, feel, and intentions of a whole book.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson is the question her mother asked her when she learnt that her daughter was a lesbian. Again, that one line of speech sums up so much about that book. Just like fiction, memoirs often hinge on a point of conflict, and that question provides conflict in spades.

The familiar expression (or variation on a familiar expression) memoir titles

A popular device is to take a well-worn expression or saying as inspiration. Often, these kinds of titles subvert our expectations.

Just Ignore Him by Alan Davies suggests how a seemingly innocuous phrase can have a darker subtext.

Must Try Harder by Paula McGuire takes that old remark, beloved of school teachers, and uses it as a springboard for a book about how she fought against mediocrity.

Puntastic memoir titles

Me:Moir (by Vic Reeves, born James Moir) could just be the best title for a memoir of all time.

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher is a nice play on wishful thinking.

The confrontational title

A shocking or confrontational title will make potential readers notice your book.

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jenette McCurdy is an arresting, confrontational, title that pulls no punches. The title leaves readers in no doubt that this is going to be an uncompromising memoir, and coupled with the cover image, a blackly comical one.

Positive and aspirational memoir titles

Many writers use their memoirs to show how they’ve overcome some trial or adversity, and in doing so, write with one eye on helping their readers. If you’re writing an unashamedly positive book, then you need an equally positive or aspirational title to go with it.

Some good examples:

Find A Way by Diana Nyad

Forward by Abby Wambach

Yes Please by Amy Poelher

And how about A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee’s Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival  by Melissa Fleming. It’s a biography, not a memoir, but how beautiful is that title?

Intriguing memoir titles…

It’s hard to beat Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finkelstein as a title that conjures up so many questions that you want to dip in and find out the answers straightaway.

Clickbait memoir titles

Stephen Moffatt, the writer of the BBCs Sherlock and Doctor Who talked about slutty episode titles that drew viewers in. It can be a good approach to memoirs too.

I’m going to nominate a book I worked on called Sex, Suicide and Serotonin (Debbie Hampton) in this category, for obvious reasons.

The defining moment

Some stories are all leading up to one event, or inspired by the ramification of an event. In those cases, it makes sense to use that event as the basis of your title. Some books that do that include:

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Play on the contrasts

You can sum up the whole expanse of your memoir’s emotional or topical range by bringing out the extremes in your title. The expression ‘rags to riches’ is the obvious example of that kind of thinking.

Some memoirs that play with contrasts in their title are:

A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz

Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz

Memoir titles: the suffix and sub-title

Very often memoir writers will add the explanatory suffix – a memoir – to make it clear what a reader is going to get.

As well as the suffix, some memoirists add a sub-title to give extra context and meaning to the title. If you’ve chosen a subtly engaging memoir title, then your sub-title can give a bit more context.

Let’s say you’re going to call your memoir, Drowning Not Waving , you could add in an explanatory sub-title: Reflections of a Frazzled Father !

Or perhaps you want to write a book about surviving a difficult childhood. You don’t want to write a conventional ‘misery memoir’ but your publisher thinks that being known as a misery memoir might make your book more marketable. You can use your sub-title to hit that part of the market without compromising your intentions. For example: Unbroken: Not Just Another Misery Memoir .

Love, Interrupted by Simon Thomas features the sub-title: Navigating Grief One Day at a Time . The job of the sub-title in this case is to give potential readers a sense of what the book is about. Anyone hoping for a memoir going into detail on his days on Blue Peter or as a Sky Sports presenter will appreciate straightaway that this is a very different kind of book.

Another benefit of the memoir sub-title is that it gives you some key words to play with, which is useful for anyone trying to promote and market a book.

Memoir title ideas often come late in into the writing process

If the perfect memoir title hasn’t come to you before or during the writing process, don’t panic.

It makes sense that it should be easier to think up a title after you’ve finished writing your manuscript. At the start of the process, you have the freedom of knowing your book can be anything. But that freedom can be more of a distraction. Generally, when you work out a structure and start to shape the book, you’ll impose limitations on it, which will help you see the core of the book more clearly. And the clearer your vision gets, the easier it will be to come up with interesting and appropriate memoir title ideas.  

You may also find that if you started out with an idea of what you wanted your memoir title to be, it doesn’t actually fit the book you’ve written. So don’t be afraid of abandoning a title if it doesn’t work for you anymore.

Some prompts to help you come up with more memoir title ideas

Some writers rely on ‘free writing’ – they start with a blank page and write whatever comes into their head when they think about their life story. If that doesn’t give them ready-made titles, it can spark ideas that lead to titles.

If you’re still struggling to come up with a good memoir title, here are a few more ideas:

• As you were writing, did any themes loom larger for you than others? Any turns of phrase that kept cropping up?
• What do people always say about you? Are there any particular words or phrases they use to describe you? Could one of those work as your title?
• Could you go with a comic contrast, e.g. Punctual (for somebody who is known for being late).
• Are there are any things that people have said to you – or about you – that have really inspired you, challenged you, infuriated you, or spurred you on?

Too many memoir title ideas?

If you end up with too many good ideas for your memoir title, test your title ideas out with your friends and family. Is there a consensus on which titles work better than others? Do you find that, as you suggest the ideas, you start to feel more passionate about one of them?

If you still can’t decide, do a mock up of your cover, with the different title options. Sometimes, seeing an idea on the page can really help clarify your thoughts.

And don’t forget to Google your preferred title, to make sure it’s not already out there. Having a book with the same title as one that’s already been published isn’t very helpful when it comes to publicising and promoting your book, and selling it.

Let’s write the memoir, then worry about what to call it!

If you’re confident you’ve got a life story you want to tell, I’m confident we’ll find the perfect memoir title for it. Get in touch via my contact form if you’re looking for a ghostwriter to write your memoir – and we’ll give it the title that fits.

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• A Letter From Paris

How to write a memoir essay

If you’ve been reading my emails and posts for awhile you’ll know my favourite strategy for getting a book deal. Why is it my favourite strategy? Because it’s empowering! Let’s face it, publishing can be slow, elitist, confusing, and secretive!

My favourite strategy for getting a book published is not…

• Spending five years on your manuscript,
• Spending two years on your book proposal….
• Paying for endless critiques or constantly workshopping either of the two….

My favourite strategy is to leverage a published non-fiction piece – say, a blog post, an essay or an article – and turn it into a book deal.

