Due to the fact that we’ve witnessed some pretty big blowouts around falsified memoirs in the past decade, it’s understandable that people feel some apprehension on the topic of truth. But my feeling is that most writers in this genre are more concerned than they need to be.

Here’s a short round-up of things memoirists do that are not the same as lying:

1. Omit
Sometimes you choose to omit to protect someone you love. You may decide that it’s not worth it to include a particular detail about a family member, because you know it will result in fallout. I’ve known memoirists who’ve slept with very famous people, and have chosen not to write about it for fear of repercussions. There are a million reasons to omit people, experiences, and scenes from your memoir. And there is nothing dishonest about it. Trust your gut on this one.

2. Create composites
Composites come in the form of characters and scenes. You may need to do a composite character to further a story along. For instance, you may have seven aunts and the reader cannot be bothered to be introduced to all of these characters. You may have moved around a lot as a kid, and therefore condense a few towns into one. You may care to showcase certain qualities about friends you grew up with and so you draw inspiration from three friends to create a single character. All of this is legit. It is not lying, and most good memoir requires composites so you don’t bore your reader to tears with extraneous detail.

3. Changing details
You may change details, again, to protect people, or mask their identities. This is usual necessary. Publishers may ask or require you to do this. This may entail changing someone’s hair and eye color, where they were from, their name, their job. The idea here is that the person you’re writing about not be recognizable to those who might know them, even if they’re recognizable to themselves. This is simply good practice, and unless you are 100% sure that the person you’re writing about is 100% cool with you writing about them, you want to change identifiers and names. It’s not lying; it’s just smart.

4. Fill in holes
No one has a perfect memory of all the details of everything they ever experienced in their life. One memoirist I worked with said in response to the criticism that she made up dialogue, “Well, yes, I didn’t walk around during that time with a tape recorder to capture all my conversations.” The point was, it was the gist of what she remembered. And this is all that matters. If you hold yourself to too high a standard where your memories are concerned, you will find yourself unable to move through your memory. I don’t care what memoirist claims to have a superhuman memory; you have to fill in the holes, and sometimes invent entire blocks of dialogue based on your best summation of how things mostly went down based on your recollection of events. And that’s good enough.

My ultimate goal when speaking to memoirist who have fears about lying is to lighten their load. It’s already tough to write memoir. Memoirists are already confronted with self-criticism up the wazoo, not to mention outside critics who go on and about how self-indulgent memoir is. I’ve worked on hundreds of memoirs over the course of my career, and I’ve only seen two authors threatened with lawsuits. One was from an institution that issued a cease and desist before the book went to publication and the author was able to change a small section of “offending” dialogue. The other was from a sibling, who had no legs to stand on when push came to shove. When you write your truth, you will most likely offend people. So hold fast and start slowly. Write for yourself. Protect yourself. And give yourself permission to omit, create composites, change details, and fill in holes.

Is there anything else you do or have done that you think should be on this list? I would love to hear about it.

But then I just did it. I decided, as I wrote about last month, to green light myself. Having spent my entire career in book publishing, I knew I didn’t have enough of a platform to publish traditionally. In fact, most authors don’t.

But how do you get a platform? The link I provided in the last paragraph is from a newsletter I wrote in 2008, when platform was even less of a buzzword and absolute prerequisite to traditional publishing than it is now. In that post, I wrote that one way to build a platform is to get published. “If you can say you’ve been published, you have a leg up on the competition.” Then I was talking about getting a byline, but in the past five years, a newer and better option exists: Publish your book!

A couple weeks ago a young woman, still a college student, contacted me for an interview for her website, PDXX Collective. When she ran the copy by me, I seriously inspired even myself.

Here’s an excerpt:

The problem, Warner said of traditional publishing, is that publishers often discriminate against the author who lacks an online presence, or a “platform,” the industry buzz word that means you have to have a big following in order to get published.

“The traditional press is like, ‘Wow, you’re great, but I haven’t heard of you.’ There’s something wrong with the excessive amount of pressure authors face to have an enormous following just to get a book published. People don’t go into writing because they’re social media experts—and people need a book to build a platform. I think we’re offering [referring to She Writes Press] a sophisticated, smart thing to authors who, for whatever reason, are barred from traditional publishing.

