Who isn’t sad that Dolly Parton has died? Apart from the music, movies, interviews and philanthropy, Dolly Parton also left a memoir collection. But even with four books about her life, she still managed to avoid revealing everything. In fact, “coy” is a word some observers use about Dolly’s manner of answering questions without telling you what she doesn’t want you to know. She told one interviewer that her mother advised her to always keep a piece just for herself.

Dolly was inclusive and a vocal supporter of LGBTQ, but conservatives still loved her. Women related to her despite that, between implants and subsequent reductions, by her own tally she’d spent more than $1 million on her breasts. Neither group seemed to mind that she carried on flirtations and more all the while with a loyal husband at home.

Thanks to personal songs like “Jolene,” “9 to 5” and “I Will Always Love You,” movies like “Steel Magnolias,” and TV appearances, we felt we knew Dolly. We liked her self-deprecating style mixed with blonde-girl bravado, her hillbilly accent alongside enormous wealth, her extreme generosity coming out of a budget that included line items for wigs, plastic surgery, shoes and outfits that none of us could begin to afford.

But did we know her? She never endorsed candidates or talked about political parties, we never heard names of men attached to her, and at the end we didn’t know she had cancer. Earlier this month, Dolly released a video telling her fans that she was attending to her improving health but couldn’t tour or travel yet. I saw that video a week or so before her death, and I fully believed she was getting better.

Yet she wrote four books in the memoir space! In 1994 at age 48, Dolly Parton authored her full autobiography, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business, tracing her early lean years growing up in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains through the dawn and progression of her career, her marriage, and her general thoughts on life. Getting creative with the memoir genre, she next released Songteller: My Life in Lyrics, a 2020 effort to explain her life in the context of 175 of her songs, including background for some of the storylines. She tackled her distinctive image and signature fashion style with her 2023 book, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones. Then just last year, My Life on Stage was Dolly’s photo and text account of touring and performing.

The Dolly Dodge

If you want to write a memoir without revealing all of your secrets, you can study Dolly’s methods for keeping details close to the vest. One trick is to stay away from timelines and structure your memoir as a series of undated and largely independent stories from your life. Use humor to deflect. Tighten the writing and make your book a page-turner so people don’t notice what you’re not including.

Will that work? Probably not. If you’re not a celebrity, people aren’t waiting on the edge of their seat to read your memoir. The secrets, the hushed whispers throughout your life, are your best bet for getting your memoir published. Omitting them will keep you at arm’s length from the very readers you want to attract.

Still, a lot of memoir authors want to avoid libeling or hurting people. If that is your goal, I suggest you do take a look at Dolly Parton’s record of talking and writing about herself. In her world of music and acting and being a great person everyone loved, Dolly had a knack for staying private in some ways. The work she leaves becomes a masterclass you might want to check out.

To end this, I’ll join everyone else who’s been writing about Dolly: I will always love you, Dolly. Thanks for everything you gave us.

You think you’ve led an interesting life, and you’d like to share it with readers, but what you have is a series of stories, not a singular or unified defining memoir theme. Can you be a memoir author if you have no obvious theme? Sure. Writers can write about anything.

First, don’t rule out the theme potential so fast. You may not have overcome an addiction, battled an illness, grown wise after a messed up childhood, or accomplished something extraordinary professionally. But try digging deeper into your past to check on whether you’re missing something. The theme may not be obvious, but that doesn’t mean it’s not lurking beneath the surface. Which rocks should you look under?

Choices

I’m watching a TV show from more than 15 years ago, “Being Erica,” that has the main character periodically transporting to the past so that she can correct choices. Her regrets range from little slip-ups to major life decisions. Sometimes she succeeds in making a new choice and sometimes she doesn’t, but she always learns something about herself and her life.

Erica thought her life’s theme was that she habitually made poor choices, which is how she ended up not fulfilling the early promise of success in all areas of life. Things are more complicated than that, but look at your own life. Did you consistently choose a path that led you to the life you have now? Perhaps it’s the opposite theme—the sort of “man plans, God laughs” variety of feeling as if your choices mean nothing because you don’t really have control.

Maybe you got very lucky and you can’t take credit for the good outcomes. Or it can be the reverse, that you tried every avenue only to be blocked over and over. Taken together in one wide-angle view, all of your choices may point you toward a theme.

Relationships

Unlike Jeannette McCurdy, who wrote I’m Glad My Mom Died, you may need a lot of introspection to narrow down your memoir to one relationship. Again, it may just depend on which lens you look through. Whether it’s a parent, sibling, friend, romantic partner or business associate, if there’s enough meat in that relationship it can form the theme of your book.

That doesn’t mean you leave out everything else in your life. It’s just that you see your life’s developments as connected to whichever relationship you’re describing. Sally Field’s memoir is ultimately a sort of tribute to her mother, but she still told pretty much her whole life story in the book.

And it can be more than one relationship. Maybe one bad romance set the course for a lifetime of dysfunctional love partnerships. Exploring all of that can make interesting reading.

Your “Truth”

You may have lived many years before facing or discovering some truth about yourself. By the time you trace the seeds for the reader, give all the examples, explain how you came to reinvent, accept or delight in the real you, and describe the ultimate outcome, you’ll have a whole book.

Thinking about this approach may reveal a secret you have. Maybe it’s a secret within your family. How has keeping that secret served you? If it hasn’t done much for you, a book with the big reveal might work out well.

Something Unusual You’ve Overlooked

Lives contain many singular events. Did something happen to you that you never gave much attention to, but now that you’re thinking about it, the incident is quite out of the ordinary?

Or, if it’s not a singular incident, it could be a pattern or a period of your life that might stack up a little differently if you want to write about it.

Truly No Theme—But Lots of Stories

If after putting your life under a microscope you can’t come up with a theme but still would like to write a memoir, make a list of all the stories you tell from time to time. We all have those stories! Good writing can make them interesting.

Then you have to decide whether to just go chronologically in your life or to contrive mini-themes. Either way can work. The funny thing is that when you look at that list, or maybe when you’ve written out some of the stories, you may notice a theme starting to form. You’ve been the same person all your life, and you approach life as that one person. There’s probably a theme in there somewhere.

As you write your memoir, you’re probably basing the stories you choose partly on how relatable they will be to readers. The reader may see similarities or stark differences between their own memories of, say, Christmas morning and the scene under the tree that you describe but, either way, the universality of the day keeps readers interested. This time of year takes me back to all the July 4 celebrations I’ve experienced, especially watching fireworks along the Susquehanna River in my childhood and by Lake Michigan with my own kids. For those of you in the U.S., July 4 has likely been a significant day in your American life—possibly important enough to fit Independence Day into your memoir.

How can you do that organically? Several ways.

• The holiday exemplifies a theme of your memoir. Maybe your childhood was less than happy, and July 4 can illustrate that. Other kids went to fireworks displays, lit sparklers in their backyard with siblings or traveled to spend the long weekend with their cousins. But your July 4 tended to be like any other day, with your dad drunk on the couch and your mom out somewhere. Choosing a holiday to explain that gives you a whole story to describe, with dialog and vivid depiction, rather than simply telling the reader the reasons you think you’re the product of bad parenting.

• The date stands out as unusual in your life. If July 4 did not tend to resemble every other day, how was it different? Maybe you hosted or attended a big annual barbecue, and it was the one day you felt like an ordinary American family. Or you loved fireworks and went down to the water/out to a field and waited for the spectacular light show to begin.

• Something pivotal happened. If a notable event during your life actually happened on Independence Day, use the familiarity of the holiday to build suspense by describing the whole day for the reader.

• The holiday can serve as an example of change. If you overcame tough conditions to give yourself a better life as an adult, perhaps July 4 can illustrate the changes. Describe the way your children experienced the holiday compared with the way you did, or just find a place in your narrative to recall what July 4 was like earlier in your life.

• July 4 is part of a summer of note. Maybe the holiday itself wasn’t remarkable, but the summer you got your driver’s license or got married or changed jobs or whatever happened turned out to be an important point in your memoir. Again because July 4 is relatable, it may be a good idea to incorporate the holiday into your description of that summer.

This particular July 4, of course, is a special birthday for the United States, marking 250 years since the 1776 Declaration of Independence. So it may be a moment in time that many people remember. Whether you include it in your memoir or not, have a great July 4.

Doubts are familiar territory to memoir authors, and they can occur at any and all points in the process. You’re either hoping to start writing your memoir, in the middle of writing it, or finished and maybe in the editing, publishing or marketing stage. Even if you’re in that final phase, you may be doubting whether anyone will want to read your story, and that uncertainty and insecurity can stop you in your tracks and keep you from completing your memoir. I am going to share the secret sentence that will motivate you to continue, and I’ll try to get you over the one word holding you back from connecting your memoir to readers. Just one word has the power to freeze you mid-project.

Alone or Not?

We live our lives in isolation in the sense that we know only our own truth. Our reality is ours alone; each of us has a separate and distinct existence with experiences that are unique because they happen in a moment at a location with specific people and, most of all, to that one human that we know as “me.”