This is how I found an agent and publisher for A Letter From Paris , it’s how dozens of authors I know have secured incredible book deals. You also earn money (if you pitch to a paying publication), improve your writing skills, build your platform and make impressive connections, learn a lot, and more.

Publishing a non-fiction piece either in a top publication or even a lesser-known outlet is also a great way to boost your writing profile (AKA that dreaded thing called ‘platform’ for the introverts among us!), gauge interest in your memoir topic or particular threads of the story, improve your google-ability (yes this IS a thing – be assured any agent or editor will google you before they do anything else!), add fantastic clips and extra material to your book proposal , finesse your story and improve your writing skills.

So how do you write a memoir essay?

In this post I’m going to give you the key points you need to remember to write a memoir essay – this is super important if you’re hoping that it will lead to a book deal for your memoir.

1: Clarify your Hook

The most important thing you need to get right for your memoir essay is also the most important thing you need in a book-length memoir: a strong hook.

Put simply, a hook is something unique, unusual, contrasting, strange or compelling about your specific personal story. I’ve talked about the hook in many of my blogs and webinars, but really, your hook is that part of your story that your friends say “WTF?” when you explain that the same day you lost your dog and your husband, you won the lottery.

It’s that part of your story that beggars belief but also elicits intrigue from your audience. It raises questions and interest.

Of course, you may not have lost your dog and your husband but also won the lottery on the same day, but the most human experiences can be given a strong hook. Find a common experience – right now, it’s the global pandemic. Throw in something unique to contend with or to assert: For example – you were on your second date when the lockdown was announced, and suddenly you had to decide whether to move in together or risk breaking the law or breaking up.

See what I mean? Practise finding your story hook by talking about your story with friends. What do they find most compelling? What is the question at the heart of your hook? You will spend the rest of the essay or article or series of blog posts exploring this.

Tip : Don’t just say “the essay is about my mother.” Or – “the essay is about my hunt for a house”. There has to be some kind of contrast. Even in a lyrical, prosaic essay, you need to explore the internal grapplings with something  – well, gripping.

Bonus tip: Start observing yourself when you watch a movie – how is the beginning of the story presented? How quickly do you learn the hook? Usually, it’s right, front and centre. For example: The Bourne Identity – Jason Bourne wakes on a boat in the mediterranean with amnesia, bullets in his body….  We have all these questions with a strong hook, we want to continue with the story…

2: Include both an inner and outer journey

Christopher Vogler in one of my favourite writing books, The Writer’s Journey   says:

“Good stories show two journeys, outer and inner…”

When I read a compelling memoir essay or article, I’m struck by how the narrator weaves the inner journey with what’s going on in their physical or outer world, and how the two reflect and build upon eachother. Have you read this essay by Lauren Hough ? What’s so human, and so compelling (and by the way, it led to a book deal for her forthcoming memoir from Vintage!), are the contrasts between her physical and working environment (being a “cable guy”) and the internal life she leads: left-leaning, queer, empathetic… These contrasts keep you reading (as well as the vivid examples she gives!). The characters she meets in her job (external) show who she is and what she believes (internal). Do you see what I mean?

Coming back to the hook element – it’s not enough to ‘explain’ something that happened to you – eg. I did this, I went here, I felt like this…. Plenty of these pieces get published. They’re clickbait, they’re quickly-forgotten, and you don’t want them on your clip list. Instead you need to deep-dive into how the external influenced the internal – to show those two journeys, inner and outer… To explore your own empathy, if you will.

Tip: Use the outer to provoke the inner. What do I mean? If you’re writing a story about meeting your real father for the first time at age 19 in a dive bar in New Orleans, relate the external reality of being in New Orleans with why and how you came to be meeting your father there…

3: Only include what’s relevant

I’ll come back to this, but a key pointer to an early versus a later draft is including relevant material. Essays need to be clean and concise – you don’t have an entire chapter to introduce a character, you have a few sentences or a paragraph. Even in longform essays, the story needs to be relatively tight. So, if your essay is about meeting your father in New Orleans (as the above example suggests), only include anecdotes, references, observations and material that relates to said meeting or how you dealt with said meeting.

Tip: Often (always?) you need to write out a whole heap of irrelevant material before you can get rid of it. You need to ‘write’ your way into the story. That’s fine! But make sure you leave it for a couple of days so you can assess what needs to go, when you come back to edit it.

4: End on a summary and/or show a clear transformation

The most important part in a memoir essay is that you show some sort of transformation in your character or point-of-view or change from beginning to end of the story. While you might be exploring a topic, question or theme in your story, you need to show that you, as a character, have changed or at the very least learnt and reflected from your journey. If it’s a non-fiction article, the ending will generally be a summary of what you’ve learnt, but with memoir it can be a little more subtle. You could end with a surprise realisation or moment of movement, to leave the reader on a high note.

Extra tips:

• Never ever send your first draft to an editor – leave your memoir essay or article for a few days and come back to it.
• Get some feedback . Truly – if one piece could mean you start fielding offers from agents and editors, wouldn’t you want to make it the best it can be?
• Edit for repetition and relevance: It always amazes me how much I repeat certain words in my writing. You only see this when you’ve left it a few days, and if you use that wonderful ‘search and replace’ tool in Word.  So look for repetition of certain words and delete or change them, if need be. Be ruthless.
• Relevance – As I touched on, above, if you’re aiming for a word count of 1200, for example (very standard for essays in publications such as the New York Times Ties section), and trying to lop 400 words off, what is LEAST relevant chunk to the main question or theme of your article? Remember: You can include the whole story in your book. This is a strategic published piece to elicit interest and engage in the most compelling elements of your story.
• Don’t take a huge ‘run up’ – Just as a huge issue many editors see in memoir manuscripts submitted to publishing houses is that they take too long to get to the point of the story – so you should jump right into the inciting incident, or compelling event, in the beginning of your essay. Don’t write three paragraphs of beautiful poetry about what you did the day before the big event. You don’t have a lot of words to waste in an essay or article.
• Study other essays – this should really be my number one piece of advice. Whatever outlet you choose to pitch to, study what has been published there and what has gone well.
• Read it out loud. This is a great tip one of my first newspaper editors gave me (particularly when you have a low word count). Reading out loud helps you see what needs to go, and what doesn’t work, very quickly.