“The biggest problem in traditional publishing,” Warner said, “is that the extreme focus placed on an author’s platform is actually hurting the quality of work getting published. Snooki and Paris Hilton can get book deals, but really amazing memoirists can’t.”

So here’s my plea to you. Stop behaving as if the only good way to get published is to publish traditionally. If you feel this way, you’re behind the curve. It’s still a solid goal, but not to the detriment of your work, by which I mean, don’t let the traditional gatekeepers stop you!

Also, if you really want to make a go of becoming an author and agents aren’t lining up to represent you, and publishers aren’t lining up to publish you, take a stab at figuring it out yourself. In my final season at Seal Press, I acquired two previously published books, Replacement Child and Fast Times in Palestine. So if your sights are set on traditional publishing, self-publishing can be a way in.

As for me, I published with She Writes Press, the publishing company I co-founded. I’ve sold over 500 copies of my book since September, modest by traditional standards but really good for me since I set a goal to sell out 500 within the first year. I’ve seen two royalty checks (yay!) and I’ve directly sold a lot of copies at events. I’ve earned out the money I put in, and What’s Your Book? is a finalist for a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award.

If I’ve even begun to convince you that self-publishing is a viable option, please consider contacting me to talk about the Self-Publishing Summit I’m putting on with Howard VanEs here in Berkeley on June 1-2. It’s going to be information-packed, inspiring, and fun. Plus, we’re invested in saving you money by helping you figure out how to publish right, where to find good editors and designers, and probably most important, how to maximize your sales—especially your Kindle sales. (Let me note that the 500 copies I’ve sold to date do not include Kindle sales.)

I’ve said for a while that I’m an equal advocate for traditional and self-publishing, and I am—when it makes sense and when aspiring authors aren’t pounding their heads against a wall and feeling shitty about themselves because they’re turning over all their control to others. In these cases, the traditional publishing dream truly is more harmful than good. So consider where you’re at with your book. You might even just consider putting out an old manuscript you have as an eBook. There are so many ways to put your work out into the world. Take a first step and publish. It’s doable, legitimate, reasonable, and smart.

Until next month!

One of the central topics of conversation at VIDA surrounds the abysmal discrepancy in bylines between men and women. There’s a lot of speculation about why this happens—sexism and the patriarchy of publishing certainly being legitimate reasons. But another truth I’ve witnessed, and that rung true for others in the “hood,” was the degree to which women, especially, take rejection personally. (Note—while it’s true that men can and do take rejection personally, by and large the discouragement they experience seems to be less paralyzing. I’m not claiming to be a sociologist, but I’m thinking this is due to socialization and that the way we react to rejection stems from early and deep patterning.)

Mark Nepo, whom I adore and reference often, has written, “The fear of rejection leads to the practice of hiding.” For writers, this translates into stopping a project; leaving your writing unfinished; not showing your work to others; and giving over your power to others (agents and editors) to determine your project’s worth.

Writing is such a vulnerable exercise that the choice to put yourself out there is a virtual guarantee that you will be rejected. But no matter what the downsides of putting yourself out there might be, the rewards are such that it’s worth the trade-off—always. The simple equation here is that rejection is an inevitable part of a writer’s life; the next question is: how are you going to deal with it?

One of the speakers I saw at AWP was Jeanette Winterson, a personal hero of mine. She spoke of artistic creation as democratic. She grew up very poor, believing (and being told by her parents) that writing was elitist, self-indulgent, and unimportant. So for her, creation and writing as democratic is part of her personal manifesto. She believes creating is our birthright, and her passion on the subject flooded me with emotion.

I work with authors to manifest their dreams. I, too, believe in the democracy of creation, and I support the democracy of publishing, which is part of what motivates me to write and speak about the changes happening in the publishing industry. And it’s what’s prompted me to co-found SWP, a publishing company that doesn’t measure a book’s worth by its author’s platform. We do not need to passively stand by and allow others to validate whether or not we are worthy enough to be published authors. As one of my star clients, Sean Hanish, said to me during the production of his indie movie, Return to Zero, “Nobody green-lighted my project; I had to green-light it myself.”

