Everyone has a story worth saving, and most people wait too long to write it down. These posts are for anyone who wants to write a memoir — where to start, how to structure a life into a book, formats to choose from, and why the time to capture your story is now, before the witnesses are gone.
Master electricians, stone masons, watchmakers, boatbuilders, organ builders, and more. Knowledge that does not transfer through textbooks. The book is the only structure that captures what apprenticeship used to carry.
Veterinarians have decades of witnessed moments inside the human-animal bond. The pet-care manual is the wrong book. Here is what the right one is.
The window for writing a veteran’s memoir is closing faster than most veterans realize. Here’s what I tell veterans when they ask whether they should start now.
A profile of a memoir client who uses AI more thoughtfully than most professionals half his age. Never lets it write a word. He’s the model for augmented humans.
Naming names to settle a score is the fastest way to get sued and the surest way to write a book nobody respects. Here’s the better book hiding inside it.
A freelance ghostwriter explains how catastrophizing affects his writing and business, and the strategies that actually work to manage it.
Holiday scenes in fiction and memoir fail when they default to sentiment instead of specificity. Here’s how to write Christmas that readers feel.
A ghostwriter with 54 memoir projects on how to handle family, friends, and colleagues in your memoir without destroying relationships or getting sued.
A 54-book ghostwriter on why the most successful people in business, entertainment, and public life write memoirs, and what those books do for their careers.
After ghostwriting 54 books including memoirs for clients in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, here’s how to organize your life story into a book worth reading.
I wrote my first memoir at 17 from my grandfather’s WWII journals. Here’s what I’ve learned about turning life into a book people want to read.
A writer’s reflection on Independence Day — from childhood fireworks to Big Bear Lake, from grandfather’s POW camp to the freedom to build a career out of words
The format chosen shapes everything about how readers experience your memoir. A ghostwriter who has structured dozens of memoirs on which formats work and why.
Why a book is the most powerful business tool you’re not using. Real outcomes from a ghostwriter with 54 projects: $30M raised, TEDx talks, university adoptions
How education built a career from assembling computers in kindergarten to Director at Trader Joe’s to 113+ published books. Real trajectory, not theory.
Thanksgiving gives writers everything: history, family conflict, food, gratitude, and guilt. Books, movies, and craft lessons from the ultimate pressure cooker.
A personal remembrance of September 11, 2001, the day that changed everything, and why the stories from that day must continue to be told.
My first ghostwriting project was my grandfather’s story, a WWII POW who survived. Why veterans’ memoirs matter and how ghostwriting preserves them.
How to write your memoir, from a ghostwriter who has helped clients preserve legacies from resort developers to brain surgeons to childhood survivors.
My first ghostwriting project was my grandfather’s WWII memoir. He survived the Bataan Death March and three years in a Japanese POW camp. I was seventeen.
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