Writing & Selling Your Memoir

Book excerpt: There's more to writing a memoir than just writing your life story. A memoir isn't one long diary entry. Rather, it's a well-crafted story about a crucial, often exceptionally difficult, time in someone's life. Writing & Selling Your Memoir talks readers through the process of telling their most personal stories in a compelling, relatable, and readable manner. Unlike other books dedicated to the art and craft of writing memoir, it teaches readers how to approach the genre with love, respect, and know-how without sentimentalizing it. Drawing on her experience working with New York Times best-selling memoirists, literary agent Paula Balzer carefully explores the genre and provides readers with step-by-step instruction on how to: • Identify strong opening and closing points • Find and develop a strong central hook that readers can relate to • Structure a memoir to maximize readability • Use dialogue and pacing to enhance intimacy • Approach honesty and truthfulness • Build a successful author platform around their memoir • Get an agent's attention • Get published Full of tips, techniques, detailed exercises, and examples from best-selling memoirs as well as sidebars from well-known memoir authors, Writing & Selling Your Memoir teaches you how to approach an often tricky genre and tell your story without sentimentalizing it.