To some extent, we all need to green-light our own work. We must remain objective enough to understand when our writing needs more work, needs collaboration, needs an editor. I’m not suggesting anyone publish unready work. But I am absolutely suggesting that many excellent projects attached to very talented authors get turned down every single day, over and over. In the wake of these rejections, the aspiring author can go one of two ways—get discouraged and paralyzed (turning their power over to the other), or get motivated and dig back in (taking their power back—over and over and over again). We’ve all heard the story of the author who got rejected hundreds of times before landing a deal and then going on to becoming a successful author. I now work with countless self-published authors who’ve taken publishing into their own hands and who are very pleased with the results.

Have you finished a project, or many projects, that you’re choosing to allow to sit? I challenge you to choose a different path for that project. Send it out again. And again and again. Enter a contest. The deadline for Seal Press’s publishing contest is March 15. Consider self-publishing, even if you only start small—with a Kindle-only edition, for instance. If you are an aspiring author, you need content in a tangible form to share with others. Go ahead, green-light yourself! And I’d love to hear from you if you have a personal success story about overcoming rejection and/or discouragement.

Outlining is not only for left-brain thinkers, and it doesn’t have to be something right-brain thinkers have to dread. I’m currently reading Guy Kawasaki’s APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish a Book, a great book, by the way. But about outlining he writes:

I don’t begin writing until the outline is complete (though it usually changes while I write the book). This takes be as long as two months, but once I have an outline, the rest is filling in the details and editing . . .

Many authors find an outline too constricting, but an outline sets me free. If you can’t write an outline, perhaps your thoughts are insufficiently organized.

There’s part of a tough attitude like this that I respond to, and I think it can help writers to get out of their funk to face a harsh truth every so often. However, I think a lot of fiction writers and memoirists (especially) struggle with the outline, and it’s not because their thoughts are insufficiently organized.

Outlining actually is hard work, but there are a few key things you can do to make it easier on yourself:

1. Mimic other writers’ structures. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel. If there’s another author who’s done something you respond to, copy it! Your story is your own, so we’re only talking about structure here. And there is nothing invalid about lifting someone else’s structure.

2. Work out a formula that works. Cheryl Strayed said last night that she had a big ah-ha when she realized that every chapter (once she got on the trail) had to begin on the Pacific Crest Trail. It helped her contain each of her chapters, and in turn it helps readers feel grounded in her timeline.

3. Remember that the outline is flexible. All you REALLY need to know is where you’re starting and where you’re ending. Everything between Point A and Point B can and will change to some degree. As this happens, make sure to update your outline to accommodate for the changes that are happening as you write.

4. Don’t buy into the idea that your outline has to be complete before you start writing. It does not. You need to give yourself the freedom and flexibility, but simultaneously the discipline and structure that the outline provides. Your outline is something to befriend, even if you aren’t there yet. Once you start writing and outlining in conjunction, the real groove of your writing will begin.

Until next month!

Brooke

I want each and every one of you to download it and enjoy it, but I also want to write a little bit here about KDP Select and how I’m doing this promo, with the goal that each of you will emulate this for your own book. I spent about $400 learning how to do all this stuff. (Later this month, for ZERO cost, you can join a webinar that I’m working to coproduce with Howard VanEs, bestselling Kindle author and the guy who’s teaching me everything there is to know about promoting on Amazon.)

Here’s the sequence of events to follow:

1. Ask people to like your Amazon page. I put the word out on Facebook and Twitter, but now I’m asking all of you to do so. Click the ORANGE LIKE button under the title of my book. Thank you!

2. Tag your book. Go below your reviews to find TAGS CUSTOMERS ASSOCIATE WITH THIS PRODUCT. When you type in common “searchable terms” (in my case “writing” or “authorship,” you’ll be prompted to choose common tags. Tag your book up! Also, right before your promotion, tag your book with “kindle freebies” and “free ebook.” If you don’t know how to tag your book, look to your competition and “steal” their tags.