Hi The detailed blogs are extremely helpful for memoir writing. Thank you so much for sharing your insight and the effort. much appreciated. ive been trying to download things and its unsuccessful.

Hi Annie – you’re welcome. I can see you signed up for the checklists but you need to confirm your email – check your spam as it might have ended up there?

Thank you so much for the response. You’re right! All your mails went into spam . Sorted and looking forward to accessing the masterclass. Thank you for the blogs. Informative and precise. Wishes from Scotland Annie

Argh – I find that a lot with gmail emails, their filters are annoying. Enjoy the masterclass!

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How to Write a Memoir That People Will Read: Your 9 Step Guide

Is it your dream to write a memoir? Everyone has a collection of memories and experiences that are worthy of being told… including you! And while memoirs are powerful stories that will change the lives of both the writer and their reader, it’s important to learn how to write a memoir effectively. 

This is a piece of your life story, after all. 

If you've been wondering: “How do I write a memoir effectively?” Don’t make the mistake of thinking that learning how to write a memoir is just like writing a journal entry, or even an autobiography. 

In this article, we’ll explain the differences, and walk you through the entire process of how to write a memoir. 

Read on to discover the secrets you need to know to make your memoir life-changing and unforgettable.

This blog on how to write a memoir covers:

What is a memoir.

A memoir is part of your life story in that it’s a collection of experiences, memories, or events that take place in a person’s life. It is not an autobiography , but rather a true experience from the writer’s life that is creatively written and incorporates research.

Writing your memoir is different to journaling moments or events in your life. If you want your memoir to be successful, you will also need storytelling skills.

Learning how to write a memoir can be a complex, daunting exercise, depending on the subject or topic of your book. It may be worthwhile to heed the advice of 20-year veteran and expert author, Jane Friedman . If your memoir isn't selling. “The only antidote to this problem is to either become a better writer, or to find a more interesting story to tell.”

Over the past few years memoirs have become very popular. You no doubt are aware of some of the memoirs that were turned into movies in recent years.

Think of an autobiography as the whole pie , and a memoir a slice of that pie . A memoir covers a certain period or specific events in your life, and not your whole life .

A memoir is…

• Not about you. Ouch. At the end of the day, you need to provide lessons and ideas that will help your readers grow. A memoir still needs to be able to resonate with readers at its core.
• Not a journal. A journal is written for personal reasons, and almost certainly does not contain any storytelling elements in it. Also, there is no message in a journal.
• Not a rant session . Keep these thoughts and feelings for your journal.

What is a memoir example?

If you are interested in learning how to write a memoir, I assume you have read a number of published memoirs already.

You have, right?

These are some memoir examples from both well-known and lesser known authors:

• On Writing by Stephen King . This memoir “is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have.”
• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls . This book came into the spotlight when the movie was made. This is a touching story, with a lot of emotion. Walls tells dives into the details of her childhood, living with her nomadic, alcoholic parents.
• Beautiful Boy by David Sheff . This is another memoir that was turned into a movie recently. And also, a very emotional story. Sheff shares his life dealing with his “son's shocking descent into substance abuse and his gradual emergence into hope.”
• Direct from Dell by Michael Dell. This book is “the incredible story of Dell Computer's successful rise, beginning in his college dorm room with $1,000 in capital.” 
• Anyone Can Do It by Duncan Bannatyne . Similar to Dell's memoir the topic of this memoir is business – but it's a business book unlike any other.
• Get Me Out of Here by Rachel Reiland . This memoir “reveals what mental illness looks and feels like from the inside, and how healing from borderline personality disorder is possible through intensive therapy and the support of loved ones.”
• Broken by Shy Keenan . This is a heart-wrenching story of incredible child abuse. The subtitle says it all: “The most shocking true story of abuse ever told.”
• The Liars' Club by Mary Karr . Published in 1995, this memoir tells the story of Karr's childhood in the 1960s in a small industrial town in Southeast Texas. The title refers to her father and his friends who would gather to drink and tell stories when not working at the oil refinery or the chemical plant.
• Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt . is a 1996 memoir by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt with various anecdotes and stories of his childhood. It details his very early childhood, but focuses primarily on his life in Limerick, Ireland. It also includes his struggles with poverty and his father's alcoholism.

Now that you have some great examples of memoirs, you may be wondering: How do I write a memoir? Can I write a memoir?

Can anyone write a memoir?

Everyone can write a memoir, but not everyone can learn how to write a memoir successfully. 

Success is linked to your “why?” and the subject matter. 

For example, if you plan to write a memoir about your years of working as a sales clerk in a retail store, you need to ask yourself what the value of your memoir is going to be to your reader.

If you have a specific and intentional value or lesson to show the reader, then great! But if you’re just telling about your day-to-day activities with no real lesson to be learned, you may want to rethink your memoir.

Finally, you also need to have storytelling skills to make your writing captivating and exciting for the reader. A book writing coach can help you bring everything together into a cohesive, engaging, and inspiring story – while helping you reach all the important milestones of writing and self-publishing a book.

That brings us to the next important topic of how to write a memoir: the key elements of a memoir.

What are the key elements of a memoir ?

Every successful memoir has specific elements that contribute to its success, both from the writing standpoint and the reader’s experience. 

Now that you have a clearer picture on the exact definition of a memoir (and what makes it different from an autobiography), it’s time to get clear on the important elements of a memoir. 

These are the key elements of a memoir: 

• A focused theme. Your memoir should have an overarching theme, takeaway lesson, or message for your readers. It’s not just a play-by-play of your life, but rather shows the reader something based on a specific event or experience.
• Conflict. The most captivating and memorable memoirs are those that have a hero’s journey , or obstacles that the narrator must overcome. 
• Writing style. The reader is likely reading the story from your perspective, so make sure your writing style and voice come through your narrative. This is your chance to invite the reader into your world and tell a story from your life, so add some personality to it. 
• Supporting stories and details. While this is a memoir about your particular experience, it will be stronger if you’re able to inject stories from other people’s lives to move your narrative along.
• Storytelling elements. Your memoir needs to be an engaging, emotional experience for the reader, and the best way to create this is by incorporating the elements of storytelling. Draw on character development, the setting of the story , an exciting plot, literary elements , and more. 
• Truth. Lastly, your memoir needs to be an honest reflection of your life experience. While it’s okay to highlight and draw attention to certain details, make sure your memoir is factual. This is not only important from a storytelling standpoint but from a legal position, too.

