IF YOU’RE AN EMAIL SUBSCRIBER TO THIS BLOG: Take note of changes

 If you receive blog posts of SPIRITUAL MEMOIRS 101 by email because you’ve subscribed as a Follower, please note:

As of July 1, you might not receive any more blog posts. Blogger’s information states that maybe some people will continue to receive them, but their communications and explanations are sketchy at best. 

If you’d like to keep up with SM 101 blog posts—and I hope you do!—you have a couple of options.

• You can follow the Facebook Page for SPIRITUAL MEMOIRS 101. (Click on that link.) I share links to weekly posts there, plus other info throughout the week that’s intriguing or helpful or juicy.
• You can Bookmark the SPIRITUAL MEMOIRS 101 website (and click on it often). Here’s how: Click on HOW TO BOOKMARK A WEBSITE.  

I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Maybe Blogger will offer another way to receive posts by email and if so, I’ll let you know.

In the meantime, please help me 

spread the news about 

Spiritual Memoirs 101.

Why?

Because your stories and mine are important.

Henri Nouwen says, “Writing can . . . be good for others who might read what we write. Quite often a difficult, painful, or frustrating [event] can be ‘redeemed’ by writing about it. . . . Then writing can become lifesaving for us and sometimes for others, too.” 

Nouwen continues, “Each human being is unique. . . and nobody has lived what we have lived. . . . What we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. Writing can . . . make our lives available . . . to others. We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told.” (Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey)

Read more at “Your memoir’s ministry” and at “Sharing your stories you’re your family: The most important job in the world. 

IF YOU’RE AN EMAIL SUBSCRIBER TO THIS BLOG: Take note of changes

 

If you receive blog posts of SPIRITUAL MEMOIRS 101 by email because you’ve subscribed as a Follower, please note:

 

As of July 1, you might not receive any more blog posts. Blogger’s information states that maybe some people will continue to receive them, but their communications and explanations are sketchy at best.

 

If you’d like to keep up with SM 101 blog posts—and I hope you do!—you have a couple of options.

 

• You can follow the Facebook Page for SPIRITUAL MEMOIRS 101. (Click on that link.) I post links to weekly blogs there, plus other info throughout the week that’s intriguing or helpful or juicy.
• You can Bookmark the SPIRITUAL MEMOIRS 101 website (and click on it often). Here’s how: Click on HOW TO BOOKMARK A WEBSITE.  

 

I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Maybe Blogger will offer another way to receive posts by email and if so, I’ll let you know.

 

In the meantime, please help me

spread the news about

Spiritual Memoirs 101.

 

Why?

Because your stories and mine are important.

 

Henri Nouwen says, “Writing can . . . be good for others who might read what we write. Quite often a difficult, painful, or frustrating [event] can be ‘redeemed’ by writing about it. . . . Then writing can become lifesaving for us and sometimes for others, too.”

 

Nouwen continues, “Each human being is unique. . . and nobody has lived what we have lived. . . . What we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. Writing can . . . make our lives available . . . to others. We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told.” (Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey)

 

Read more at “Your memoir’s ministry” and at “Sharing your stories you’re your family: The most important job in the world.

 

How to craft your memoir’s best title, Part 2

 

“A clever title is great if it is clear,” writes Judy Cullins, 

“but a clear title is always preferable. The best? A clear and clever title.”

 

Cullins continues: 

“A shorter title is better than a longer one. 

Your reader will spend only four seconds on the cover. 

While some long titles have succeeded, 

usually the shorter, the better.”

 

Does your memoir have a title yet? If not, I hope last week’s post and today’s will inspire you to work on it.

 

Remember: It’s good to give your memoir a working title until you can pin down the just-right title.

 

Why? Because:

 

The process of writing

often takes the story

places the author never expected.

 

The process of writing

can take the author’s story

in a different direction

than she planned.

 

The facts—dates, places, people’s names, for example—

don’t change, but you can see the deeper story

and its meaning and significance in new ways.

 

With that in mind, choose a working title, knowing you might change it later, depending on what you discover as you continue to write. In fact, you might not pin down your permanent title until you’ve finished writing your memoir, but your working title can help you reach your final title.