3. Set your promotion date. Kindle will only let you give away your book for a total of five days. I’ve been guided to do a three-day giveaway on a Friday/Saturday/Sunday, followed by another one in another few weeks. You can experiment, where relevant, by changing up your primary categories and tags to see if it makes a difference.

4. Fill out tons and tons of links (as many as you can find) to promote your promotion. Here’s a handful of the sites whose forms I filled out (all free, just a little time-consuming):

Pixel of Ink

Bargain eBook Hunter

Indie Book of the Day

Awesome Gang: Free Book Promotion for Authors

The eReader Café

eReader News Today

Snickslist.com

Free Book Dude

Book Goodies

Author Marketing Club

The Kindle Book Review

eBooks Habit

Free Kindle Books and Tips

When you Google “kindle promotion” or “free amazon giveaway” you will find countless more sites and information about other places to advertise too.

5. Check out the deals you can find on Fiverr.com. There are people who specialize in free Kindle promotions, and just like the site promises, you pay them just $5. I paid three different people five bucks. We’ll see what happens!

6. Lower the cost of your book if it’s over $5.95. It was advised that I lower the price of the Kindle book for the purposes of driving more buyers after the promotion is over. The goal of the giveaway is to get so much attention that your book makes it to a Kindle Top 100 list or an Amazon bestseller list, thus driving actual sales in the long run. Again, we will see what happens!

7. Notify everyone you know on the day before the promotion and/or the day of promotion. I’m posting this today, but sending it to my list tomorrow so that people can take action. I will be notifying everyone I know and asking for Retweets and favors. I want people to download the book because the more books downloaded the more likely my book is to reach the Top 100 list.

All of this is a grand experiment for me. The truth of the matter is that I have mixed feelings about giving books away. I want my book to reach a wide audience, but I also want to sell books.

KDP Select requires you to remove your book from all other online sites, like Indiebound and B&N.com and others. It’s yet another way that Amazon is working to monopolize the book market. AND yet, it’s a major vehicle to get exposure for your book and to get your name and your book in front of more readers.

Almost everything I have been doing to promote my own book has been a learning curve, with the express purpose of figuring stuff out to share with my clients and authors. I welcome thoughts and suggestions and advice from anyone who’s already walked this path!

*Note: If you are traditionally published, your publisher will manage free giveaways. You can do this on Amazon through a traditional publisher without have to go unlisted by other major online retailers. Publishers are generally receptive to the idea of giveaways. Amazon also does a Kindle promotion called The Daily Deal, which is an awesome one that you must qualify for. It’s pretty competitive, but worth asking your publisher about since they have to nominate you.

 DOWNLOAD WHAT’S YOUR BOOK? ALL WEEKEND.

I do Bikram Yoga, a very intense and strenuous and hot form of yoga. You stand in front of a mirror and have to confront yourself during your practice—whether you’re having an awesome class or a horrible one. On Christmas Eve, I had the kind of practice that felt like a form of mental torture. I struggled through each pose. I felt nauseous. I could barely look myself in the mirror. I was distracted, thinking of all the places I’d rather be. I left an hour into the 90-minute class.

Driving home, I discovered, as is often the case, that I felt really good. I was even the teensiest bit disappointed with myself for having left early, though I’m really good at making myself feel better and was able to placate that voice, too, by reminding myself that one hour is better than nothing. It was a start—another first step toward getting back into a regular practice. I’ve been here countless times before.

Regular practice—whether we’re talking about writing, yoga, meditation, music, you name it—is tough to maintain. I’m lucky, because while I have a strong love/hate relationship with yoga, I’m also addicted to it. Some of you may feel that way about your writing. I know many many writers who talk about not being able to not write. This is a blessing and a curse, particularly because it means when you’re not writing, you’re struggling with why you’re not doing it.

