Can you include difficult, sometimes very hard to write, scenes of professional, or personal situations? I suggest you can write those scenes from your point of view as in "I saw...I experienced...this happened to me...I felt...etc."

As I have written before, this is YOUR life not anyone else's life.  Please do not let others influence the way you experienced whatever went on in your life.  Sometimes writers hear "I don't remember it that way..." from others.  Please tell them to write their own memoir and they can write whatever they want to write.

In workshops that I conduct I have been asked why do I call the people in one's life "characters?"

In a recent workshop someone asked that question saying it seemed like characters only should apply to fiction writing. My answer is always the same: if you see the people in your life as major and minor characters two things happen: 1) it takes some of the emotion out of how you want to include these people in your memoir; and 2) it allows you to see who were the most important people in your life, and who were minor characters that came into your life at a particular time to help or hinder you but then left your life.

Major characters might be parents, partners, mentors, supervisors, teachers, military superiors, or...
If you are writing about your personal life, major characters might be family members, even extended family members.  In an event memoir (a memoir about a particular event in your life - moving, a new job (that worked out or did not work out), a marriage, fertility issues that took a long time to resolve (or not), etc.

Minor characters come into our lives to sometimes point us in the right direction (they might be mentors, or counselors or someone who gives you information you did not know...or...), they might want to stop us from doing something (and in stopping us, without knowing it right away, point us in the right direction), they might come through with a grant, loan, scholarship...(or not), etc.

The minor characters may be significant but they do not stay in our lives. Major characters do - even if they are not there physically, they are in our memory as we remember their advice, things they lived by that you adopted in your own life, and were/are a continuing influence.

You want to write a personal or an event memoir? What is the difference? A personal memoir is about your life, an event memoir is about a particular time in your life i.e. moving, getting married, loss, a new job, trying to have a child, taking care of a disabled person etc.

Memoirs have a theme -- when you look back upon your life what is one word that describes your life? This is not written in stone. It is a way, at the moment in time you are thinking of one word, that you might think about your life.  The word might change in a minute or a day or a week...or...
Write down that word. Did you do it? Great!  Next time you get stuck in your writing use that word as your writing prompt.

Your memoir will have people in it - they are major and minor characters.  You will describe scenes in your memoir, make a list of your scenes as you go along.  Why? It helps you keep track of what you are writing about.

Use short sentences. It provides energy to your work, Pretend you are telling your story to your new best friend - it will help you shorten the length of your descriptions and clarify who you are speaking and writing about.  DO NOT USE ADVERBS! In dialogue use "she said," "he said," allow the dialogue to carry the emotion of what is said.  USE ACTIVE VERBS. No lazy verbs. Every verb counts and infuses your work with energy.

Put everything in your first draft you want to write.  In succeeding drafts lay out your chapters in succession on a table, or on the floor and you will see redundancies in your writing. Maybe you will rearrange your chapters, maybe some characters will be removed or changed.

It does not matter if you succeeded or not in things you tried to do in life - readers will be fascinated by your wins and losses knowing you survived when things were not going well and a reader in a faraway place might be heartened to know you survived to write about your life.  The reader may be going through their own trials and you will have given them that precious four letter word: hope.

A couple of years ago I was asked by the managing director of a publishing house in Vermont if I would teach writing because, she said, "I am getting in so many manuscripts I can't publish because people don't know how to write."

So I packed up and moved to Vermont for two years where I created 150 three hour classes taught on a weekly basis in a place called the Writer's Barn south of Burlington, VT.  I taught memoir writing and I taught fiction writing along with a few poetry workshops.  It was a wonderful experience.

Men and women from all walks of life were in my classes.  Like all people beginning in my classes everyone was a little nervous but as they realized that the way I teach is a positive, what did you like or remember about the attendee's writing sort of way, they began to relax and not only tried new stories to write, but learned how to write believable characters, create scenes that resonated with the reader, write chapters than were page turners and much more.

Burlington, VT - in fact the entire state of VT - is a wonderful place to live.  It is like walking around in a landscape painting all day - no matter where you look.  The Green Mountains are to the east, the Appalachians  and Lake Champlain with its sparkling waters to the West.  The people are kind and generous, well read and I think most everyone has an advanced degree (or so it seemed).  

Writers are the same everywhere - sensitive, empathetic, unsure of themselves, but oh the marvelous work they do when they find their true narrator's voice. Never give up saying you are a writer because you would be doing something else instead of writing if you weren't drawn to telling stories.