But how many people are out there in the world? More than 8 billion. They’re all human, all somewhere between birth and death, many living under conditions similar to yours. There’s no reason to feel small; we each account for one important person in that sea of humanity. But there is a reason to pause and think about our uniqueness.

The Birthday Problem

A little math. I’m no math whiz and don’t understand why what I’m about to tell you is true, so hang in there with me. What’s referred to as the “birthday problem” illustrates how coincidences are more likely than we intuitively expect. This first part is easy math: with 365 days in the year, the chances are only 1 in 365 that a random person you meet shares your birthday. And yet it takes only 23 random people in a room to increase those odds to 50 percent that two will have the same birthday. It’s a paradox involving probability and various mathematical concepts too advanced for my little brain. But there it is, just 23 people for it to be 50/50 that you might run into someone with your birthday.

With that in mind, think about whatever is your biggest reveal in your memoir. Is that what’s making you doubt the desirability of your story? It may be a family secret or an avoidable mistake or an embarrassing medical condition. Perhaps your book is the first time you’ve shared your story with anyone, much less everyone. Now think of the 8 billion people and the birthday paradox. Certainly someone out there has been through what you’ve been through.

And that relatability is one reason you’re writing the memoir, right? Because somewhere in your mind you know that people will not only empathize but relate to the way you’ve faced your challenges. That’s the whole point for some memoir authors: to help the next person facing the same difficulties.

Finally, the Reveal

So the sentence that will motivate you to keep writing is this: You are not unique. You are not alone in this. Other people recognize your struggles. They’ve experienced them or know someone who has. And the word that will free you if you neutralize it is: Shame. There is no shame in however you handled a situation. There is no shame in the fact that something terrible happened to you or someone did something offensive to you.

Without making sweeping generalizations, I think the shame can play out differently for men as compared with women. Jordan Ritter Conn’s new book, American Men, follows the stories of four men who hadn’t previously let their guard down to talk about their challenges. Conn concludes that men don’t like feeling, much less showing, vulnerability. They compartmentalize, shove thoughts away from their conscious thinking, never talk about aspects of themselves even to the people they love most. Back to coincidences, actor Andrew McCarthy also has a new book—Who Needs Friends: An Unscientific Examination of Male Friendship Across America—that tackles more or less the same topic.

Women have been conditioned to feel ashamed of all sorts of things. If they were sexually assaulted, it can become a big secret and they even can feel responsible for causing the crime by, for example, letting a man in their house. They can feel ashamed of sexual feelings of any variety, or of having ambition, failing as a mother, succeeding in a nontraditional industry, and on and on. Men can have shame around these same issues, and with their fear of vulnerability it can be doubly tough to get past the shame.

In Good Company

Writing a memoir is therapy. It helps you cut through shame. It gets you comfortable with feeling vulnerable. And when readers assure you that you’re not unique in the experiences you describe, you’ll feel a freedom that will be worth every minute you’ve spent writing.

Memoir is an identified genre, but when you examine the process you see that this genre sources writing from many others. So when you ask yourself what category of writer you should be acting as in order to write a solid memoir, you may have to answer: all of them.

Well, not all. Children’s lit, horror, fantasy—there probably are others as well that don’t play much into memoir. But many do. Still, memoir is unique, and borrowing from other genres doesn’t mean letting them take control.

Diary

First, of course, you’re writing stories from your life. So in a way, you’re letting readers peek into your diary. Let that influence you to stay raw, honest and vulnerable.

But you’re not a diarist; you’re a memoir author. You won’t be giving readers anything close to a day-by-day account of your life. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to include more than necessary to stay on your theme. Choose your stories carefully.

Some authors even use the structure of a diary for their memoir, but I think in most cases a memoir does not benefit from the diary structure. It makes me think the author chose the format just because it’s easier.

Fiction

Memoir authors can be surprised when their book starts sounding a lot like a novel. That’s a good thing. It should read that way, with devices from fiction like dialogue, description and character development. It can have suspense and foreshadowing, story arcs and time jumps, cliffhangers at the end of chapters.

But this is nonfiction. That means it has to be essentially true. The “essentially” part is that you aren’t expected to write a conversation in the exact words that were said at the time. Or if you describe what your dad was wearing, you can picture him in something he wore often and not feel an obligation to know whether he wore it on the day in question. But “essentially” also means you have to get the essence of the conversation right and capture the essence of the person you’re describing.

News Report

Instead of sounding like a novel, some chapters may sound more like a news report—a straightforward description of events. So part of the time you’re a reporter, providing readers with a detailed account of something that happened in your life. Like other journalism students, I learned the five W’s: who, what, where, when and why. There’s also how. Keep these in mind when describing what occurred.

Journalism students also learn how to make a story short and dry. Newspaper articles are, or at least were, cut from the bottom, so you have to get all of your important facts in at the beginning and let them proceed in diminished order from there. There’s no room for adjectives, either. Just report the facts.

That short-and-dry aspect has little bearing on memoir writing. Make your writing concise and don’t ramble, but certainly “dry” is not a description you want for your book. You can start anywhere, and you have license to indulge in description. Remember the “show, don’t tell” mantra, which is true for both news report and memoir. If you describe the events well, the reader will know how you’re feeling about them.

Feature Article

If a magazine or website did a profile on you, what would it say? It would have a theme and then support that theme with pertinent stories from your life. A memoir is kind of a very long feature article about you.

But it’s not quite that, because it’s written in more of a fiction format. The bigger difference, though, is that it’s from your point of view. It’s inherently biased, not objective. Since you’re writing it, you don’t have to balance the piece with other people’s opinions, good or bad, about you.

History/Textbook

Memoirs teach readers about all sorts of topics that surround the person’s life. Like any book or movie, it should increase the reader’s knowledge in addition to offering an entertaining story.

But when your memoir captures a time period or geographical location so comprehensively that sections morph into a class lecture, you’ve gone too far. I often remind memoir authors specifically that they’re not writing a textbook.

Op-ed

I also remind memoir authors who are using their book to make a point that this is a memoir, not an op-ed. Persuasive writing is a talent, but in a memoir it has to be under wraps a bit. You can be fighting for justice or promoting one side of a cause, but you have to fold that into your storytelling. You’re not writing a diatribe.

Humor

Not every memoir can have humor, but authors of even the darkest tales can find a way to lighten up between tough memories. It gives readers a break. If your memoir doesn’t cover a tragedy and is more upbeat, humor adds a compelling reason for readers to recommend it to friends.

Young Adult

Memoir writing can be intellectual and complex, and some memoir topics may be too mature for young minds. For the most part, though, memoir is perfect reading for teens. They can learn about a person and what life was like during the time period covered and within the culture described. So if you’re struggling to explain your life in the most highfalutin language, you may do better to dumb it down enough to keep the reading flowing.

More Ideas

There are lots of structures to choose from when you’re writing a memoir. Food can be an important element in your story, so maybe your book is a memoir/cookbook hybrid. Perhaps a home figured prominently in your life and you describe each room the way you might for an interior design magazine. Or your life may take place in so many locations that your memoir is part travelogue.

Wear as many writers’ hats as you need in order to craft the memoir you envision. You’re a memoir author. That means you’re hoping to be a master of multiple writing categories.

Writing this on Mother’s Day (although posting the day after), I’m thinking of moms and motherhood and of course I’m always thinking about memoir. There’s a pretty significant intersection of these topics.

If you’re writing a memoir, your mother will make an appearance—a cameo at the very least. Even if your theme has nothing to do with your mom, if you’re marketing your book as a memoir you pretty much owe the reader some information on your background.

However, if your mother is truly a minor player in your life or not associated with your memoir theme, you can introduce her to readers in a chapter about your childhood and be done with it. You don’t have to devote multiple chapters to your early life or even mention when your parents died if it doesn’t really fit into your narrative. If you never knew your mother, be transparent about how that happened.

Starring Your Mom

But what if you want to focus on the mother-child relationship? That is a valid memoir theme. Sally Field’s memoir In Pieces tells a lot about Field’s own life but always comes back around to her role as daughter and the impact of her mom’s strengths and weaknesses. And, of course, the title of the bestseller I’m Glad My Mom Died previews Jennette McCurdy’s complicated relationship with her mother.

Cher is another celebrity whose memoir supplies a lot of her perspective of her mother. It serves to demonstrate why second-generation talent has a better shot at success/stardom. Sometimes the most talented person in the family is the parent, but that parent has to focus on paying the bills. You often hear comedians say that their father was the funny one in their family. Never having had the support from their own parents, these parents of celebrities pour themselves into the promise of their children’s future.

So if you want to write a book as a tribute to your mom, go ahead. Still, write it as a memoir. Don’t write a biography of your unknown mother. Write it as your memories and reactions surrounding your relationship with her.

Many people use their memoir as a statement of their own truth about their upbringing, and sometimes that truth comes across harshly in recalling parents. Maybe you’re still in therapy decades after leaving home because of the harm your mother did to you. Is it okay to write about all of that? Yes. But if you’re aiming for a broad readership, your story will have to involve more than a long list of complaints.

When You’re the Mother

The other side of a motherhood memoir is written by the mother, not the child. Some people write memoirs to document their children’s illnesses or learning difficulties. That’s fine but, again, write it as a memoir, not as a biography of your child.

Now back to a twist on the original question—what if your memoir theme has nothing to do with your role as a mother? Should you still include the topic of motherhood? Whereas your childhood and the parenting you received shaped you as a person, that’s not true of the way you parent. So I would say this aspect of your life is not essential when the theme doesn’t touch on it, especially if your memoir largely takes place before you had children.

There’s a big “but” here, and that’s because you probably were emotionally affected by becoming a parent. When chronologically in your story you get to the year of having a child, I think it would be awkward not to mention it. Or at some point, refer to the family you raised. It’s nice to answer readers’ obvious questions and not leave them hanging.

These thoughts come around on Mother’s Day. And if you’ve lost a mom, as I long ago lost my mom pictured above with me, I hope you have good times to remember—and write about.

I always learn a lot from every memoir I read/listen to, but Lauren Graham’s I’m Talking as Fast as I Can supplied a little bonus information that has nothing to do with her life or memoir style. She wanted to pass along a 10-step writing motivation technique called the Kitchen Timer Method. After learning it from director/screenwriter Don Roos, Graham adopted it herself and says she never had another problem with procrastination, writer’s block or anything else that can keep writers from making progress.

This is how it goes, but of course below each step I have to add my two cents. The all-caps sections are original, not mine ever!

1. Buy a kitchen timer, one that goes to 60 minutes.
   Me: Translation for 2026: know how to set your watch or phone alarm for one hour.

2. We decide on Monday how many hours of writing we will do Tuesday. When in doubt or under pressure or self-attack, we choose fewer hours rather than more. A good, strong beginning is one hour a day.
   Me: I think this is a great idea. Rather than commit to a long-term calendar or plan even a week ahead day by day, wait until the day before. You’ll know your schedule and can somewhat anticipate any surprises that come up. This also lets you plan the rest of your life without much regard to your writing goal, because even if you schedule other things that day you know that you won’t set your writing time until all of those other plans are made.

3. The Kitchen Timer Hour:
   No phones. No listening to the machine to see who it is. We turn ringers off if possible. It is our life; we are entitled to one hour without interruption, particularly from loved ones. We ask for their support. “I was on an hour” is something they learn to understand. But they will not respect it unless we do first.
   No music with words, unless it’s a language we don’t understand.
   No internet, absolutely.
   No reading.
   No “desk re-design/landscaping,” no pencil-sharpening.
   Me: Don Roos developed this before so much of a book’s research could be done online. The “listening to the machine” and “no pencil-sharpening” are the giveaways. So the problem I have with this rule is that then we must define what an hour devoted to “writing” looks like. When you’re writing a memoir, other nonfiction or even a novel, the hour you devote to writing can turn out to be 60 valuable minutes of online research. There are chapters you can’t write without determining a sequence of events or other information that is in the public record. I would say turn off your phone’s ringer but leave the buzz on for emergencies, and definitely no social media or responding to email/texts. But I would replace “no internet, absolutely” with “internet for research purposes only.” And it counts as research when you spend your time emailing requests to friends and relatives for stories, documents or facts they may remember.

4. Immediately upon beginning the hour, we open two documents: our journal, and the project we are working on. If we don’t have a project we’re actively working on, we just open our journal.
   Me: Roos’s idea here is that you write, and if that means nothing but writing in your journal, well, good enough. But as a memoir author you always have a project: your memoir. And writing a memoir doesn’t automatically mean you also even have a journal. So on this one, just open your memoir document.

5. An hour consists of TIME SPENT keeping our writing appointment. We don’t have to write at all, if we are happy to stare at the screen. Nor do we have to write a single word on our current project; we may spend the entire hour writing in our journal. Anything we write in our journal is fine; ideas for future projects, complaints about loved ones, even “I hate writing” typed four hundred times.
   When we wish or if we wish, we pop over to the current project document and write for as long as we like. When we get tired or want a break, we pop back to the journal.
   The point is, when disgust or fatigue with the current project arises, we don’t take a break by getting up from our desk. We take a break by returning to the comforting arms of our journal, until that in turn bores us. Then we are ready to write on our project again, and so on. We use our boredom in this way.
   IT IS ALWAYS OKAY TO WRITE EXCLUSIVELY IN OUR JOURNAL. In practice it will rarely occur that we spend the full hour in our journal, but it’s fine, good, and right that we do when we feel like it. It is just as good a writing day as one spent entirely in our current project.
   Me: If you can get yourself to write in your journal, you can put the same thoughts into your memoir. You may delete them later, and I think that’s the key to this #5 point—don’t give in to writer’s block. Write anything, and edit later. It’s all part of your life. For me, the problem is that I’m a writer. So devoting an hour to writing is no problem since I write all day long. For someone like me, that hour has to be devoted to the memoir or whatever project I’m avoiding. And the part about staring at the screen? I think the idea is that if you sit there for an hour, you’ll write something.

6. It is infinitely better to write fewer hours every day than many hours one day and none the next. If we have a crowded weekend, we choose a half-hour as our time, put in that time, and go on with our day. We are always trying to minimize our resistance, and beginning an hour on Monday after two days off is a challenge.
   Me: I respect this point of view when it functions for you, but it is actually opposite of my experience. I used to work at least a little bit seven days a week. I made all my professional deadlines, but sometimes the rest of my life would get away from me. For many years now, I’ve taken Saturdays off from working. Saturday is a great day to spend on the phone or in person chatting with friends, getting some shopping done, cooking something special, cleaning a closet, assembling some apparatus that’s been sitting in a box, packing for an upcoming trip, and so forth. I think that when you set such a high bar of never skipping a day, when you do inevitably skip a day it’s like cheating on your diet—you think everything is ruined now. But I do agree that two days in a row make this writing goal feel less like a habit and more like a hobby. So try to write on day two, but busy life today doesn’t always cooperate. Maybe you’re traveling or dealing with a sick child or hosting out-of-town friends. A day off here and there, even weekly if that is what becomes you habit, is just fine.

7. When the hour is up, we stop, even if we’re in the middle of a sentence. If we have scheduled another hour, we give ourselves a break before beginning again—to read, eat, go on errands. We are not trying to create a cocoon we must stay in between hours—the “I’m sorry I can’t see anyone or leave my house, I’m on a deadline” method. Rather, inside the hour is the inviolate time.
   Me: I don’t agree with this except that you should get up and stretch after, maximum, an hour. Touch your toes, walk up a flight of stairs, certainly eat if you’re hungry. But if you’ve scheduled two hours to write, there’s no need to split them in half to the point that you’re running errands in between the two hours. It’s fine if you want to do it that way, but I don’t see why it’s imperative.

8. If we fail to make our hours for the day, we have probably scheduled too many. Four hours a day is an enormous amount of time spent in this manner, for example. If on Wednesday we planned to write three hours and didn’t make it, we subtract the time we didn’t write from our schedule for the next day. If we fail to make a one-hour commitment, we make a one-hour or a half-hour appointment for the next day. WE REALIZE WE CANNOT MAKE UP HOURS, and that continuing to fail to meet our commitment will result in the extinguishing of our voice.
   Me: I fully agree with this one. If you scheduled two hours but made it only through the first hour, the natural response might be to try to make it up the next day and schedule three hours. As he notes, doing that is probably setting yourself up for failure. Let it go. If you made it through only one hour, then set one hour as the nest day’s goal. You know you can keep that promise to yourself.

9. When we have fulfilled our commitment, we make sure we credit ourselves for doing so. We have satisfied our obligation to ourselves, and the rest of the day is ours to do with as we wish.
   Me: Sure. Get it done, and go about your day. Or do everything you need to do all day, and then write at night. Let your memoir be part of your life rather than having it consume your life. That’s good advice, but I can’t say I follow it. I recently ghostwrote a memoir, and I lived and breathed it a lot of each day. When I saw one of the people in the book boarding the same plane as I was, I thought that perhaps I was just imagining it was that person because the players in the book were always in my thoughts. Don’t be like me!

10. A word about content: This may seem to be all about form, but the knowledge that we have satisfied our commitment to ourselves, the freedom from anxiety and resistance, and the stilling of that hectoring voice inside of us which used to yell at us that we weren’t writing enough — all this opens us up creatively. When we stop whipping ourselves, our voices rise up inside.
    Me: Absolutely. Under the pressure of our own burdensome self-chastising, we lose the freedom of mind and soul that it takes to create. I remember this from college. I felt frozen facing papers and tests for three or four different classes. A friend urged me to let go of all but one and just get started on that one. It was amazing how much better I felt—instantly—once I made progress on the first one, and then I went to the next and the next.

Well, that’s the Kitchen Timer Method. Follow it to the letter, try my tweaks, or come up with your own version. Good luck!

As you start your memoir, identifying your ideal reader will help you determine what to include and what tone to use. As the writing process continues, picturing that reader will keep reminding you of both aspects. But how do you figure out who your reader is, this wonderful person lapping up every word you write about yourself?

