How long should a memoir be? The answer is not "as long as it needs to be. "Have a good theme, a defined audience, and a desired effect.

My late-in-life career as a freelance editor has brought challenges, growth, and joy.

You’d like to write a memoir. You’ve been thinking about it for a year or more. You’ve been journaling for years or just writing down...

In June 2019, I posted an article to this blog called "Sensitivity Readers Are Not Censors." At that time, controversy was swirling...

By mingling on social media with potential memoirists, I often hear it said that they need to get their stories out to the world; they’ve...

A few of the best resources for writers and editors.

Memoir writers can't make progress because they are learning to write, have career and personal commitments, and get no support for the work

Dialogue never exists for its own purpose. It is a form of narrative.

The key to writing a really good memoir is to identify a really good theme that runs through some aspect of your life and focus on that.

Understanding the true purpose of memoir is key to knowing when the time is right for you to write one.

Memoir authors risk defamation and invasion of privacy lawsuits. How can they protect themselves?

Simplicity . No matter your genre, keep your writing as straightforward and to-the-point as possible. Write to communicate, not to impress.

Journaling promotes self-awareness, shifts your viewpoint, and broadens your perspective on yourself and others.

A personal essay is about a topical subject discussed from a personal perspective, yours or someone else’s.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I want to talk about this issue of self-editing and the necessity of hiring a professional...

Trust is a requirement of the editor-author relationship. You must trust that I want your work to be of outstanding quality.

Some writers, even those who have already self-published, have never, even once, had a professional writer or editor read their work.

Our brains have evolved to learn from stories. Theme is not the same as plot. It is more important.

Author Terri Lyon focuses on how she evaluates the effectiveness of her author platform to create an audience and generate sales.

What do get when you merge the mechanics of creative writing with factuality of literary nonfiction? Creative nonfiction, or CNF.