Often from clients, attendees at lectures and workshops, either spoken out loud or I can see/hear from their writing struggles, the words or thoughts tumbling around in their minds about "am I a good enough?writer?" "Is this writing perfect?" "I can't find an agent. Does that mean my work isn't any good?"

When is my work good enough? 

Teaching memoir, I often have those in class who write something that reveals some intimate detail of their life. Love, sex, murder, theft, bullying, infidelity, divorce, anger, you name it and I have probably heard the story from someone along the way.

After revealing this dramatic scene and information, the author is generally a little anxious about his/her revelation.  How will I respond to including this scene after it is published? How will others respond to it?

In my view everything is from the narrator's point of view (POV). In memoir writing the author writes about what happened to them from their POV. What you cannot do is  castigate others. 

I look at all scenes with the characters, conflict, details in the writing as serving the story . In memoir we have a focused theme, in creative writing the hero (protagonist) has to want something.  Whatever comes about creatively as writers do the writing exercises, and then write on their own, matters not because what they reveal is so intimate, but how it serves the memoir or creative writing piece they are working on.

For example, if someone writes about being a prostitute or seeing someone in their family killed, that scene is important because it provides: conflict, heightens tension, tells us about the family (what they did or did not do) or the individual escaping from their former life.  The emotion of those moments is what the reader responds to in the story. The reader identifies with the author in memoir, or hero in creative writing.

Those moments are authentic moments, the reader feels the narrator's distress, quandary, or flat-out fear. So write whatever comes to you without fear or worry.  In memoir each event you experienced that has had a profound impact on you matters. 


 In creative writing - it's the same thing, except our hero is fictional. Remember in first draft work write down everything -  you can always change it your writing in successive drafts.

Whether you are writing fiction/non-fiction/memoir/screenplay/short stories you are telling a story.  In all those forms of  writing, the hero has to begin somewhere, go through trials, be defeated, then begin to win and close by winning the prize (whether it is wisdom or something more concrete).

We may have a hero starting out not wanting to do either their journey to get something, live their lives despite fears or physical danger.  In non-fiction we begin with laying out what we want to talk about, then introduce people who usually have not benefited from whatever you are researching, then do find information and, because they found information on their travel, health, computer issues etc. they win something in the form of knowledge (and your audience loves having a non-fiction piece personalized).

You may wind up with a hero and a subplot enemy (or enemies), even our evildoers either in our lives (in a memoir) or in our fictional stories must have a narrative arc (they want to do something, but it is something nasty) and those wretched anti-heroes must be defeated: this is their narrative arc.

When you decide on your characters for fiction/memoir/screenplays etc. sit down, list all the characters in your work.  Then write a few words next to their names what they want.  It will clarify your writing tremendously.  Then write down the roadblocks they run into, and next to their names, if they are defeated meeting this roadblock or fail to overcome it.  Voila.  You are creating your own roadmap for your work.  And that, my friend, is good writing.

You look back on your life and wonder how can I possibly remember exactly what happened?   You speak with your siblings or other relatives about a pivotal incident that happened in your life, and they say "that is NOT HOW I REMEMBER IT."

I always tell my students that if your friends, relatives or siblings remember an incident differently that you do, well, tell them that you are fascinated they remember the event in a different way.  If they want to, they can write their own memoir. Have them sign up for one of my classes...

We remember incidents in our lives from our own point of view (POV).  We don't remember anything in complete detail.  I am going to say that again, in case you missed it: we don't remember anything in detail.  What we do remember is the way an incident, experience, conflict, good luck etc. affected us.  

So don't worry as you remember pivotal moments in your life.  If someone tells you "that's not the way I remember it" just smile and keep writing YOUR memoir.  It is your life, not theirs, and what matters is what is important to you.

Writers and illustrators are always looking for information and websites to help them answer specific questions.  Here are some that might be useful:

Websites for Children's Book Writers and IllustratorsThe American Booksellers Association 
The American Library Association 
Children's Book Council 
The Drawing Board for Illustrators 
Book Links Magazine 
Illinois Library Association 
Illinois Reading Council 
International Reading Association 
Internet Directory of Agents 
Publishers Catalogue Home Page 
The Purple Crayon 
Aaron Shepard's Kidwriting Page 
The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators