Tag: memoir
The Arduous Search for An Agent
First thing to remember, it doesn’t start with sending out query letters. It starts before that. You finally finish your manuscript, then you re-write it, and you edit it, and you craft it probably more than once. But even before that, if you’re writing a novel or memoir as I have, you have also spent […]
From Playwright To Memoir
I live in Bethnal Green in London, England. When I was born it was a place nobody went to, except the locals who lived there. Even the police gave it a wide berth and we pretty much managed on our own without them. The occasional murder elicited their attention, but that was all. I didn’t […]
Paint Vs Prose
Not that it’s a competition but as a professional artist who has recently become a published author, I can’t help but compare the creative processes that characterise the two modes of artistic expression i.e. painting and writing. What are the similarities and how do they differ? ‘Difficult pleasure’ is how renowned Australian painter, Brett Whiteley, […]
The Memoir I Did Not Plan to Write
The best memoirs read like novels with their shaped plots and fully developed characters, yet the experience of reading a memoir can have a compelling power that fiction does not always match. The knowledge that the story we are reading is true and the immediacy of the author’s voice bring us into direct relation to […]
The Truth About My Memoir
I’ve written articles and blogs and given many talks—both before and after my book was published—about why I wrote my memoir. It’s not that the reasons I talked and wrote about aren’t true; it’s just that they weren’t fiercely true. Accessing my truth hasn’t always come easy. Let’s just say the truth played hide and […]
How Ancestral Research Can Lead to Memoir
In November, 2011, ten years and one month after the death of my mother, Nannie B Chandler Nelson at age ninety-six, I found myself eager to explore my ancestral roots through her blood line. The challenge was more significant than me, I believe, than for a person who has visited with, and heard tales of […]
Novelist Or Poet?
When I was thirteen years old, I announced that I was going to be a poet when I grew up. I had already been writing poetry for years – since the age of 10 – and both my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Alexander, and my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Melchior, had encouraged me. Mrs. Melchior, […]
Psychotherapy and Memoir: The Talking Cure and the Writing Cure
Without wishing to sound freakish or weird, I liken my vocation—writer and psychotherapist—to conjoined twins. Born in my midlife, they developed from the same fertilized egg, gestated in the same amniotic fluid, were nourished by the same placenta. They share the same interests, the same reading lists, and, dare I say, the same soul. […]
Motivating Factors in My Life
Martha Lemasters spent almost ten years working as a PR writer at Cape Kennedy as a member of IBM’s team on NASA’s Apollo Program. Those years saw remarkable success in seven Apollo launches and six moon landings. Lemasters worked her way up the ladder from secretary to a respected writer and managed to find her […]
Three Things I Wish I’d Known as an Expectant Author
“Please keep in mind; this is just my first book.” This is what I began telling friends and family several months ago when I was still up to my eyeballs in anxiety and final edits of my memoir, Pieces of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters. I followed the announcement with a bunch of reasons why […]
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