Video course with Linda Joy Myers and Brooke Warner
Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful—a New York Times bestseller

Smith is a well-known poet who’s created a deep and engaging memoir that invites us to reconsider the structure and style that’s possible in memoir. We discuss how memoir has come a long way since thirty years ago when people like Mary Karr and Tobias Wolff broke open the memoir genre, and nothing has been the same since. In the video we discuss writing about family, which includes how to use distance to provide protection for family members. And we talk about the author’s voice, techniques that open up the space on the page and pacing such as including poetry and fragmented story lines. Structure is one of the most challenging elements of craft so we examine how to lay out the story, the use of quotes, musings, and white space, and her use of a meta-narrative.

“What Made Wild a Best-selling Memoir?”
Wild by Cheryl Strayed

In Wild, Strayed uses what’s called a framed structure, meaning that she writes the story of her life, but uses her limited time on the Pacific Crest Trail as a means to contain her story.

This four-session course showcases some of the things Strayed does brilliantly—structure; transitions; flashbacks vs. memory; and takeaway—so that you can begin to use these skills in your own writing.

My Memoir Organizer Download

The best way to keep track of the stories you are writing is to organize them in a binder where you can read them like a book. Printing out your stories and reading them as they will be seen in book form is a great way to experience all your hard work and experience how others will read your story!

For Cyber Monday, we offer a newly designed cover that can fit into your binder “MY MEMOIR.” This year’s topics include:

• Childhood memories
• Roots and Legacies
• Mother
• Father
• Holidays
• Love and Marriage
• Houses
• Secrets and Hidden Truths…
• and more

You will receive over 90 writing prompts, a timeline, a list of dozens of memoir topics and writing tips to get you started and keep you going to “The End” of your memoir.

This year we are offering an immediate download so you can get started writing right away! Start the year with a way to organize your writing and your new inspirational prompts.