The Memoir Hub

Everything about turning a life into a book that lasts. I’ve ghostwritten memoirs for people who were certain their story wasn’t interesting enough, and watched them hold the finished book and change their minds. These articles cover where to start, how to structure it, what to do about family, and the one thing nobody wants to hear: your story has a deadline.

No pitch. No pressure.

Your life is worth a book. This is how to write it.

A memoir isn’t an autobiography and it isn’t a diary. It’s the art of choosing which parts of a life matter and telling them so a reader feels them. This hub covers the whole journey, deciding whether your story is ready, finding where to start, choosing a structure, handling the hard parts like family and confidentiality, and finishing before the window closes.

Should you write a memoir at all?

The doubts that stop most people, answered honestly, and the reasons the right memoir is worth it.

• ► Is My Life Interesting Enough for a Memoir? Probably Yes, and Here’s the Test
• ► Memoir, Autobiography, and Biography: Which One Are You Actually Writing?
• ► Why Successful People Need Memoirs
• ► Do You Want All the Good That You’ve Done to Be Forgotten?
• ► The Revenge Memoir: Who Shouldn’t Write One
• ► When Grief Sent Me to the Desert: Finding Healing Through Joshua Tree
• ► How I Became a Ghostwriter: From a WWII Diary to 54+ Books
• ► Public Speaking for Introverts: How Photography, Grief, and Practice Turned Me Into a Speaker
• ► When Your Own Memoir Sounds Like Bragging

How do you start writing a memoir?

The practical craft of memoir, finding your starting point, organizing a lifetime of material, and choosing the right shape for your story.

• ► How to Write Your Memoir: Where to Start
• ► How to Organize Decades of Memories Into a Memoir
• ► Writing a Memoir from Journals, Letters, and Records
• ► How to Organize Decades of Memories Into a Memoir
• ► How to Capture Your Life in a Memoir Readers Will Love
• ► Memoir Formats: Choosing the Right Structure for Your Story

How do you write about family without a lawsuit?

Every honest memoir runs into the same walls. How to write about other people without a lawsuit or a rupture.

• ► Writing About Family in a Memoir Without a Lawsuit or a Family Rupture
• ► Why Thanksgiving Scenes Are the Best Material for Memoir and Fiction
• ► Writing Christmas: How to Capture Holidays on the Page

Memoir for a purpose: gifts, founders, and veterans

Specific situations where a memoir does specific work, as a gift, a legacy, or the capstone of a career.

• ► How to Write a Memoir as a Gift for Someone You Love
• ► If You’re a Veteran and You’ve Been Meaning to Write Your Memoir
• ► The Acquisition Memoir for Founders Who Sold
• ► Four Weddings and a Soul Mate: The Week I Married My Wife Four Times
• ► The Letters They Never Sent: What Iwo Jima Taught Me About Executive Books
• ► The Technical Professional’s Memoir
• ► The Technology Executive’s Memoir Nobody Is Writing
• ► The Technical Founder’s Memoir, Told Honestly
• ► The Memoir of a Career That Spanned Mainframes to AI
• ► Legacy Systems Don’t Die Because You Want Them To

Why can’t your memoir wait?

The part nobody wants to hear, and the reason I push people who keep saying “someday.”

• ► Your Story Dies When You Do: Why Your Memoir Can’t Wait
• ► The Witnesses Are Dying: Write Your Memoir While They Can Still Verify It
• ► The 71-Year-Old Memoirist Who Uses AI Better Than You Do

What is it like to work with a memoir ghostwriter?

If you’d rather tell it than write it, how a memoir ghostwriter works, and how the best memoirs get made.

• ► How to Hire a Memoir Ghostwriter, and What to Look For That Most Articles Don’t Mention
• ► The Ghostwriter and the Tennis Legend: How Open Changed Celebrity Memoirs
• ► Capturing the Client’s Voice: How Ghostwriting Actually Works
• ► What a Belly dancer Taught Me About Writing

What books help with writing a memoir?

Each of these has a full review covering what it teaches and where it falls short.

• ► It Didn’t Start with You

More from this hub

• ► 100 Life Lessons I’ve Learned: Wisdom for Success
• ► Behind the Book: My Life in Crazytown
• ► Book Structure: Why Most Manuscripts Fail Before the Writing Starts
• ► Four in Ten: American Prisoners of the Japanese
• ► From Castro’s Cuba to America’s Courtroom: The Remarkable Journey of Judge Alex Ferrer
• ► How to Organize Decades of Memories Into a Memoir
• ► I Watched the Moon Landing at Eight Years Old. It Changed Everything I Read and Wrote.
• ► Journaling Through Election Chaos: Why Writing Beats Arguing
• ► Nobody Else Asked. I Sat on the Folding Chair and He Told Me.
• ► The Hypervigilance That Ruined My Childhood Made My Career
• ► The IT Director Who Wrote 113+ Books
• ► The Surgeon Who Wrote a Book (And the Six Questions You’re Asking)
• ► Trigger Warnings: Protecting Readers or Censoring Art?
• ► Ybor City Is the Densest Square Mile of Material Here
• ► Yogababble in Business and Books: Why Inflated Language Fails

Ready to finally write your memoir?

You’ve been meaning to for years. The stories are still in your head, and the window doesn’t stay open forever. Let’s talk about getting your life onto the page, in your voice, the way you’d actually tell it.

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