Crucial things to consider before writing your memoir:

It’s easy to get inspired by your dream to write a memoir, but before you get started, there are some cold hard truths to be mindful of.  Acknowledging the realities of memoir writing will help you manage your expectations and redefine what a successful memoir means for you.  Before you write your memoir, you should ask yourself:

What’s in it for the reader?

If you're not a celebrity, it may not be realistic for you to find instant world-wide success. Getting people interested in your memoir is more difficult than writing a “how to” book. That’s why it’s important to angle your memoir in a way that readers can benefit from.

Is this the right topic?

The subject or topic of your memoir has a big influence on how successful the book will be.

Are my writing skills up to snuff?

Storytelling is important when learning how to write a memoir. That isn’t to say that you need to be a super talented writer to publish a successful memoir, but you do have to use literary elements in your story.

Am I emotionally prepared?

Writing a memoir can be a tremendous experience, but it can also be a daunting one. For example, if you want to write a memoir about your years of abuse in foster care, revisiting the memories may be traumatic.

That being said, learning how to write a memoir about traumatic experiences can be an incredibly empowering and healing process. You just have to be ready for it.

So, now that we've discussed what a memoir is and determined that you can, in fact, write one, let's discuss how to write a memoir successfully in nine simple steps.

How to write a memoir in 9 easy steps

Here are the only steps you'll need to learn how to write a memoir:

1. Determine the purpose of your memoir

The first step in learning how to write a memoir is determining WHY you want to write it. If you don't have a strong “why?”, the motivation and determination to write your memoir will be almost impossible.

Tips for discovering the “why” of your memoir:

• Accept the process. It can be hard, but also exhilarating to learn how to write a memoir. Accept that there will be roadblocks, then ask yourself why it will be worth the struggles.
• Free write. Before you even start writing your book outline , brainstorm the reason you want to write it. Use pen and paper, or fire up your favorite word processor and think about the reason(s).
• Don’t make your “why” about money or recognition. Although these can be part of the reason for writing, your “why” should be deeper than that, like changing lives or leaving a legacy . 

Even if you are not a celebrity, but your memoir has a powerful message – encouraging, inspirational, motivational, or helpful in some other way – you may find that your book really takes off.

What do you want your reader to take away from your memoir?

Looking at the published memoirs I mentioned earlier, let's look briefly at what their purposes are…

• Beautiful Boy . The purpose of this memoir is to illustrate the value of human endurance, love, and perseverance in dealing with drug addiction. Sheff offers encouragement and inspiration for his reader.
• Anyone Can Do It . Bannatyne inspires and motivates his readers by saying that anyone can achieve business success through perseverance.
• On Writing . The purpose of King's book is to educate and encourage anyone interested in the writing craft.

2. Identify your target audience

Knowing the purpose of your memoir can help you identify your audience, and as such identify a market for your book. This will be invaluable when the time comes to promote your memoir. Ask yourself:

• Who is my typical reader? Examine their background, age range, career, interests, fears, etc.
• What is my reader looking for in a memoir? Does this reader expect to see heavier research, specific words and phrases, or actionable takeaways they can apply to their lives?
• What categories does this reader belong in? Is your memoir targeted at entrepreneurs, young parents-to-be, or people dealing with illness?
• Where do these readers consume information? Think of where you can reach these readers. These could be blogs and forums on the subject of your memoir. Think of where your readers can be found offline, too (clubs, organizations, associations, etc.). 

Think “outside the box.” In many cases (especially for a memoir) there could be secondary audiences.

3. Plan your memoir

Without proper planning, learning how to write a memoir will take a lot longer. 

After your initial questions are answered, you can start the actual planning of your memoir. This can include:

• A mindmap (Hero's Journey)
• A text list
• An outline (questions)

Using a mindmap can be a huge time saver when learning how to write a memoir. You should:

• Plan the events. What event(s) and period is your memoir going to cover? For example, my time spent in the navy, my years at the orphanage, my life in foster care, how I started a side hustle and built it into a 6-figure company, etc.
• Use questions. As you build your mindmap, think of questions you want to ask. These will form the basis for your outline.
• Keep it simple at first. Start with a basic mindmap, then create a 3-act structure (or Hero's Journey) diagram.

The above diagram I created after doing my mindmap, when I planned my second memoir. This was an A3 sheet, and I then used a pen to build the full story structure of a memoir afterwards.

Make a list

Expand your mindmap items and make a list (or lists) of the main points of your story. The list can be short answers to the questions you asked yourself.

Because the idea at this stage is to get the ideas down on paper quickly, these can be short phrases or sentences.

This is an example from my second memoir:

• Where it started – a kid, with my friend; make pocket money
• Reading a certain book – big influence on me – gave me the foundation
• First side hustle; photography [photo of camera] – weekends & nights – good extra income
• And so on…

Tip: Make notes on your mindmap of what source material (research) you will need. In my list above, I noted (in [brackets]) that I want to find a photo of the camera I used.

Outline your memoir

With your mindmap and list done, you can now start writing the basic outline of your memoir.

The value of a memoir outline is priceless; as it is when writing any book. With a memoir you will be covering a certain timespan, and events that occurred, and relying only on memory, which can be an arduous task.

Some of the basic questions to get started are:

• What event(s) am I going to cover?
• What is the timescale of my memoir?
• Who are the characters (the people) in my memoir?
• What source material do I need? Where will I get this?
• Will I need to interview anyone? When/how can I do this?

Use your list (and questions) and start to create your outline.

Every writer is unique and we all have our own best method of outlining.

4. Find source material (research)

When learning how to write a memoir, don't rely on your memory alone. If you have any type of source material, gather this and file it.

This is applicable whether the time period of your memoir covers a number of years, or only a few years. Use the notes you made on your list – you may think of more source material you need as you do this.

Before you start to gather your source material, create a filing system (either physical, on the computer, or both).

If your source material is not sorted and filed, it can turn into an incredible time waster when learning how to write a memoir.

Think of what (and how much) research you need to do. This will give you an idea of how much work is needed before you put pen to paper (or hit the keyboard).

Another thing you should consider when learning how to write a memoir is a writing schedule . This can help you a lot in getting the actual writing of your memoir done within a realistic time frame. Otherwise it can drag on for years.

