The Book I Turn Down
Some books I turn down in the first conversation. The revenge memoir has a sound: I am a victim, I am a victim, I am a victim. It fails on the page and in court, and sometimes a better book…
Category: Memoirs (Page 6)
Behind the BookBehind the Book: My Life in Crazytown
I was diagnosed AuADHD at sixty-four, and the diagnosis is the reason this book exists. One of the answers it supplied was that the traits my family spent nineteen years trying to suppress were the traits keeping me alive in…
GhostwritingThe Policy Memoir That Became a Night
A former government official hired me for a policy memoir. What the interviews found was the night he chose to save his family. The book someone describes is rarely the book that is there.
GhostwritingDoris and the Book for Her Daughter
Doris came to me in her late seventies, knowing the end was coming, and wanted her dreams written as a novel for one reader. The book made no money and worked perfectly.
GhostwritingWhat Happens to My Ghostwritten Book If I Die Before It Is Done?
If you die before your ghostwritten book is finished, your family can still complete it, if you plan for it now. Here's what the contract, your will and your family need.
MemoirsYbor City Is the Densest Square Mile of Material Here
Ybor City was a company town built by a cigar manufacturer in 1885, run through mutual aid societies that owned their own hospitals, and used by Jose Marti to fund a revolution. For a writer it is the densest square…
MemoirsThe Charge to Billybeat Island
Billybeat Island was a bed in a Camden bedroom with five boys in it, and the floor was lava. Gerry Mecca's memoir runs from there to a Texas state championship his team won and he did not.
MemoirsYou Retired Here With a Life Behind You
Pinellas County is full of people who did something substantial somewhere else and then moved here, and almost none of them have written it down. The reasons are always the same three, and all three are wrong.
MemoirsThe Mound Under the Picnic Tables
There is a Tocobaga temple mound in a county park in Safety Harbor, and the park is named for the Frenchman who showed up in 1842. Which name ends up on the sign is the useful thing to think about.
GhostwritingWhat Is It Like to Tell Your Trauma Story to a Ghostwriter?
Telling your trauma story to a ghostwriter can be safe and even healing, if you stay in control. Here's what the interviews are like, what stays off the page, and why a therapist belongs in your corner.
GhostwritingCan a Ghostwriter Help Me Write About My Divorce?
A ghostwriter can help you write about your divorce honestly without turning the book into a weapon. Here's what to check first, how to protect your children, and how to center the book on your own rebuilding.
GhostwritingWhat If My Story Is Too Horrible to Tell My Ghostwriter Out Loud?
Some stories are too painful to say out loud, and you don't have to. Here are the other ways to get a hard story onto the page, and how to decide what the book needs.