Younger You

The most obvious people who will want to read your book are those who might learn something that will help them. This applies primarily to memoirs about overcoming trauma, illness, abuse or other major life hurdle. But a memoir focused on achievement or simply the life you led also can teach and inspire people who are finding themselves with similar goals or in comparable situations. Who is this reader? A younger you.

Picture yourself at the time you were dealing with the trauma, challenges or successes you describe in the book. What will you write that will guide Younger You to navigate through the inevitable roadblock or take advantage of an open door? That doesn’t mean write it as an advice column, but describe your stories and experiences clearly enough for readers facing the same thing to have positive outcomes.

People Who Know You

Your friends and family, along with anyone you mention in the book, will be interested in what you write—but mostly what you say about them. So, really, these are the readers you should not write for. Picturing your late mother in heaven as you praise the way she raised you is fine. Picturing your living mother scowling as you criticize the way she raised you will only keep you from writing your truth.

Still, it’s valuable to stay accountable to these readers in terms of making sure you’re accurate. Was it windy on that day, or are you throwing in a strong wind just as a device to create a mental image? Take the time to google what the weather actually was that day, because your friend may remember, or google, and catch you in the minor fabrication. When readers see that you’re making up the little things, you start to lose them on the big things. Will that conversation with your boss sound at least plausible all these years later to a coworker who was there at the time?

The danger is worrying about hurting the feelings of people you know. And the concern so many memoir authors have—that someone will sue them for writing negatively about the person—influences authors, often unnecessarily, to hold back. These people have already harmed you; one reason you’re publishing your memoir is to speak up for yourself. So don’t let them now stop you from authentic, possibly cathartic, writing.

People Familiar with Your Time/Place

Even if people don’t know you, if they’ve lived in the small town you’re describing or if they’re roughly your age and remember the way things were just as you recount them, they’re potential readers for your book. So, again, take the time to get the details right. Be both accurate and comprehensive. Don’t rush through; it’s okay to take a paragraph or a page to create a full mental picture of a train station or teacher or riverfront or fashion craze.

Someone Particularly Interested in Your Theme

Let’s say you triumphed over a rare disease. Maybe you were cured, or perhaps you are doing very well living with it. The reader may not be a younger you with early symptoms, but an interested reader can be an academic researcher into the disease, could have a relative with the condition, may be curious about the disease after having seen a movie or TV show about it, or may be living with a similarly serious health issue. Or there could be any number of other reasons for a reader looking to learn how you overcame the worst of the disease.

For this reader, you’ll want to provide details that other readers may skim through. This is a tough judgment call. You don’t really want readers skipping whole chapters. But documentation can be a critical part of your theme. You have to show evidence for your point of view, you need the play-by-play for surgeries or a recovery, or you may want to include resources for people facing the same plight. If you can make these details a compelling part of the story, readers will get through them. So the goal here, as throughout your book, is to write in a way that keeps readers with you.

Story Lovers

If you’re a natural storyteller, or if you can become one, you’re on the path to writing a good or great memoir. As I often do, I’ll use the example of Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated. I don’t personally relate to Mormons or survivalists or bad parenting (despite what my kids say LOL), but I love a captivating story, and Educated delivered, so I enjoyed it.

Picture your reader as someone who feasts on great novels. Keep writing with that critical reader having the choice with each chapter to continue going or put down your book and not bother to pick it up again. Make your stories fresh and surprising, frightening or funny or enlightening. End some chapters with a cliffhanger, or skillfully allude to something in the future that explains what you’re saying now. Keep hooking the storytelling fan over and over.

Readers Who Instantly Get You—and Those Who Don’t

And this is the catch. Typically, you want to get readers on your side. You’re probably not writing a memoir to convince readers what a despicable person you used to be, but even in that case you’ll be trying to get them to agree. Usually, though, you want them rooting for you.

Readers who connect right away will stick with you. The problem with picturing only those people is that you may gloss over explanations that will help other readers understand your motives, mindset and circumstances. The trick is to toggle between these two opposing readers and give each enough without alienating the other.

You Can Do It!

I mean, I hope you can do it. I like to give affirmation! A lot of “writing for the reader” can be done on the first edit. Your initial draft is to identify the stories you want to tell and just get yourself on a regular schedule of focusing on your memoir. But as you reread and edit, try to get into the head of the reader. You do eventually want people other than you to love your book.

“There is no grail so holy as the truth of one’s own story. And to tell it so that others may find meaning, there requires self-awareness minus the safe distances of irony or sarcasm—as well as belief that one’s story is worthy of being told.”

I was reading an ordinary entry in the Sunday, February 8, New York Times Book Review section when I came across that paragraph. I had to smile. Has it become simply fact that “the truth of one’s own story” is so vastly important? This is what we memoir coaches have been telling clients all along, but I wasn’t aware that it had risen to become conventional wisdom. But there it was, stated by journalist Danyel Smith in a review of The Flower Bearers by Rachel Eliza Griffiths, who’s married to author Salman Rushdie.

Worthiness doubts

Let’s start with the easy part of that paragraph—the notion at the end that to be a memoir author you have to believe that your story is worthy of being told. It seems self-evident, but I really tried to consider whether you could write your story despite self-loathing or just a nagging doubt that anyone would want to read about your life.

I don’t see why not. You just write it anyway. You can think about the subject—yourself—as someone else. Pretend that you’re just discovering this person. Now is the book more interesting? Or look at it as an assignment: write about yourself in a somewhat flattering light. And, really, humility can work in your favor. If you’re all full of yourself, your memoir will reflect that. Braggy memoirs sit on shelves.

If you’re writing a memoir mostly for informational purposes—to leave it for grandchildren and later generations—then your life is interesting because it’s their heritage. It doesn’t have to be filled with exciting adventures, tear-jerking tragedies or great achievement. Your life is about the stock they came from, and they’ll appreciate it.

Then there’s the goal of writing your own book for yourself. That is good enough. It’s your life, and it’s not unusual to want to document it from your own perspective. You’ll hand it out to friends, maybe list it on Amazon, but you’re doing this to fulfill a goal. And whether your life is worthy of a read or not, the goal itself is worthy of pursuing.

To sell a memoir, you must have either a great story or great writing. You don’t need both. If you’re a very good writer, you can choose quirky stories from your ordinary life and still write a fantastic book. And if you’re not a good writer, but your story is truly compelling or you have a large following, a publisher might get you a ghostwriter or excellent editor.

Self-awareness, no irony or sarcasm

The reviewer who wrote the paragraph specifically says a memoir author must have self-awareness and not hide behind irony or sarcasm. I agree with that. You have to be aware of what motivated you to act as you did at every turn of your story. You must understand your own talents and shortcomings and how you acquired them. You should be generous in giving credit to parents or mentors or some luck for your achievements, and you must be simply honest, raw and without attitude about any harm that was done to you. Lead with your heart; don’t give into the temptation to be cute or clever while not taking enough accountability. Readers will respond in turn with their own hearts, appreciating that you’ve presented yourself as naked as a newborn.

I remember when two celebrity memoirs were released at the same time, in October 2023, thereby meeting the risky fate of being compared against each other. Reviewers praised Henry Winkler’s Being Henry: The Fonz…and Beyond as less self-conscious, more genuine than John Stamos’s If You Would Have Told Me: A Memoir. I didn’t read the Stamos effort, but I did read Winkler’s book, and it was so forthcoming, candid, bare.

Truth as holy grail

Now we get to the initial claim that there is no grail so holy as your truth about your own story. I don’t know; it seems hyperbolic to me. If you ask 100 people to finish that sentence—“There is no grail as holy as…”—I doubt that “the truth of one’s own story” will come to the mind of any of them.

But, look, I’m a memoir coach. I believe in “one’s own story” even if I stopped using “one’s” when I realized I wasn’t British. I believe in the personally told narrative of every single life. I enjoy good writing. Put that together and I suppose it’s a grail holy enough to earn the distinction.

Many memoir authors include life lessons to help others who face challenges similar to their own. From illness and injury to abuse, learning issues and difficult relationships, our hurdles are never ours alone. Often, memoir authors believe that other people can benefit from reading how to manage or overcome hardship from someone who’s been through it.

But how do you structure a memoir that has both narrative and lessons? As always with memoir, there’s no single way to craft this, but there are some obvious options.

Deftly throughout the book

Readers are smart and will pick up on the lessons just from your narrative. Even if you want to mention resources or offer advice more obviously, you can weave that information throughout the book. Really, most memoirs have lessons inherent in the story. People get that.

At the end

One way to make it easy on yourself is to save the direct advice for one or more final chapters. By then readers know you, understand that you’ve overcome the same challenges they now face, and may be looking to you as a type of mentor. This structure gives readers the option to read these life lessons or not bother. You may not like that, but you can’t force lessons on someone anyway.