To learn how to write a memoir smoothly, I cannot emphasise the value of thorough preparation enough.

5. Consider memoir writing legalities

Full disclosure: We are not attorneys, and do not offer legal advice.

Heed the advice of Nomi Isak, from Los Angeles Editors & Writers Group : “Before publishing your memoir, get feedback from others and, if necessary, consult an attorney.”

Here’s what you need to know to avoid being sued with your memoir : “If your facts will not hold up as 100% true in a court of law, you can open yourself up to defamation. Before you write, make sure to check your facts. You want to know that if you’re writing about something controversial, that you’re not fabricating the truth.”

Tips to avoid being sued when learning how to write a memoir:

• Don’t lie in your memoir. 
• Understand your right to free speech. 
• Be aware of defamation and invasion of privacy issues. 

6. Be mindful of common memoir mistakes 

As you begin to write, it’s important to identify the common mistakes made by those writing a memoir. By keeping these front of mind before you start writing, and during your writing process, you’ll be prepared to avoid these mistakes as much as possible. 

Here are common mistakes when learning how to write a memoir:

• A boring story. This was the mistake I made with my first memoir. There was no storytelling, and the structure was…boring. The structure of a memoir needs to be compelling. I will always be grateful that a friend reviewed the manuscript and offered his honest advice. Be aware of this and ask a trusted friend or family member to read your manuscript before you send it to the professional editor and publisher.
• More than one book. This can be a real problem. As you start thinking about your memoir, it is possible that you want to include too much information, and the end result is that there is more than one book in your memoir. This can be overwhelming for your reader.
• Not focusing on the reader . Review the sections on finding your “why” to make sure you don't make this mistake. Again, this was a mistake I made with my first memoir – I wrote it only from my view, and for me. There was nothing for the reader to glean. 
• Strange chronology. Memoirs have a general format, and to make it easier for your reader, the structure of a memoir should follow a chronological order.

7. Work through multiple drafts until you finish your memoir

As a memoir is such a personal type of book, and relies on memory (or historical source material), I suggest the following writing stages when learning how to write a memoir.

• Rough draft . Finishing a rough draft is all about speed – just get your ideas down on the page (or computer screen). Write, write, write.
• First draft . You can now tidy up your writing and add any source material that you may need. At this stage you should look at the completeness of your manuscript, i.e. is everything in that needs to be in? See how to start writing a book for more ideas on how to write a memoir in the beginning stages.
• Second draft . Now you look closer at your manuscript and your story to improve upon it. Refer back to your 3-act diagram.
• Final draft . Bring out your magnifying glass. I would suggest printing a copy of your Second Draft, and check the physical copy. Read your manuscript as a book and check how the story flows. Is there anything that's unclear? Are all your cross-references correct?

Here are some tips to finish writing your memoir:

• Set aside time for writing and make a schedule. Then, stick to that schedule as much as you can!
• Acknowledge and overcome any feelings of imposter syndrome that prevent you from writing.
• Take breaks from writing if you need them, but do not give up entirely.
• Write first, edit later. Do not edit while you write. Save this for your editing process. Just focus on getting the words out first.
• Create a writing routine. Write at a specific time in the day, or in a specific area. Use positive affirmations, inspirational quotes , and have a warm cup of coffee or tea ready to go.
• Communicate with your family and friends about your writing goals . This will help them understand the importance of your writing time.
• Don't aim for perfection. This is a common mistake most aspiring authors make when learning how to write a memoir. Done is better than perfect. You can always edit and refine your words later.

8. Title your memoir

When you start planning your memoir, you will likely have a working title, and that may change, especially after you start writing your book.

This is perfectly normal.

The subject of your memoir will usually determine your title. Look at the titles of the memoirs I have referenced in this series, and notice the titles for the different types of memoirs to draw inspiration.

The right title is important when your book is ready to be published. It can be more valuable than your book's cover design, although they go together like a horse and carriage. My advice is not to just pick the first title that comes to mind.

A tool I like to use is our free book title generator .

Keep in mind that this is software, and you know the contents of your book best. The ultimate decision lies with you, the author.

9. Get your story out in the world

Once your memoir manuscript is written, it’s time to get it ready to be published. 

This means having it professionally edited, getting a book cover designed, and completing the entire publishing process. 

Hopefully, this guide on how to write a memoir will help you launch into action.

You have a life experience to share – a life experience that will contribute to your legacy and impact the lives of readers all around the world.

Are you ready to share your story?

Hopefully by now, you can confidently answer the question: “How do I write a memoir?”

So now it's time to get writing!

If you need more help with how to write a memoir, the team at selfpublishing.com is always here to offer advice. You can make use of our many services for authors, from free outlines and courses, to book cover design, to one-on-one guidance from brainstorm to book launch.

What is a Biography? Definition, Elements, and More

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25 Personification Examples for Writers: What It Is & How to Use It

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5 Tips For Mastering Your Rough Draft

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• MLA titles: Formatting and capitalization rules

MLA Titles | How to Format & Capitalize Source Titles

Published on April 2, 2019 by Courtney Gahan . Revised on March 5, 2024.

In MLA style , source titles appear either in italics or in quotation marks:

• Italicize the title of a self-contained whole (e.g. a book, film, journal, or website).
• Use  quotation marks around the title if it is part of a larger work (e.g. a chapter of a book, an article in a journal, or a page on a website).

All major words in a title are capitalized . The same format is used in the Works Cited list and in the text itself.

When you use the Scribbr MLA Citation Generator , the correct formatting and capitalization are automatically applied to titles.

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Table of contents

Capitalization in mla titles, punctuation in mla titles, titles within titles, exceptions to mla title formatting, sources with no title, abbreviating titles, titles in foreign languages, frequently asked questions about mla titles.

In all titles and subtitles, capitalize the first and last words, as well as any other principal words.

What to capitalize

What not to capitalize

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

• Academic style
• Vague sentences
• Style consistency

See an example

Use the same punctuation as appears in the source title. However, if there is a subtitle, separate it from the main title with a colon and a space, even if different (or no) punctuation is used in the source.

Example of a work with a subtitle

The exception is when the title ends in a question mark, exclamation point or dash, in which case you keep the original punctuation:

Sometimes a title contains another title—for example, the title of an article about a novel might contain that novel’s title.

For titles within titles, in general, maintain the same formatting as you would if the title stood on its own.

