Memoir Publishing – PAMELA JANE

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The Query that Landed Me a Book Contract – And 5 Tips for Writing Your Own

Quill

I’m always interested in reading successful queries, especially memoir queries because they are so difficult to write–at least for me. I was so close to my story that it was nearly impossible for me to describe it with any degree of objectivity. It seemed easier just to write the whole darn book! But after much revising and tweaking, I did write a query that ultimately sold my memoir, “An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer’s Story.” Enclosed below is my query and five tips to help you write your own. Query “An Incredible Talent for Existing” is the story of a young woman who longs for an idyllic past even though, as a revolutionary, she believes everything that exists must be destroyed. The story is set in the 1960s, the era of love, light–and revolution. While the romantic narrator imagines a bucolic future in an old country house with children running through the dappled sunlight, her new husband plots to … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

5 Tips on Hiring a Memoir Coach

jumpers

If universities offered degrees in the art of finding and evaluating writing coaches, I would have earned a PhD by now. Maybe two. In the many years I’ve worked on writing my memoir, in-between publishing thirty children’s books, I’ve hired several dozen writing coaches, from famous writers to obscure professors. I’ve worked with some outstanding coaches, such as Tristine Rainer (Your Life as Story), Karen Propp (In Sickness and in Health: A Love Story) and Eric Maisel (The Art of the Book Deal and Mastering Creative Anxiety). Hiring a writing coach can be expensive, although I was able to pay for much of my coaching with my own earnings. Still, I haven’t been on many vacations in recent years, my family-room furniture is really funky, and my fantasy of adding an addition to our house remains just that – a fantasy. But for me, working with all those coaches was worth it. As I’m writing this, I ask myself why? … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

5 Outstanding books for memoir writers

When compiling this list I realized that most of the recommendations are books about plotting. This makes sense because good memoirs employ a sound story structure – one similar to yet distinct from novels (more about that later). Though some of the books listed are unlikely choices for a memoir-writer’s self-help list, they have proved enduringly helpful to me. Through the years each one has become an old friend and trusted writing companion. The Weekend Novelist  by Robert J. Ray (weekendnovelist.com) The Weekend Novelist lays out a plan for completing a novel (or memoir) in 52 weekends, a strategy the author used for writing his first book while teaching during the week. But whether you are a weekday or a weekend writer, this book is a guide in that it provides a blueprint to help you articulate and direct your creative energy. (I almost said “crazy creative energy,” but I don’t want to project here.) The author’s diagram for plotting … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

Just Wait! A short story rejected in grade school becomes a cause of action

In elementary school, back in the 1950s, we were never given writing assignments, and I never imagined there were any living authors. I pictured a cemetery filled with tombstones of my favorite writers with their last names first, like card catalogs in the library: Baum, L. Frank 1856-1919. Writing – the pleasure of articulating interior worlds sensed but not seen – was something I did on my own. I was in eighth grade before I got a chance to write a story for school. My eighth-grade English teacher, Mr. Mortem, was a malevolent-looking man with a low brow and small beady eyes. We joked that he moonlighted as an axe murderer. But he was even scarier as an English teacher. He terrorized us with menacing-sounding exams called “evaluations,” which turned out to be ordinary multiple-choice tests. But he was the first teacher to give us an assignment to write a short story. “Remember,” Mr. Mortem called as we filed out of class, “no stories from TV!” I hardly heard him. I was … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

Read the First Chapter of My Memoir

beach run

In 1965, when I was eighteen, I ran away to Portland, Oregon. Running away was an act of rebellion, but also of faith. In one beautiful leap I would escape my family, my past, and the insufferable person I’d been living with for the past few years—my teenage self. This person was quite obviously screwed up. She had way too many problems. No one wanted any part of them, especially me. In Portland I could reinvent myself and leave the past behind. My brother agreed to drive me to the airport on the condition that I stop to say goodbye to my parents. So on a gray November morning, I found myself driving down the flat Midwestern streets where the silent, respectable houses stared impassively out of the dawn. We turned a corner, and my brother slowed down. There it was—the familiar red brick bungalow with my writing alcove overlooking the maple tree. My brother pulled over and turned off … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