At the beginning

For some authors, the whole point is helping the next person avoid or deal with unwelcome developments in life. If you’re thinking of your book as more “how to fix yourself” than as a traditional memoir, it makes sense to start out by framing the issue you’re addressing. You can use the second person “you” and liberally sprinkle in “command verbs” so that it reads something like: “Make sure you follow your doctor’s orders,” or “Know that you’re strong enough to leave someone.” Then you can pivot to your personal story and come back to the advice later in the book.

Make each chapter a specific lesson

Perhaps your healing/recovery/triumph took place over a lot of steps. If you have enough, you can craft each of those parts as its own chapter with its own lessons. The title of each chapter will reflect that. Then you still have the choice of either weaving the advice into the narrative or separating it from the story.

At the beginning or end of each chapter

I just read a very good memoir, Heart of a Stranger by Angela Buchdahl. The author tacks onto each chapter a little aside that is related to the chapter’s topic. Buchdahl is a rabbi, and these sections are kind of mini-sermons. Either she quotes scripture, discusses the chapter’s topic in a broader context, or in some other way passes along the wisdom she’s gained in her life. It did work in this book. As with saving all of your advice for a final chapter, putting it at the beginning or end of every chapter signals to the reader that this is a part they can just skip. And, again, you may not like that, but readers who are there for the story and not the lecture will thank you.

Use essays rather than narrative

Instead of writing your story out with all the tools of fiction writing, you can write a series of essays. Taken as a whole, the essays may tell enough about your life to be considered a memoir. But chapter by chapter, you’re writing exactly what you want readers to take away from your book.

Write two books

If your traditionally written memoir becomes popular and you sell a lot of copies, you will become a sought-after author. At that point, you need a next book! You could fashion that second book as more of a how-to and round it out by reviewing the latest research on the challenge you overcame.

Ask a lot of people to read your book. No matter how you’ve structured it, if they feel that the advice comes across in too heavy-handed a manner, believe them. But if you do have distinct lessons to teach, don’t shy away from that. Add a layer of subtlety and a dash of humility, and readers may very well accept and appreciate your cautionary tale.

I’ve read a lot of highly regarded celebrity memoirs, and it’s a rare one that focuses on the obvious success. Instead, they’re filled with tough childhoods and squalid conditions, pitfalls and insecurities, bouts of depression and failed relationships. You may be trying to write the perfect memoir, but to begin with nothing is perfect, and for sure no honest account of a life portrays a perfect person. Readers are drawn to vulnerability. Only a memoir that reveals an imperfect you is likely to keep readers engaged. Then they can root for you.

Challenges are built into many memoirs. As I mentioned in my last post, the inspiration for writing a memoir often comes from a tragedy, traumatic event or tough period in life. Abuse, addiction, disease and mental illness are common themes. But outside forces are one thing, and I’m not talking about those. Whether you’re writing about a hard life or a relatively easy one, the tale of how you dealt with each episode conveys elements of your humanity. Readers identify with that common thread that even with our unique gifts and limitations, we’re all so quintessentially human.

And yet the differences are what matter. You’re quirky, you have your own way of doing things, you like certain foods and dress the way you like to dress, and you have a few unusual hobbies or predilections. Your smile or gait or voice may be identical to your grandmother’s, but it’s unlike that of anyone else. I know all of this about you because this describes all of us. And this is what should stand out in your memoir.

Character development (yours)

A memoir’s narrative can read like the plot of a novel—suspenseful or funny or sad—and that’s probably been consuming the majority of your writing energy. Of course, you have to give readers a story, with pivots and crises, a beginning and ending. But a memoir highlights character development as well. What is your character, your essence? Where are the cracks? What scars are left but helped you become who you are, so familiar and unexpected all at the same time?

Along the way, it’s fine to share your achievements and times that make you proud of yourself. Be careful not to describe that in a boastful way. Maybe a successful outcome surprised even you! Or you expected to fail but somehow prevailed. Most of all, in your rise to the top, certainly you made mistakes. Write about those swings that missed. Recognize that luck may have played a role in your success.

If your memoir is about a singular, major life challenge, then part of the theme is that you overcame this hurdle. You probably are telling your story partly to reassure others that they, too, can overcome a similar situation. You may feel that you want to emphasize what worked for you, not all the goofs. But you’ll lose them that way. They have to identify with a winner to become one, and they can’t identify with a perfect score. So explain how you triumphed despite human frailties, not because of all your strengths.

Remember as you write to give a nod to any advantages you had, not only the barriers in your way. That shows humility. Describe your fear and doubts. Look at yourself from others’ points of view and think about what they’re seeing. Ultimately, a memoir is introspective. When you reveal your shortcomings, you prove you’ve done the work in your own mind before trying to explain yourself or help the next person.

Photo by Jacob Owens for Unsplash

I had a whole obligatory New Year’s resolutions piece to post, but I’ll save it for January. Today I’m feeling you. I’m thinking about you non-celebrity memoir writers. I’m feeling your pain of living and your catharsis from writing about your life. I’m feeling your triumphs and your regrets, your hardships and your blessings. So here’s a welcome 2026 toast to you, memoir writers, hoping for a new year that delivers everything you want in life and all the benefits you’re seeking through sharing your memories and your unique story. There is no other you.

Above, there I am with the best thing for me about 2025: the birth of a grandchild. So here’s also to new babies and the lives that they’re just beginning. May those lives be worthy of a memoir in their ordinariness or their greatness, but not in their despair.

And here’s to YOU who are getting past the hurdle of reliving trauma as you diligently write about….

Your terrible parents and miserable childhood.
Your childhood with just one parent—or with no parents.
A childhood plagued by bullying.
A life of homelessness.
A life of extreme poverty.
An unspeakable childhood or adolescence on the receiving end of sexual abuse, a childhood that no child should have and no adult should be remembering. Your courage astonishes me.
Seeking education despite your learning disability.
Learning despite limited access to education.
Life in a country where freedom is withheld, and perhaps a risky escape.
A life of religious persecution.
Life in a brainwashing cult.
A life of substance abuse.
The life of an alcoholic.
Your gambling or shopping addiction.
A life of pain and illness for a memoir set in hospital wards and closed-curtained bedrooms.
Life as an accident victim who fought back to live as fully as possible.
Your experiences with mental illness.
A life of embarrassment about who you are in a society that doesn’t readily accept you.
A life filled with challenges of various sorts.
A life primarily characterized by others’ hatred.
A marriage or other partnership defined by abuse, whether verbal and emotional or physical and sexual. Or all of it.
Your difficult pregnancy.
Your experiences parenting a child with physical, developmental or emotional issues.
Horrific memories from your brutal military service.
Your desperate search for a meaningful life, or a savior, or simply peace.
Your life involving sadness, no matter what the cause.

I salute every single one of you and wish you the best in writing about your challenging life. I apologize if I neglected to mention your journey. Typically, if you’re at the point of memoir, you feel you’ve overcome your major challenge. My hat’s off to you for never giving up, with an extra tip to those of you who are writing in order to help the next person under circumstances similar to the ones you battled.

Now to the rest of you memoir authors—those who are writing in gratitude for a good life or are writing to just leave behind a record for grandchildren to understand your choices and to learn how things were in your life and times. I toast to you as well. A life may be for living as they say, but it’s also a great gift for the people in your life, and strangers, too, to pause and write about who you were, who you are, and why this all matters.

To all of you: love, peace and joy in 2026. And a solid writing habit :).

Rosanne

A lot of memoir authors don’t look forward to the holiday season because of all the family gatherings. Through your memoir, you may hold family members responsible for challenges you’ve had in your life. But as long as attending a holiday gathering does not endanger your mental health, use the holidays to your advantage! They hold a lot of promise for a memoir author. Bring a laptop, notebook or recording device!

1. Memories. You know what your older relatives love doing? Reminiscing. You may think they keep everything close to the vest, protecting secrets and hiding background circumstances, but the older they get the less they care, or maybe they don’t quite remember which information they’re not supposed to disclose. And typically there’s alcohol to loosen those lips. Most holiday celebrations last hours and include casual sitting around, so focus on that and consider the advantages of being able to reach everyone at once:
   -Bring old photos. Family members will enjoy going through them, and you won’t have to say a word because the photos will generate comments and conversation all by themselves.
   -Approach relatives one by one to ask a few questions. You get a face-to-face interview without having to make a separate appointment with each person.
   -Walk up to a group and throw out a question that might provide a big-picture view for you when different people respond with different recollections. It can be anything from “Why don’t I know much about the years Mom’s family lived in California” to “What do you recall about me as a little kid?”
   -Talk to the family members you know the least. What insight can they give you into your own life?

2. New memories. Even if your memoir’s timeline ends long before current day, hanging with your family can influence your memoir. Perhaps because you’re writing a memoir, you’ll be paying attention to the dynamics of relationships and traditions, and that will guide you in the tone of your writing. Maybe something dramatic will take place—a reconciliation, wedding announcement, memorable or clever remark, or empty chair due to a recent death. This can give you an idea for a good ending for your book.