Titles and names that fall into the following categories are not italicized or enclosed in quotation marks:

• Scripture (e.g. the Bible, the Koran, the Gospel)
• Laws, acts and related documents (e.g. the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution , the Paris Agreement)
• Musical compositions identified by form, number and key (e.g. Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5 in C minor, op. 67)
• Conferences, seminars, workshops and courses (e.g. MLA Annual Convention)

Sections of a work

Words that indicate a particular section of a work are not italicized or placed within quotation marks. They are also not capitalized when mentioned in the text.

Examples of such sections include:

• introduction
• list of works cited
• bibliography

Introductions, prefaces, forewords and afterwords

Descriptive terms such as “introduction”, “preface”, “foreword” and “afterword” are capitalized if mentioned in an MLA in-text citation or in the Works Cited list, but not when mentioned in the text itself.

Example of descriptive term capitalization

In-text citation: (Brontë, Preface )

In text: In her preface to the work, added in a later edition, Brontë debates the morality of creating characters such as those featured in Wuthering Heights .

If there is a unique title for the introduction, preface, foreword or afterword, include that title in quotation marks instead of the generic section name when referencing the source in the Works Cited list or an in-text citation.

For sources with no title, a brief description of the source acts as the title.

Example of a source reference with no title

Follow these rules for capitalization:

• Capitalize the first word
• Capitalize proper nouns
• Ignore other MLA rules for capitalization

There are some exceptions to this general format: descriptions including titles of other works, such as comments on articles or reviews of movies; untitled short messages, like tweets; email messages; and untitled poems.

Exceptions to general format for sources with no title

If you need to mention the name of a work in the text itself, state the full title, but omit the subtitle.

If you need to refer to the work multiple times, you may shorten the title to something familiar or obvious to the reader. For example, Huckleberry Finn for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . If in doubt, prefer the noun phrase.

If the standalone abbreviation may not be clear, you can introduce it in parentheses, following the standard guidelines for abbreviations. For example, The Merchant of Venice ( MV ) . For Shakespeare and the Bible , there are well-established abbreviations you can use.

When you abbreviate a title, make sure you keep the formatting consistent. Even if the abbreviation consists only of letters, as in the MV example, it must be italicized or placed within quotation marks in the same way as it would be when written in full.

Abbreviating very long titles in the Works Cited list

Titles should normally be given in full in the Works Cited list, but if any of your sources has a particularly long title (often the case with older works), you can use an ellipsis to shorten it here. This is only necessary with extremely long titles such as the example below.

In the Works Cited list, if you are listing a work with a title in a language other than English, you can add the translated title in square brackets.

Example of a reference with a translated title

If you are using the foreign-language title in the text itself, you can also include the translation in parenthesis. For example, O Alquimista ( The Alchemist ) .

You don’t need to include a translation in your reference list or in the text if you expect your readers to be familiar with the original language. For example, you wouldn’t translate the title of a  French novel you were writing about in the context of a French degree.

Non-Latin script languages

For works in a language that does not use the Latin alphabet, such as Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, or Russian, be consistent with how you mention the source titles and also quotations from within them.

For example, if you choose to write a Russian title in the Cyrillic form, do that throughout the document. If you choose to use the Romanized form, stick with that. Do not alternate between the two.

Yes. MLA style uses title case, which means that all principal words (nouns, pronouns , verbs, adjectives , adverbs , and some conjunctions ) are capitalized.

This applies to titles of sources as well as the title of, and subheadings in, your paper. Use MLA capitalization style even when the original source title uses different capitalization .

In MLA style , book titles appear in italics, with all major words capitalized. If there is a subtitle, separate it from the main title with a colon and a space (even if no colon appears in the source). For example:

The format is the same in the Works Cited list and in the text itself. However, when you mention the book title in the text, you don’t have to include the subtitle.

The title of a part of a book—such as a chapter, or a short story or poem in a collection—is not italicized, but instead placed in quotation marks.

When a book’s chapters are written by different authors, you should cite the specific chapter you are referring to.

When all the chapters are written by the same author (or group of authors), you should usually cite the entire book, but some styles include exceptions to this.

• In APA Style , single-author books should always be cited as a whole, even if you only quote or paraphrase from one chapter.
• In MLA Style , if a single-author book is a collection of stand-alone works (e.g. short stories ), you should cite the individual work.
• In Chicago Style , you may choose to cite a single chapter of a single-author book if you feel it is more appropriate than citing the whole book.

The title of an article is not italicized in MLA style , but placed in quotation marks. This applies to articles from journals , newspapers , websites , or any other publication. Use italics for the title of the source where the article was published. For example:

Use the same formatting in the Works Cited entry and when referring to the article in the text itself.

The MLA Handbook is currently in its 9th edition , published in 2021.

This quick guide to MLA style  explains the latest guidelines for citing sources and formatting papers according to MLA.

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Gahan, C. (2024, March 05). MLA Titles | How to Format & Capitalize Source Titles. Scribbr. Retrieved June 24, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/mla/titles/

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Title: Dr. Fauci Publishes Memoir Chronicling Career To Inspire Next Generation of Public Servants

Dr. Anthony Fauci reflects on his long career in public service in a new memoir almost one year after joining the faculty at Georgetown.

For Fauci, the memoir has been a decades-long project he first envisioned while advising former President Bill Clinton. Since then, he’s taken copious notes on his experiences, collecting bits of wisdom to pass down to the next generation of public servants.

“My situation was unique because I lived through it personally, and I thought that would be a valuable experience to share generally, not only in the United States but globally,” he said. “No one has had the experience in global health of being able to advise seven presidents with the bookends of my career being HIV/AIDS in the early years and COVID at the end of my career.”

Now a Distinguished University Professor with appointments in the School of Medicine and the McCourt School of Public Policy, Fauci has spent much of the last year engaging with students across the university. He has loved interacting with students through lectures, fireside chats and casual encounters on Healy Lawn and Yates Field House, he said.

At Georgetown, he feels right at home.

“I just feel so much at home [here] … and that’s a really good feeling,” Fauci said. “Sometimes, when you come to a new place, you feel like an outsider. I don’t feel at all like an outsider. I feel like it’s a place where I belong.”

As Fauci celebrates the launch of his memoir and almost one year at Georgetown, we asked him how public service has evolved over time, what advice he’d give to aspiring public servants and how his own life has changed since coming to Georgetown.

