Making Meaning of Your Memories

I’m a goal-setter. I can’t help myself. At the end of the year, I like to take time to reflect on the year I’ve just lived. What were the high points, low points, and points in between? How far did I get in achieving my goals for the year? For my writing especially, I like to assess how much progres...

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 ...

June 30th marked the midyear mark for 2022, the end of the second quarter, and the perfect time to evaluate how you’re doing with your annual writing goals. At the beginning of the year, I took a risk and publicly shared my 2022 writing goal:

By the end of the second quarter of 2022, I will have co...

If you live in a place where you experience the four seasons, you likely notice a change in your mindset and energy level when there’s a change in temperature and weather patterns. I definitely feel a shift in my creativity with each change of season. 

I live in Chicago, and though spring technical...

At the beginning of this year, I set a writing goal for myself: Finish writing the first draft of my memoir by the end of June. It’s a realistic goal if I maintain my writing routine. For me, this means writing first thing when I wake up. I set my Tomato timer on my phone for 30 minutes. Invariably,...

When you get to the end of 2022, what do you want to look back and remember the year for? Spending more time with your friends? Losing 20 pounds? Reading a book a month? Decluttering your closets? 

I’ve made several goals for 2022, but chief among them is finishing my memoir: “By the end of the sec...

I’m a goal-setter. I can’t help myself. At the end of the year, I like to take time to reflect on the year I’ve just lived. What were the high points, low points, and points in between? How far did I get in achieving the goals I set for the year? For my writing especially, I like to assess how much ...

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...