The feeling of not wanting to do something is like an undercurrent. It can keep you treading in a no-man’s land, where you haven’t actively given up, but you’re also so far from shore that the effort it would take to get back feels insurmountable. The farther into not doing something you get, the more the congress in your head convinces you that starting back up is going to require something ceremonious. You need a New Year’s resolution. You need some form of external motivation—like an editor who likes your work, or a book deal.

Real practice, however, is not the least bit ceremonious. All it requires is showing up—on the good days and the bad days. I’m sore today, still, from my class two days ago. But that aching in the backs of my legs is such a good one—and it didn’t need to wait for the new year. I aspire to go to yoga twice a week, but I’m not making it a new year’s resolution to do so. The real reason I keep going to Bikram, after all, is the same reason I write: Because I love it. Sometimes it sucks so much I want to cry. But then there are those times with both practices—like when I have a class that makes me feel like Linda Hamilton in The Terminator, or when I write something that actually moves me to the point of being able to feel my heart swell with happiness—when I feel connected and grateful. Even if they’re sometimes inconsistent, they’re both steadies that I can rely on and go back to and that complete part of who I consider myself to be.

What keeps you connected to your practice? I’d love to hear about it.

But the phenomenon of too much showing is a whole different beast. It seems to me to be a common affliction among serious writers. They have taken classes and done their homework. They know that they’re not supposed to “tell” and they understand how detrimental telling can be to their work. They’re obsessed with scenes and visceral experience–so much so, however, that their plots tend to suffer.

When you’re writing–and this is whether you’re doing memoir or fiction–you have to show and tell. The notion that you don’t tell in your writing is ridiculous. Too much showing is exhausting, and it has the impact of creating distance between you and your reader. I’ve had countless authors say to me that “Show, Don’t Tell,” is what they learned in school, and yet “showing too much” seems not to be on the radar of all these teachers–past and present–who are teaching students how to write well.

Likely this way of teaching writing originates from proponents of Ernest Hemingway, who wrote in his book, Death in the Afternoon:

“If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.”

The problem here, of course, is that most writers don’t have enough control over their stories or their prose to omit things they know. It’s interesting to note that Hemingway’s style was said to “function as a means to distance himself from the characters he created.” Hemingway also wrote in the ’20s-’50s, during a time when the memoir form that’s popular today would have been considered exhibitionist or downright shameful in its exposition of every interior thought, secret, and feeling.

Today, readers of memoir not only expect a book to bare all, but they also generally yearn for connection with the author. If you omit what you know, or what you think the reader knows, you are usually severing possibilities for that connection. Failing to tell your reader what you’re thinking about makes for hollow places in your writing, too.

I work with writers to break down their scenes and think through the takeaways not only of every chapter, but of every scene. Scenes should be very “show”-driven, showing the reader what happened and painting a vivid picture through imagery, dialogue, and description. Takeaways can sometimes be inherent in the showing, but usually they require a bit of tell. Takeaways are moments of connection, in which you tell the reader about what you–or your protagonist (in close point-of-view fiction writing)–are thinking about. Or it can be what you think others are or were thinking about. The reader is looking for these moments to have their own thoughts and convictions validated. Your scenes (showing) forward along the plot, but your insights (telling) are the glue.

**NOTE: It’s important to note that the above doesn’t really apply for mystery, thrillers, and other kinds of genre fiction, in which you’re purposely misleading the reader or trying to omit certain thoughts, facts, or ideas for the sake of the story. I always tell memoirists, however, not to be cryptic. If you’re not writing a thriller, you are generally better off sequencing your events in an order that makes sense, and not create cliffhangers where they don’t do anything for your reader or your story.

2. Be generous on Twitter.
Retweet things you like. Give credit where credit is due. Learn to use people’s handles properly so that they actually get tagged in your shout-outs. I recently saw that someone Tweeted something about me, but they used @brooke_warners, a handle that doesn’t exist because my handle is @brooke_warner. When someone retweets something you posted, send them a thank-you message. Participate in #FF (Follow Friday), in which you simply open your post with #FF and then list the handles of everyone you like or are grateful for.