What is the main message of the book that you want readers to take away?

The one I think will come to the reader as they read it is how extraordinarily gratifying and fulfilling a career in public service is, but also how challenging it could be because you really face unexpected challenges. A lot of times when I talk, I say one of the great lessons is to expect the unexpected, which, if you read the book, you see how many things popped up in front of me that were not anticipated, nor were they planned for. Everything from the direction of my career to the outbreaks that I had the opportunity to address.

You’ve spoken about how the Jesuit ideals of service and care for others motivated you throughout your career. How do those values animate your role at Georgetown?

The reason I picked Georgetown among many reasons was it is reflective of the principles that I’ve lived by and that I was trained in through my own experience in high school and in college about service for others, founded in a high degree of integrity, honesty and empathy. That’s the spirit that I see at Georgetown. So to me, Georgetown would be a perfect fit as the culmination of my long career.

How has your day-to-day life changed since leaving public service?

During the early years of HIV, the intensity of when I developed the PEPFAR [U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief] program with George W. Bush, and obviously during the very intensive years of COVID … I really pushed myself to the limit. I mean chronically, not just one weekend or one week. I was chronically sleep-deprived for decades. I worked 16 hours a day. 

I was very fortunate that I had my wife, Dr. Christine Grady, who by the way is a double Hoya . … She’s an amazingly supportive person, so I don’t think I’d be able to have done that without her support. But it was really just wearing yourself into the ground every day, accomplishing a lot, of course. We saved millions of lives, and I’m very proud of that, not only with the development of the drugs for HIV, but for the development of the PEPFAR program and the development of the vaccine for COVID. But it was a grueling schedule.

Since I left the NIH and joined Georgetown, I think I’m working almost as hard in all the things I’m doing, working to write the book, working to do all the things I do. The only difference is I don’t feel like I’m chronically sleep-deprived. I now get seven hours of sleep a night, whereas before I used to get four to five hours of sleep a night.

How has public service changed throughout your career, and what are the opportunities and challenges facing young people interested in becoming public servants?

The opportunities are probably broader now because we operate much more on a global level. Fifty years ago, people were focusing mostly on somewhat provincial issues that relate only to their immediate environment and the country they’re in. Right now, we live in a global society, so public service has so many more opportunities.

The challenge is what I mention in the book that, unfortunately, we’re living in an era of a profoundly divided society. We’ve always had appropriate and understandable diversity of opinion and diversity of ideology. People in the center, center-left, far left, center-right, far right. That’s fine. Diversity allows for a healthy and vibrant democracy. But when that diversity becomes profound divisiveness, that really interferes with so many things that you’d like to do. I think divisiveness in society is one of the great challenges that the younger generation is going to face in whatever it is that you want to do.

Why is inspiring the next generation of public health leaders and public servants important to you?

Public health is one of the most important issues of the human race. Without health, so many other things fall by the wayside that don’t function as well. We have a responsibility as a society to promote public health, and the individuals who get involved in that are individuals who have taken up and assumed a considerable degree of important responsibility.

I think the book might help at least somewhat in getting people who read it to realize how gratifying an experience of being a public health person is. Or even if it’s not public health, at least public service. Remember, the title of the book is “A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service.” So you don’t have to be a doctor or a scientist to do public service. You can incorporate public service into any career path you choose.

What advice would you give to someone considering a career in public service?

It’s less advice than it is an observation, and my observation is that having a career in public service is such a gratifying feeling. When you go through life as I have through so many decades, you have a lot of different experiences with a lot of different people, and there are so many people I know who do productive things but don’t get the feeling that they’ve actually contributed to society.

They may have made a lot of money. They may have had a lot of fun, but when they start to ask themselves, “What have I contributed to society? Have I made the world a better place?” Sometimes people realize they have not, and that’s not a great feeling.

But the people I know, myself included, who’ve devoted their lives to public service, when you take a breath and think about what you’ve done, it’s a very fulfilling and gratifying feeling. … If you want to get a good feeling about yourself and you have some inclination to do public service, I would strongly recommend you seriously consider it because it might turn out to be the fulfillment that you’re looking for in your life.

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5 Questions for Dr. Fauci on Why He Decided To Join Georgetown

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Waite and Fauci Discuss Health Inequities and Disparities, Burnout and Well-being

Anthony Fauci covers an eventful career, covid and all, in ‘On Call’

The scientist, public health official and unlikely political lightning rod writes candidly about Donald Trump, the AIDS crisis and other subjects.

The old cliché has it that bureaucracies are “faceless” institutions, insensitive to the demands of the people they serve. Anthony S. Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1984 to 2022, is a career bureaucrat, but he also has one of the country’s most recognizable faces.

Fauci never set out to become a familiar presence on talk shows and at news conferences, but his career as a public figure is not exactly an accident. As he explains in his new memoir, “ On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service ,” he has always made a point of communicating with his patients — even when they make up the entire population of the United States.

Fauci had already spent more time in the spotlight than most health officials before disaster struck in 2020, but the onset of the covid pandemic — and his role as “the de facto public face of the country’s battle with the disease” — launched him to newfound celebrity. Tussles with President Donald Trump , both on and off camera, made him a political lightning rod and, to many, a hero.

Fauci’s struggles with the Trump administration feature in “On Call,” but it contains no bombshells and not much in the way of juicy new information. Fauci permits himself sharper words about the 45th president than he did during the thick of the pandemic — “he shocked me on day one of his presidency with his disregard of facts,” “he seemed to conflate COVID with influenza,” he displayed “overt hostility to much of the press,” and so on — but the doctor’s frustrations were always manifest. Few will be shocked to learn that he was annoyed by the fecklessness of the bungler-in-chief, dismayed by Vice President Mike Pence’s sycophantic adherence to the party line and alarmed by the administration’s ignorance of the basic workings of government. Nor is it startling that Trump was a volatile boss who alternately cursed at Fauci and professed to love him, all while undercutting his scientifically sound advice in inflammatory interviews.

Perhaps slightly more unexpected and revealing is Fauci’s contention that America’s disastrous covid response was not solely the fault of the petulant man in the Oval Office: Aging infrastructure and pervasive inequalities were also to blame, as were Fauci’s colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fauci allows himself several respectful but cutting criticisms of the CDC, an agency that he alleges was slow to track cases and develop effective testing technologies.