Color-Coding Story Elements to Weave a Narrative

There are several ways to weave together various elements of your narrative, whether fiction or non-fiction. Begin by asking yourself the following two questions (it may help to write down the answers). Question #1. What is the main story you want to tell? In other words, what is the most important element of your story, what drives you to want to write this particular book? Once you have answered this, ask yourself: Question #2. Is there a secondary narrative, or a subplot that you would like to include. This might be a love story, a parenting or a childhood story that relates to the main narrative. Let’s say, for instance, your mom was a doctor or health worker in the hospital where you are visiting a family member; you could contrast your current story with memories of a young child in the same setting. Alternatively, you may simply pause in the narrative periodically to reflect on what you went through, or outline strategies that helped you … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

Dear Pamela: Worries that offering a memoir class at my church will bring up too many strong emotions

I will be posting every month from my new writing advice column, “Dear Pamela,” from womensmemiors.com. I will be answering questions about all aspects of writing, specifically memoir writing, from character development (yes memoirs do have characters, including you, the narrator!) to agent submissions. Below is a question-and-answer from the May post: Dear Pamela, “I am co-creating a memoir-writing class at our church. When this was first proposed, someone said we shouldn’t do it because writing a memoir might call up too many strong emotions from someone, presumably with difficulties in their lives, like childhood abuse or an abusive marriage or loss of a child. We are going ahead with the project, but how would you respond to such an objection, and, more importantly, how to help attendees with such challenges? I’ve always thought that writing was one of the best ways to re-address and help heal such challenges from the distance of time and perspective.” — Carol at Church … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

Does Your Past Hold a Key to a Great Story? 5 Elements of Experience Essential for Writing a Memoir

Every year, usually in spring or fall, I spend a few days at Mohonk Mountain House, a hotel in the Shawangunk Mountains in upstate New York. With flags fluttering from its turrets and towers, Mohonk stands like a triumph of Victorian architecture, a hymn to nineteenth century beauty and civility. But I don’t go there for the luxurious setting, or even the amenities. I go to remember. In the spring and early summer of 1972, when I was twenty-five, my first husband and I had summer jobs at Mohonk. I worked as a “flower girl” gathering lilacs and lavender from the cutting gardens, which I arranged into bouquets for the guests. It sounds idyllic, but that summer was more of a nightmare than an idyll. The truth is, I was having a nervous breakdown (to use an old-fashioned but aptly descriptive term). And though I would have loved to stay on at Mohonk that summer, to see the roses bloom … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

Eliciting Emotion in Your Readers: 3 Tips on Writing Highly-Charged Scenes

kiss

“When you… want to make the reader feel pity, try to be somewhat colder — that seems to give a kind of background to another’s grief, against which it stands out more clearly… The more objective you are, the stronger will be the impression you make.” – Anton Chekov Recently, I was reading a chapter of my memoir to my writing group. In one chapter, a character makes a startling confession, and my response in the book was something like, “I felt shattered.” Later, when I was reading the group’s comments on my story, I saw that Joyce, a highly perceptive critic, had written next to that passage, “I don’t feel the intensity here.” Others agreed. I thought about this for a while. Why didn’t my writing convey to readers the intensity of my emotional response? After all, I had felt shattered – or had I? I frowned, trying to remember. Did “shattered” truly describe what I had felt? Or … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

How to Write a Memoir or Novel According to Shakespeare – And 4 Other Famous Artists

Shakespeare

It’s fashionable these days to turn to the artists and writers we know and love for advice or wisdom – How to Live like Proust, how navigate the complexities of marriage and morality according to George Eliot*, how to grow up through the novels of Jane Austen. What can the writers and artists who have endured tell us about writing? Below are five tips from some of the best: 1. Isak Dinesen: Don’t wait for the perfect frame of mind to begin writing “When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, without faith and without hope…suddenly the work will find itself.–” Isak Dinesen. When I searched on-line for the above quote just now, I found that the words “without faith and without hope” had been deleted, as though they detracted from what Dinesen is saying. But to me, those words are what make the quote … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

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