3. Test the publishing waters. If your family isn’t aware that you’re writing a memoir, this could be a convenient time to give them a heads-up that they may see their name in your upcoming book. You can even bring printed passages if you feel that you need someone’s permission to publish a detail, you want to check the accuracy, or you’d like to just let the person know how you’re presenting an aspect of your life. This may give your relatives comfort rather than having them fear the worst. Of course, you may get blowback as well, so don’t spoil the party with a preview if you’re determined to write an unforgiving tell-all. If you’re finished or close to finishing your book, you can ask whether anyone knows a literary agent or has connections to a publishing house. Again, this is easier with everyone in the room than making a series of phone calls or relying on word-of-mouth methods to spread the information.

4. Trigger your writing habit. So much happens at the holidays, especially if you have house guests or you’re the one traveling and staying with relatives. Let the pile-on of experiences inspire you to write something unrelated to your memoir, just for practice. Call it a writing exercise, and I’ll give you the assignment: Write a short story or poem about your 2025 Thanksgiving or winter holiday. Some years ago, I found myself writing fiction, which I never do, based on our family’s Thanksgiving. I knew I could report in a narrative way, but I have no imagination and didn’t realize I could write fiction if I sat down and just did it. A lot of the story I crafted was truly made up, and I wrote in first person but from my daughter’s point of view, not my own. And guess what! A little literary journal, Meat for Tea, accepted it for publication after I reworked the story according to the issue’s parameters—the story had to revolve around “mugwort.”

While Meat for Tea sells its books and I encourage you to read the stories because they demonstrate good writing, my story is from 2022 so I think it’s okay if I just let you read it here. I hope you write something in 2025 yet that will give you confidence to work on your memoir in 2026. And Happy Holidays to you all.

You may not remember learning this rule about using the possessive with a gerund, but I assure you it was in an English grammar book you had at some point. It goes like this: some words ending in “ing” should be introduced with a possessive rather than an object pronoun. That’s the case when the “ing” word is a gerund, which is a noun.

To make this easy for you to understand, here are sentences that naturally seem to follow this construction correctly:

Their whispering disturbed everyone who was trying to watch the movie.
You probably don’t say, “Them whispering disturbed…..”

They took my arriving early as a sign of eager participation, which was not the case.
Again, it doesn’t sound right to say, “They took me arriving early….”

My constant apologizing only made them angrier.
Would you say, “Me constant apologizing….?” Unlikely.

His dancing was fun to watch.
Was “him dancing” fun to watch? We tend to say/write this correctly.

I think these examples sound correct because a word like “dancing” or “singing” is recognizable as a noun. But in many cases, using the possessive is not as intuitive, even though it is still correct:

He didn’t appreciate my commenting on his new facial hair.
vs. the error of:
He didn’t appreciate me commenting on his new facial hair.

I hope you don’t mind my interrupting you.
vs. the error of:
I hope you don’t mind me interrupting you.

To prevent my mom’s having to drive home late, I insisted she stay overnight.
vs. the error of:
To prevent my mom having to drive home late, I insisted she stay overnight.

You may have chosen the second choice in each example, especially the last one, but technically that would be incorrect. All three should take the possessive. So your ear is often an unreliable ally in this decision.

Sometimes It’s Not a Gerund

However, sometimes an “ing” word is not a gerund; it can be a participle. When it’s a participle, which is a verb form rather than a noun, you shouldn’t use the possessive:

I saw them still waiting for the bus after I’d circled the block twice.

I get annoyed at people claiming to be someone they’re not.

On the first example, your ear won’t let you write, “I saw their still waiting for the bus….” In that case, you can trust yourself to recognize that “waiting” is a participle.

On that second example, you could make an argument either way. Could “claiming” be a gerund and then it would be “people’s claiming”? I suppose so. But even highly educated readers may stop and have to look at that sentence if it has the possessive, and when you write a book, you don’t want to stop the reading fluidity.

Then there are sentences that require the possessive to be correct, but I’ll opt for making an error instead. Examples:

My basketball team’s winning the competition gave us all confidence as we prepared for the next challenge.
vs.
My basketball team winning the competition gave us all confidence as we prepared for the next challenge.

In some sentences, it’s important to figure out whether the “ing” word is a gerund or a participle, because using the possessive will change the meaning:

I wanted more info on the man juggling three jobs.
vs.
I wanted more info on the man’s juggling three jobs.

Did I want more info on the man, as the first sentence implies, or did I want more info on how to juggle three jobs?

Get It Write has a good explanation of this. In general, though, I am not judgy about it. If you want to drop that possessive, in most cases I’m okay with that decision. But as with so many grammar rules, I usually reword a questionable sentence. I would never write a sentence like the above “basketball” example. I’d say: Winning the competition gave everyone on my basketball team confidence as we prepared for the next challenge.

There are so many ways to convey the same thought that I try not to get trapped into these gritty choices.

Continuing from my last post, here’s another controversial grammar point.

Ending with a Preposition

Grammar-type people love to haggle over this one, and the meme above shows one of the several versions of a quote widely, but probably erroneously, attributed to Winston Churchill. No matter who really said it, the quote is perfect for making the point that in some cases you tie yourself in knots trying to avoid ending a phrase or sentence with a preposition.

The easy-to-understand sentence, “That’s something I will not put up with,” ends with the preposition “with,” and according to the rule, must be addressed in some other way. That leads you to, “That’s something with which I will not put up,” which still ends with a preposition. So you have to take one more step to reach the unwieldy, “That’s something up with which I will not put.”

As with everything in English, you can reword a thought to avoid the problem. For example, you can say, “I won’t put up with that.” Problem solved. But do you have to do that every time?

I think in some cases you should and in some it’s not necessary. In a memoir, you probably will include a lot of dialogue. Make your dialogue sound natural. A lot of grammar rules go out the window when you’re quoting people in the way they truly talk.

Apart from dialogue, let’s look at sentences that you might end with a preposition but don’t really have to. Before we start, consider that sentence you just read. It ends in “to.” Rewording that is a bit of a nightmare. No matter how many “which” devices you use, you can’t just stick the “to” somewhere else; it doesn’t work to say, “Let’s look at sentences that you might end with a preposition but to which you really don’t have” or “….a preposition but have to which you really don’t.” To avoid ending with a preposition, you would have to totally rework it. I’d say, “Let’s look at sentences that you might end with a preposition, but you can choose not to do that.”

Here are examples of sentences that you might end with a preposition but, instead, you can reposition the preposition:

• I didn’t know which category I should place that into.
  vs.
  I didn’t know into which category I should place that.

• I didn’t know which half I should take my slice from.
  vs.
  I didn’t know from which half I should take my slice.

• He was head of the committee I eventually took charge of.
  vs.
  He was head of the committee of which I eventually took charge.

In all of those sentences, I would use the “which” device and avoid ending with a preposition.

I’d choose differently for the next sentences. Even though it’s not difficult to avoid ending with a preposition, I don’t think that improves the sentence. Sometimes you improve the grammar at too high a price to the language or the communication:

• Her own situation was what she wanted to talk about.
  vs.
  Her own situation was about what she wanted to talk.

• I know I wasn’t exactly the kind of person they were hoping for.
  vs.
  I know I wasn’t exactly the kind of person for whom they were hoping.

I would just use the first option in those sentences. In some cases, you’re dealing with an idiom of some sort. Take this:

• I didn’t know where that comment came from.
  vs.
  I didn’t know from where that comment came.

In that sentence, too, the first option sounds more natural.

Let’s try “with” as in the meme quote:

• They told me to bring a “plus one,” but I don’t have anyone to go with.

Sure, you could say, “…but I don’t have anyone to bring.” That’s what I would do, at least in writing. But if you’re writing a memoir from the heart, and you want to write in a natural way that ends some phrases and sentences with a preposition, I certainly will not stop you.

This whole line of thought applies when you’re talking about a clause rather than a full sentence. If you say, “I didn’t know which half I should take my slice from, so I let the other person go first,” you still have to decide where “from” goes. It’s exactly the same as if it ended the sentence.

Note to anyone who stuck with me through this long lesson: I have one more coming, and then we’ll be done with grammar for a while.

You might think of grammar as black and white—correct grammar and incorrect grammar and nothing in between. But some grammatical structures fall into a gray area. Maybe the thinking on them has changed over time, or there might be examples of great writing taking opposite choices. So let’s explore some tricky grammar. Here are the first two controversial grammar points, and I’ll follow up with more in the coming weeks.

Serial Comma

People keep wanting to die on this hill, typically in favor of the serial, also called the “Oxford,” comma, but some stalwarts against the damn thing stake their claim to higher ground as well. The serial comma is the comma before and when you’re naming three or more items.

Outside of the United States, the serial comma has generally been accepted as proper. But Americans, especially American journalists, have been more likely to contend that the serial comma is, at the very least, unnecessary. In “my day,” standard stylebooks advised dropping the comma, and journalism schools taught that you’re always trying to save space, even the space of a tiny punctuation mark.

But then the Internet came along, with its eclectic and global mix, and Americans saw that they were in the minority not only in the world but also among academics, who tended to go with the comma. The meme above depicting JFK, Stalin and strippers became the rallying image against the serial comma. The idea is that without the comma, JFK and Stalin become identified as the two strippers. With the comma, you’ve invited two people and an indefinite number of strippers:

We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.
vs.
We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin.