3. Make your website attractive AND functional.
It’s easy to create a visually aesthetic website. GoDaddy will install WordPress FOR YOU. Don’t skimp. It’s too important. A good website shows good taste, and tacky websites have been known to blow potential book deals. And what do I mean by functional? I mean install a web form, like you see on my site. Don’t miss the opportunity to capture the names and information of people who are visiting your site.

4. Blog consistently.
The best way to not bring people back to your website is to blog erratically. People need to be given parameters about how often you blog, and if you start to gain a following, they will start to check back. If you’ve been blogging weekly for two months and suddenly stop for a few weeks, you’re leaving your readers hanging. I blog once a month and have for years. Whenever I post, I put it out on Facebook and to my newsletter recipients. My readers don’t have to check my site if they’re signed up for my newsletter, and I like it that way. Find something that works for you and stick with it.

5. Create and nurture alliances.
Find like-minded people to partner with and to share happenings. I have a handful of partnerships and I post regularly about goings-on on Facebook and Twitter. This week, for instance, I’m announcing everywhere I can the great deal going on at the National Association of Memoir Writers. Their Cyber Monday deal is $99 for a year-long membership. A steal!! Linda Joy Myer’s service to the memoir-writing community is something I wholly stand behind, and she’s someone I’ve chosen to partner with in business and by extension in social media.

I’d love to hear about how you’re implementing, creating, and improving your own social media. Please share and I’ll share your words of wisdom on my social media. Please include your fan page URL and/or Twitter handle in your comments.

Yes, I eat, breathe, and dream writing. I read all day—hundreds and thousands of words every day. Because of this, mediocre writing is fine. It’s something I encounter and deal with because it’s part of my job. Good writing is a treat. It’s something I appreciate and enjoy. Masterful writing, however, is something that gives me chills.

Not all writers can be masterful writers, but all writers can aspire to hone their craft and learn to be better writers. I spend a lot of time working with writers who strive to be better. I work with writers who want to figure out what they need to do better in order to get published. It’s not only masterful writers who get published, of course, nor do I believe this should be the case. Mastery is rare, and it touches us for good reason—because it’s not easy to attain.

Sometimes, as I’ve written about before, masterful writing gets rejected because an author doesn’t have a platform strong enough to merit a publisher taking a risk on them. And sometimes, of course, what one person considers masterful another might consider esoteric or overwritten or crap. We see this all the time in art, when something being hailed as genius might just look like splotches on a canvas. Writing is perhaps a little easier to critique, but no one writer can move everyone. And commercial writing is successful despite clearly falling short of being masterful. Commercially popular books, I would argue, are mostly written by good writers, not masterful writers. And yet writers like Jodi Picoult or Nora Roberts, for instance, might be considered to be masterful at their particular brand of storytelling.

The point of all of this is to say that I have little sympathy for those writers who don’t want to try to become better writers, and who prefer to stick their fingers in their ears than to be open to the work it takes to become a great writer. I encountered these people more often at Seal Press than I do in my work as a coach, because writers who want to work with me are choosing to put their money where their mouth is. You might have some of these knee-jerk reactions without even realizing it. Like, upon getting a critique or a rejection, you assume that the problem lies with the other person. Or you believe without hesitation the feedback you get from friends and family relations that your writing is brilliant. Or you take the truism that good writing is subjective too far, and therefore work under the assumption that your people are out there—and anyone who doesn’t like your writing simply doesn’t share your taste. Then there are those writers who don’t read. If you are an aspiring novelist or memoirist, you must read others in your genre. The idea that you might be tainted or otherwise influenced by your published brothers and sisters is a way of keeping yourself isolated.

As much as true and raw talent exists among writers and artists of all kinds, true masters work their asses off. They are disciples of their craft. In his book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes that it takes 10,000 hours to master a craft. That’s 416 twenty-four-hour days. At this point, I think the only thing I can claim mastery of based on this number is reading!

It’s evidenced by their jaw-dropping awesomeness that the members of the Dave Matthews Band have spent hours upon hours and years upon years perfecting their instruments and becoming the musicians they are today. And they’re having fun doing what they do. I wish for all the writers I’ll ever work with, and all the other writers I’ll never encounter, the same spirit of hard work and joy in aspiring to greatness and achieving it.

