Making Meaning of Your Memories

You’ve decided to write your life story. Congratulations! Most people only think about writing their story but never actually get it from their head to the page. Before you get started, you’ll want to determine which type of life story you want to write—memoir or autobiography. These two genres are ...

You’ve decided it’s time to write your memoir. Eager to dive in, you open your laptop and create a new document titled, “My Memoir.”

Day One

Clickety-clack, your fingertips peck at the keys, and your first pages flow out of you. After writing a few thousand words, you feel satisfied with your firs...

Fall is my favorite season for creativity. To capitalize on this seasonal surge in creativity, I’m hosting Write Your Own Life’s first NaMeWriMo 30-Day Memoir Writing Challenge. (Psst, the challenge starts on November 1st, so now's your chance to sign up!)

 NaMeWriMo is a spin-off of the popular...

What’s your favorite season? For me, it’s fall. The sun breaks the horizon later in the morning. It casts long shadows in the afternoon. The breeze carries a new scent—possibly the combination of drying leaves and crab apples.

As subtle as these natural changes in the weather, they light me up inte...

This summer, my two daughters-in-law gave birth to beautiful baby girls. I experienced everything from the thrill of my sons and their new wives announcing that they were expecting, to watching them grow over the course of 40 weeks, and then finally, wondrously, welcoming two perfect girls into the ...

One of the most common and paralyzing obstacles for memoir writers is telling stories that expose family secrets. The fear of being ostracized—or worse, excluded—from your family for disclosing long-held family secrets can cause you to get stuck in your writing.

If you're wrestling with how to writ...

When I moved to the city to start a new life after my divorce, I splurged and bought myself a special writing desk. It has the look of an old drafting table with a matching swivel stool. Both the desk and the stool can crank up and down depending on what height I want to position myself at or if I w...

Writing prompts are a great way to get your creative juices flowing when you sit down to do your daily writing. They provide a focal point to quickly generate stories.

For memoir writers, writing prompts can help stir up new stories when it feels like your memory well has run dry. They can be a gre...

Everyone has a story to tell. A slice of life to share hard-won wisdom, transformation, trauma, redemption, or laugh-out-loud hilarious moments. How many times have you thought, I should write my life story. Only to follow with, The End.

Thinking you’ve got a story to tell and actually sitting down...

I spent many years working as an editor and writer for a Christian magazine publishing company. A big part of my job entailed reading article submissions and advance copies of books by Christian authors. Many of these works were well-intended memoir-type pieces in which the writer would share their ...

Everyone who embarks on a journey to write their memoir inevitably hits a wall. You have a dream of telling a slice of your life story, but you meet resistance—a too-full calendar, kids who need your full-time attention, a day-job that saps your energy and leaves you too tired to write your tale. We...