Still, the covid pandemic was only one of many crises that Fauci confronted during his many years at the National Institutes of Health, and it takes up less than a fourth of his eventful autobiography.

His is a classic American story, with the usual modest beginnings. Anthony “Tony” Fauci was born in 1940 in Brooklyn to first-generation Italian immigrants. His upbringing was comfortably middle class: His mother was a “homemaker,” while his father owned and operated a pharmacy. The passages in “On Call” that treat his early years are wistful and somewhat bland. Fauci informs us that he was a star student with “a close-knit, happy family,” a placid child who felt that “life in Brooklyn was good.” At College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit liberal arts college, he was treated to “a terrific curriculum”; in medical school at the prestigious Cornell University Medical College, he enjoyed “one of the happiest, most fulfilling periods of my life.” Throughout, he remained irksomely well-adjusted.

Of course, Fauci includes a smattering of personal details. He briefly discusses his marriage to the bioethicist Christine Grady, and D.C. residents will delight in his mentions of local haunts, prime among them his running route along the C&O Canal. For the most part, however, his private concerns take a back seat to the diseases he tackled with single-minded and unwavering intensity.

It was only when he landed in Washington to lead a laboratory focused on immunology at NIH that his life took off. If Fauci’s childhood reminiscences can be stiff and dutiful, his accounts of the health emergencies he weathered as a public servant — particularly the AIDS epidemic — are gripping. Given his expertise in infectious diseases and immunology, he was perfectly positioned to tackle the devastating new illness that emerged at the beginning of his tenure at NIH in the early ’80s.

At first, his efforts were largely confined to the laboratory, where he conducted pioneering research, and the NIH Clinical Center, where he tended to critically ill patients. Even now, he appears most comfortable in his capacity as a physician and scientist, and “On Call” is punctuated with succinct and remarkably lucid introductions to thorny medical topics, such as the nature of the immune system and the different types of influenza. But AIDS was not just a clinical conundrum for Fauci. As a resident at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, he had most often succeeded in saving even the sickest of his charges; now, he watched in horror as his patients deteriorated and died.

“The median survival of our patients was nine to ten months,” he writes. These numbers had human faces: One patient whom Fauci visited on rounds in the morning had gone blind by the time he returned that night, and the doctor lost his beloved assistant to the disease. As answers continued to elude desperate researchers, Fauci exhausted himself caring for patients late into the night. These brutal shifts in the clinic distress him to this day, and he confesses that he still suffers from bouts of post-traumatic stress disorder.

AIDS had rapidly become personal for Fauci, and soon it became political, too. “I felt compelled to break out and force more attention and, importantly, more resources toward this disease,” he writes. “But how was I going to do that? I was just the chief of a relatively small laboratory in a huge research agency.” Before long, he realized he would have to do two jobs at once: He would keep his official job as a scientist, of course, but he would also pursue an unofficial job as a public figure who could use his “visibility and scientific credibility to influence policy.”

When Fauci was appointed chief of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984, he expanded funding for AIDS research and scandalized his conservative colleagues by establishing a program dedicated exclusively to the disease. Later, he pushed the George W. Bush administration to enact the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives by distributing AIDS treatments around the globe.

Fauci’s simultaneous commitment to science and policy served him well as he navigated the many debacles that followed: the anthrax scare in 2001, the emergence of concerning new strains of influenza in 2006 and again in 2009, the Ebola outbreak in 2014, and, of course, the covid pandemic in 2020. His approach to AIDS, to which he devotes by far the most space in the book, is a reliable guide to his overriding sensibility. Implicit in his strategy is a truth that all good doctors grasp: Health is as much a political affair as a clinical one. Long before the onset of the covid pandemic, Fauci found himself at the center of a firestorm, merely because he was determined to do his job properly.

The relative dearth of intimate writing in this memoir feels apt: For decades, Fauci subordinated his own concerns to the two roles he assumed in the ’80s as a dispassionate scientist and a public servant accountable to the people. This latter role was perhaps as challenging during the dark years of the AIDS epidemic as it was during covid. Fauci is not one for sugarcoating, and he is honest about the LGBTQ+ community’s initial — and justified — outrage. A representative article, by the famed playwright and activist Larry Kramer, ran in the San Francisco Examiner in 1988 under the headline, “I Call You Murderers, an Open Letter to an Incompetent Idiot, Dr. Anthony Fauci.”

But when that incompetent idiot was confronted with the disaffection of the patients he hoped to save, he did something extraordinary: He listened. “I tried to put myself in their shoes,” he writes, “and it became clear to me that I would have been as vehement as they were in demanding a more concentrated and effective effort against this emerging plague.” When Fauci asked the protesters to meet with him, “they were shocked. This was the first time in anyone’s memory that a government official had invited them to sit down and talk on equal terms and on government turf.” Their exchange would prove to be the first of many, and Fauci’s collaboration with LGBTQ+ advocates eventually evolved into a “true partnership.”

Indeed, it was a conversation with the activist Marty Delaney that persuaded Fauci to defy his superiors and call for a “parallel track” approach to the distribution of AIDS drugs, one that suspended standard procedures and permitted the dissemination of medicines even as clinical trials were underway. When a member of Fauci’s staff spoke rudely to activists whom the doctor had invited to attend an NIH meeting, he promptly told the man, whom he couldn’t fire, to start looking for another job. He was sorry to have to do so, he recalls, but the employee in question “was completely wed to the classical paradigm that scientists and scientists alone should participate in the development of a scientific agenda and above all that activists had no place in the process.”

Fauci, in contrast, is not wed to this counterproductive paradigm. Despite his repeated insistence that he is “apolitical,” he has always been responsive to the medical constituencies he is serving and willing to involve them in the decisions that affect their lives. Listening to communities at risk is not bad science but good medicine. Fauci is not temperamentally inclined toward radicalism — he is mild and measured for much of the book, going so far as to extend perhaps too much courtesy to the likes of Bush and Dick Cheney — but there are moments when competence and conscientiousness are revolutionary. Fauci has lived through two of them. Hopefully we will not have to endure many more.

A previous version of this review misstated that Anthony S. Fauci had fired a staff member who rudely spoke to activists. He told the staff member to start looking for another job. The review has been corrected.

Becca Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post and the author of “All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess.”

A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service

By Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.

Viking. 464 pp. $36

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