Until next month,

Brooke

Childhood, Adolescent, and Coming of Age Memoirs

• Family dynamics, dysfunction, drama

• Unique childhood experiences/growing up stories

• School days

Examples of this type of memoir include: Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs; Jesus Land, by Julia Scheeres; I’m Down, by Mishna Wolff; Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas

Life Experience Memoirs

• Motherhood

• Career

• Incarceration

• Extraordinary stories

• Inspiring tales

• Disease: living with; witnessing; surviving

• Death: witnessing, questioning, living in the aftermath

Examples of this type of memoir include: It Sucked and Then I Cried, by Heather Armstrong; Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua; My Life Deleted, by Scott Bolzan; Between a Rock and a Hard Place, by Aron Lee Ralston; Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi; The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion;

Relationships

• Love

• Dating

• Divorce

• Friendship

• Animal stories

Examples of this type of memoir include: Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett; The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness, by Brianna Karp; It Happens Every Day, by Isabel Gillies; 31 Dates in 31 Days, by Tamara Johnson; Marley & Me, by John Grogan

Cultural/Ethnic/Sexuality Memoirs

• Coming-out stories

• Stories of growing up within a particular culture

• African American, Asian American, Southeast Asian-specific stories, where race and ethnicity play a primary role in the story.

Examples of this type of memoir include: Black, White, & Jewish, by Rebecca Walker; Bitch Is the New Black, by Helena Andrews; YELL-O! Girls! edited by Vickie Nam

Food Memoirs

• Cooking

• Eating

• Inspired by food

• Gardening

• Food movement stories

Examples of this type of memoir include: Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell; Tender at the Bone, by Ruth Reichl; The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, by Jennifer 8. Lee; Farm City, by Novella Carpenter; Licking the Spoon, by Candace Walsh

Travel Memoirs

• Single-destination

• Multiple-destination

• Theme-based travel

• Soul-searching travel

Examples of this type of memoir include: Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert; The Road to Somewhere, by James A. Reeves; The Adventures of Bindi Girl, by Erin Reese; Es Cuba, by Lea Ashkenas

 Survivor Memoirs

• Harrowing childhood stories

• War stories

• Abuse (sexual, physical, or emotional)

• Trafficking

• Prostitution
Examples of this type of memoir include: The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls; The Tender Bar, by J.R. Moehringer; A Child Called “It,” by Dave J. Pelzer; A Piece of Cake, by Cupcake Brown

 Addiction and Compulsion Memoirs

• Drug or alcohol abuse

• Smoking

• Parents of child with drug or alcohol problem

• Eating disorders

• Body dysmorphia

Examples of this type of memoir include: Beautiful Boy, by David Sheff; Tweaked, by Patrick Moore; Lit, by Mary Karr; A Life in Smoke, by Julia Hansen; Drinking, A Love Story, by Caroline Knapp; Purge, by Nicole Johns; Fat Girl, by Judith Moore

Emotion Memoirs

• Stories of a single emotion

• Personal interactions with things like time, money, etc.

Examples of this type of memoir include: Monkey Mind, by Daniel Smith; Money, A Memoir, by Liz Perle; Dancing at the Shame Prom, edited by Amy Ferris and Hollye Dexter

Spirituality Memoirs

• Spiritual development

• Your experiences with religion

• Finding or losing religion

Examples of this type of memoir include: Traveling Mercies, by Anne Lamott; The Spiral Staircase, by Karen Armstrong; Unorthodox, by Deborah Feldman; 90 Minutes in Heaven, by Don Piper

Other Memoirs

• Humor (Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris)

• Hybrids (The Pain Chronicles, by Melanie Thernstrom)

• Graphic memoirs (Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel)

• Anything extraordinarily unique that doesn’t fit into the above-mentioned categories (ask Brooke or Linda Joy before you place your book into an outlier category!)

• Personal essay anthologies that do not fit into the above-mentioned categories