What never went viral is a meme showing how inserting the comma can create an ambiguous meaning. In the following example, JFK could be your uncle, whereas without the comma it’s clear that you’ve invited three people:

We invited my uncle, JFK, and Stalin.
vs.
We invited my uncle, JFK and Stalin.

For many years after getting my master’s degree in journalism in the U.S., I held fast to omitting the serial comma as I was taught. But when times change, I change. Today, even here in my country the serial comma has become relatively standard, and the AP Stylebook no longer bans the comma and, in fact, recommends using it in a long, complicated series. I still drop it in a short and simple series:

On my birthday, I received three cards, some makeup and a necklace.

But in anything longer or more complex, I usually throw in a comma before the and.

Sentence Fragments and Run-ons

A proper sentence requires a subject and a verb. Sometimes it’s an implied subject, as in a command. “Go away!” is a sentence with you as the implied subject.

But skilled writers do not always have to be proper in their writing. Run-on sentences and sentence fragments used to indicate a lack of sophistication. Today, they can signal just the opposite. When you break rules with knowledge and purpose, you’re molding the language to fit your writer’s voice. That’s a good strategy for developing your style. With that approach, you can justify inserting a period after a phrase that has no subject and, therefore, is not really a sentence. Or you can use the once reviled comma splice instead of a period or semicolon to create what technically is a run-on sentence.

Look at these examples of sentence fragments (in bold). I think they’re just fine within the context of their paragraphs:

My sister stared at me but said nothing. Nothing at all. She didn’t even blink.

I looked away and thought of all the things I could do. Accept the ring. Give him reasons for not accepting the ring. Tell him I still loved him. Tell him why I hated him. At least give him a hand so he could get up off his knee. Instead I walked away, slowly at first and then more quickly, not once looking back.

Let’s twist that second example and turn it into a run-on, comma-spliced sentence:

I looked away and thought of all the things I could do. I could accept the ring, tell him I still loved him, head into some imagined and unlikely sunset with him. Or I could decline his proposal, tell him why I hated him, push him to watch him fall completely to the ground. I could at least extend a hand, help him get up off his knee. But all I did was walk away, slowly at first and then more quickly, not once looking back.

I routinely use both devices—the fragment and the run-on. Fragments are the way we speak; they’re useful for connecting with the reader. With run-ons, I like the cadence of omitting the and or the or. I like the way you say it in your head when it’s a complete thought without being a proper sentence.

Come Back for More Torture

Next time, I’ll tackle ending a sentence with a preposition and using the possessive with gerunds. You don’t have to know anything about it ahead of time to understand—you’ll see!

I’m not the biggest Swiftie out there, but I did take the above jumbotron photo when I saw her in concert during the Eras Tour, and now I’m doing a heavy listen of the new album, “Life of a Showgirl.” Mulling over the lyrics, the storytelling, the marketing and the work ethic, I’ve come up with 10 things memoir authors can learn from Taylor Swift.

1. Supply details that create a visual. I’m just using other words for “show, don’t tell.” This is probably the biggest takeaway from Taylor’s music. You don’t need the video, because you can picture every moment of the story she’s telling. And the descriptive details she supplies are not cliché or tired, old descriptions you’ve heard a million times, something such as, “Her eyes, the clear blue of a quiet lake, held the promise of a better tomorrow.” No, they’re surprising but precise:
   “She wears high heels, I wear sneakers. She’s cheer captain, and I’m on the bleachers.”
   “Spinning like a girl in a brand new dress.”
   “I can see us twisted in bedsheets.”
   “I was walking home on broken cobblestones.”
   “The dominoes cascaded in a line.”
   “See me nervously pulling at my clothes and trying to look busy.”
   “I’m drunk in the back of the car and I cried like a baby coming home from the bar.”
   “When we’re on the phone and you talk real slow ’cause it’s late and your mama don’t know.”

2. Bring readers into your life on an emotional level. And this is the second most important lesson. From listening to her songs, Taylor’s fans feel as if they’re her friends; she shares her thoughts and her experiences with them directly. From reading your book, your readers should feel that they know you well and have an emotional connection with you. These lyrics from Taylor give you an idea of how language facilitates that:
   “Well, you stood there with me in the doorway. My hands shake. I’m not usually this way. But you pull me in and I’m a little more brave.”
   “In a box beneath my bed is a letter that you never read from three summers back.”
   “When my depression works the graveyard shift, all of the people I’ve ghosted stand there in the room.”

3. Be authentic. I think most memoir authors understand this one. Most likely you’re not writing a memoir to prop yourself up or establish some version of yourself that isn’t true. Just the opposite—most writers I know find that memoir brings them closer to their most authentic self. Through the research and soul-searching that memoir requires, you may feel that you’re in touch with parts of you that either had never before surfaced or had been long forgotten or neglected. Taylor is so overly authentic that conjuring up stories about completely fictional characters in the “Folklore” album introduced a new angle to her music.

4. Build suspense or anticipation, and later reveal the outcome. One of my favorite Taylor Swift songs, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” tells the story of a quirky woman who, after marrying her way into wealth and real estate, “ruined” the last great American dynasty, according to the townspeople. Her house sat idle for 50 years until, Taylor tells us, “it was bought by me.” And then she had a good time being loud and scandalous and ruining things all over again. So that was a surprise ending. Readers will turn the pages of your memoir to find out what happens. Write your story in a way that makes readers unsure of how precarious situations will turn out.

5. Drop “Easter eggs” along the way. In building that anticipation, you can mimic Taylor’s habit of hiding clues or what’s come to be called “Easter eggs.” Taylor’s fans are always on the lookout for any hint of what’s next, because she’s become associated with this device. Let’s say in your teens you meet someone who many years later becomes your spouse. You can write something like:
   In the group of friends was a guy who caught my eye for just a moment. At the time, we didn’t have a conversation, but somehow I knew I’d run into Paul again someday.

6. Invent new metaphors and conflate idioms to create a mashup. “I’m a mirrorball,” Taylor sings. “I’ll show you every version of yourself tonight. I’ll get you out on the floor. Shimmering, beautiful. And when I break it’s in a million pieces.” You don’t hear someone comparing herself to what I picture to be a disco ball every day. But I think it works, perhaps not as easily in a memoir as in lyrics, but my point is to take risks with your writing. In Taylor’s song “Cancelled” from the new album, she asks whether you brought a tiny violin to a knife fight. I really like that mashup. In my own writing, I frequently take a common saying and either twist it or mash it up with another one. What I mean is something like:
   The prodigal daughter had become a son of a gun. Or:
   After a while, I started arriving at work right on time like the rest of the staff, accepting that all being an early bird would ever get me was the promised worm.

7. Use humor. Many authors write about a dark time in their lives and the redemption that followed. Humor seems out of place in that type of memoir. But if there is a way to inject even a little humor, try doing that. It gives the reader a break from the heavy subject matter. The lyric I’ll cite from Taylor Swift is from the new album’s song “Actually Romantic.” She’s talking about how someone has been throwing shade at her on social media, and it’s sort of cute—“like a toy Chihuahua barking at me from a tiny purse.” Well, it made me laugh, anyway.

8. Create a brand. Engage with potential readers even before your book comes out. Publishers today are risk-averse and more likely to offer you a contract if you already have a definable following. Taylor understood fan engagement while still a teen, and obviously it’s served her well.

9. Capture your genius moments. According to numerous reports, Taylor was riding in a car with her then boyfriend, now fiancé, Travis when their conversation about a particular late great actress inspired the song “Elizabeth Taylor,” now track three on the new album. So they parked the car, and she popped out to get some quiet in her head so she could sing a tune into her phone. That’s how she began to write that song. If you’re writing a memoir, it’s always on your mind. Whether you’re daydreaming some lines in the shower or an interesting aspect to your life story wakes you up in the middle of the night, don’t lose the opportunity to grab some paper or your phone and get your thoughts down. They can be fleeting!

10. Be fearless. Look, you’re writing a memoir. This is not a project born of timidity. You’re already doing something very bold. Don’t be afraid of the writing, don’t be frightened of the ordeal of finding a publisher, and don’t fear the reaction from family or the public. You’ll never finish this project if you glance over at Fear Fiend. So take that lesson. From the name of one of her albums to the way she manages her career, “fearless” is an apt label for Taylor Swift and can be for you, too.

• 10/01/2025

Today it’s not easy to sell any book, but memoir is a particularly challenging and competitive category. So ask yourself: Is memoir really your book’s genre?

Authors can start out thinking they’re writing about their life, but sometimes a book has a mind of its own. The narrative can be leading the author rather than the other way around, and you can find yourself flowing into another section of the bookstore altogether.

Perhaps your book is more authentically:

• Self-help. Some authors wonder whether it’s okay to devote a chapter or more, usually at the end of the book, to straight advice. While they want to document whatever hardship they experienced, they’re even more determined to offer help to others facing that same situation. If your book ends up at 60% memoir and 40% self-help, you might do yourself a favor and fashion your text to swap those figures, because self-help is an easier book to sell to a publisher and likely to appeal to more readers.

• Fiction. Maybe you’ve changed people’s names, represented them as composite characters, switched story locations and disguised details of events. At what point does memoir cross over into fiction? If you’re that concerned about getting sued or just hurting people’s feelings, it may make more sense to write a novel “based on a true story.” Then it’s not even about you or the people in your life. I think some authors want to have it both ways. They want to write out their life story to have their voice heard, but without risk or retribution. I think that does justice to neither truth nor great, imaginative storytelling. Opting for the latter might make help you write a really good novel.

• Op-ed. Let’s say your book centers on your escape from an abusive marriage. As you share your experiences, you may have a lot of opinions at every turn. Maybe your state’s restraining orders aren’t enforced well enough or the divorce laws favored your spouse or your children’s school failed them in some way—you could have a lot to say, along with research, about how to improve matters to make it easier for people like you. If you find yourself interrupting your personal narrative to share your views on the topic, and if that’s the aspect that is taking your writing energy, perhaps you’d be better off writing a book or magazine article that merely references your own experiences in primarily advocating for the societal improvements you have in mind.

• Travelogue. If you’re writing an “Eat, Pray, Love” type of memoir, obviously this is not an original idea. Maybe your book will benefit if you focus more on the travel than the travail. A book of travels can be informative and helpful to the next traveler who will just skip over the chapters telling one more “finding myself” story. But no judgment!

• History textbook or how-to. Similarly, if your memoir theme is so narrow that you’re educating the reader in-depth, maybe you’re actually writing a textbook for college majors in a particular discipline. Or it’s a nonfiction book about the history of an era, event or location. Maybe it’s lighter reading—a how-to guide in gardening or diet and fitness or following some obscure philosophy. Or you start out with the premise that it’s not quite a cookbook, but it has so many recipes that maybe it turns out to be a cookbook after all.

• Poetry. I’m surprised at how many people want to include poetry or song lyrics in their memoir. In this case, keep the “memoir” label. Poetry is nearly impossible to get published.

Or it could be a memoir

A book stands on its own merits, your memoir is fully yours to cross genres or create your own hybrid if you like, and for general reader enjoyment it doesn’t matter what category the book falls under. But for marketing, sales and just getting published to begin with, you have to identify what you have there. So give it some thought before slapping “memoir” on your cover.

Still, I don’t want this to discourage memoir authors. If I’m the reader, give me a memoir every time. I think they’re cool and fascinating, and they’re always as unique as the individuals who have written them.

In light of my last piece, I was thinking about the different topics and themes that frame people’s stories, and it occurred to me that a lot of memoir subject matter begins with the letter F. I’m not referring to the one-time unmentionable but now ubiquitous F word, although I’m not judging you if you find yourself uttering it quite a bit during your memoir journey.

There are lots of other words beginning with F. Here’s why memoir is all about the F’s.

• Freedom. There’s a tremendous freedom involved in the process of writing about your life and perhaps even more in completing the project. Once you have your book in your hand, you’ve accomplished a life goal. That’s freedom enough. For trauma victims, the freedom comes in closure and letting go. With or without trauma, “getting it off your chest” brings freedom as well. A memoir is the gift you give yourself of sharing your perspective, in your voice, for friends, foes and strangers alike. The freedom you sense is from finally feeling heard.

• Facts. Along the same lines, your truth is what matters in a memoir, and truth translates to facts. You most likely will do some research and share factual data and information, but your memory is a source for facts as well—even if other people in your life have, in your mind, twisted the facts to skew them in their own favor. This is your book, and you get to write down the facts as you see them.

• Family. Many memoirs center around a relationship with a spouse, parent, child or sibling. But no matter what the main topic or time frame of your memoir, it’s likely that you’ll devote some pages to your family. Your childhood influences the choices you make throughout life, so typically your early life with your family is relevant. In your adult years, marrying or becoming a parent also plays a huge role even if it does not directly fit into your theme.

• Fortune. You may be writing about an aspect of your professional life, the way you started out having very little money, or a pivot that changed your direction in life. Your fortune isn’t just about how big a bank account you’ve built. It can be the fortune of happiness or fulfillment. Certainly it can be misfortune, or you can include how luck played into your life.

• Friends. This one’s a little weaker. Some memoirs focus heavily on one or more friendships, but many do not. Still, a memoir typically will mention some friends who played significant roles at some point in the author’s life. Including your friends in your memoir can give the reader a lot of insight into your personality. Also, crafting dialogue between you and a friend is a great alternative to simple description in letting the reader know what you were thinking and how you were feeling.

• Fate. Did you direct your own life, or was it all fate? No one knows the answer to that age-old inquiry. Your memoir explains what happened and how you navigated the situations you encountered. No matter how you interpret the concept of free will, either fate placed you where you ended up or you chose your own fate.

Your memoir might be Fabulous and Fantastic, include sections that are Funny or Fantasy, plague you with Frustration, challenge you with necessary Formatting or eventually bring you some Fame. There’s an F left—Future—that I can’t contrive to make part of memoir. You can apply various lenses in documenting your past but, as Natasha Bedingfield sings, the rest is still unwritten.

If you want to write a memoir rather than a full autobiography, what might you focus on that will resonate with readers? When you get down to it, there are really only two categories of common memoir themes.

Category 1: Triumph

Feeling you’ve overcome some adversity can be so life-changing that you want to not only share it with others but use your experience to help the next person facing the same problem. You may even help people avoid falling into the trap of whatever tripped you up.

Within this broad category, there are subsets:

• Illness. A rare illness introduces readers to something new, which always makes for good reading. On the other hand, more people will relate to a common illness. This means that no matter what health challenge you faced, including mental illness and depression, you can write a memoir about it.

• Trauma. From living with an abusive parent or spouse or experiencing extreme bullying to growing up in a country at war, trauma is a frequently explored misery. Escape tends to be the resolution, but there are many directions this can take, and not all tales of trauma are alike.

• Addictions and vices. With all the groups available to help people quit drugs, alcohol, gambling, shopping, compulsive sex and more, it’s no wonder that former addicts want to write memoirs after believing they’ve kicked the habit. Matthew Perry is a sad example of how difficult this is to achieve, even if at the time you write your memoir you think you’ve gotten there.

• Identity and insecurity. The path to figuring out who you truly are can obviously fill a book. Gender confusion, body shape issues, learning challenges, cultural blurriness, even career indecision—people spend many years on choices and self-acceptance. Once you’ve come to terms with your authentic self, it’s understandable that you want to provide a path of information and encouragement to people just beginning the journey.

• Spiritual awakening. The outcome of any of these challenges can come through a new spiritual awareness, but the awareness itself also can be the main topic of a memoir. Perhaps you just didn’t feel whole until you let God in your life. It’s a common theme, but everyone’s discovery is unique.

Category 2: Time period of your life

While the triumph category may end up covering only certain years of your life, this second category focuses specifically on a slice of time with the theme inherent in how you spent that time. Again, there are sub-categories:

• A geographic location. It can be very interesting to read someone’s “my time in” an unfamiliar culture. Perhaps you lived part of your life in an area that was exotic, isolated, poverty-stricken, dangerous or even privileged. Or maybe you simply took a trip that you describe in an extensive travelogue.

• A relationship. Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays With Morrie is a well-known example of chronicling time spent with a special person. Albom revealed the myriad topics of discussion during his weekly visits with his dying former professor, opening readers’ minds to life’s richness. If the movie Beaches had been based on a memoir instead of a novel, which of course is fiction, it would be another good example of a friendship memoir. Some relationships last a lifetime, but if you’re writing a memoir about it you probably had a beginning and end.

• Coming of age. Somehow we have a timeless fascination in exploring the bridge between childhood and adulthood. Perhaps it’s because then we remember our own coming-of-age years, when we had our whole lives ahead of us, lots of options and endless new experiences.

• Drastically changed circumstances. Perhaps there were some months or years that, for whatever reason, were completely different from the rest of your life. Joan Didion explored grief and loss in The Year of Magical Thinking. Maybe you spent a couple of years working as a firefighter or fostering dozens of children or running an unusual company. It can be worth writing about.

• A project. Whether you took three years to sail around the world or you set out to visit every major league ballpark in the country, you may have a memoir there. White journalist John Howard Griffin wrote his 1961 best-seller Black Like Me to enlighten people about how race impacts everyday life after he managed to pose as a black man in the segregated South.

Once Again: Autobiography vs. Memoir

If you’re a celebrity, you can get away with writing a full autobiography, cradle to present day, and still call it a memoir, not to mention still get it published. If you’re an ordinary person, only your family will be interested in your autobiography. And that’s fine. In fact, that’s our typical customer at Write My Memoirs.

Just don’t expect, as a non-celebrity, to have high book sales without a theme. Often the theme is the catalyst for writing the memoir. But let’s say the motivation to write about your life comes first, and then you go looking for a theme that will be compelling to readers. You want to write about something, with you as the major player. That’s a memoir.