 

Daniel Scocco offers seven interesting methods of crafting your title:

 

He suggests listing nouns, verbs, and adjectives that describe your story and “combine them into different phrases.”

 

Daniel also suggests describing an important turning point or the climax of your story, noticing key words. “Mix and match these words,” he says, “to see what works for you.” I like that: “Mix and match.”

 

Read the rest of Daniel’s seven tips in his post, “Picking Your Perfect Title.” They are intriguing.

 

Choose a title that’s easy to pronounce and easy to remember.  Jerry Waxler points out that a good title helps a reader recommend a book to a friend. I hadn’t thought of that before, but his point caught my attention. He says, “…the title should roll off the reader’s tongue when friends ask for a recommendation.” Good stuff, Jerry!

 

You might consider giving your memoir a one-word title.

 

A title with a visual component works well in catching potential readers’ attention.

 

Analyze other memoirs’ titles. Study advertisements. Examine article titles in newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Ask yourself “What makes them work?”

 

Or, how about a Shakespeare quote? Or a phrase from an old hymn that’s in the public domain? (Avoid using copyrighted materials. Check out the laws thoroughly if you’re tempted to use anything copyrighted. Click here to read Virginia Lloyd’s "How to Get Permission to Use Song Lyrics in Your Book.")

 

In her excellent book, The Writer’s Portable Mentor, Priscilla Long tells us to craft titles that “give readers an extremely accurate idea of what’s behind the door they are about to walk through…. [S]hun lyrical flourishes, obscure metaphors, and anecdotes with delayed points.”

 

She urges writers to avoid being fancy. Instead, she says, we should be direct, accurate, plain and simple.

 

So, now, put on your thinking cap 

and craft a working title, 

or maybe even your final title. 

And come back next week for more tips.

 

 

Does your memoir have a title yet?

 

Have you chosen a title for your memoir? You can give it a working title even if you haven’t finished polishing your manuscript.

 

Most of us spend a long time pinning down exactly the right title so start now on yours, knowing you might change it later.

 

Ask yourself the following when searching for your title:

 

• What is my memoir’s theme or recurring themes—my memoir’s message?
• What is my story’s key turning point?
• Can I link my title to a popular book title? (The last time I checked, book titles cannot be copyrighted but, nevertheless, craft your own similar title.)
• Is there a famous quote or Bible verse that summarizes my memoir’s message?
• Who is my audience (who is most likely to buy my book)? Use key words to catch potential readers’ attention.

 

Kathy Pooler offers good advice in her blog post “Choosing the right title for your memoir” In it, she leads us through steps she took in crafting her memoir’s title.

 

She asked herself:

 

• Is the title catchy?
• Does the title strike at the heart of my story?
• Does my title reveal my promise to the reader?
• Does the title create interest for the reader?

 

Jerry Waxler, in his blog post, “How to Pick the Best Title for Your Memoir,” says we need to “consider all the work a title has to do. A great title helps potential readers buy the book, love it to the last page and then recommend it to friends.”

 

Jerry says, “the title is the first line of marketing.” A title can make or break a sale.

 

Think about how you decide which books to buy: The first thing you notice is the title, right?

 

If the title doesn’t appeal to you, you put the book back on the shelf. You want a book that makes you curious, attracts you, draws you in, and makes it impossible to put it back on the shelf.

 

If the title does grab your attention, then, if you’re like me, you read the back cover for more info, and you open the book and read endorsements. But remember, it was the title that inspired you to do so. That’s why your title is so important.

 

Above, Kathy asks, “Does my title reveal my promise to the reader?” and Jerry says it this way: “Reading a book is like entering a contract with the author, and the terms of that contract are summarized in the . . . title. Every time a reader sits down to read, the title goes through their mind, evoking an image that pulls them back into the story.”

 

My first memoir had several working titles. I played around with Confessions of a Baby Boomer: Letters from Africa because the organization I worked with was interested in using the book to recruit Baby Boomers, empty-nesters, and mid-lifers. The words Baby Boomer are key words that could catch the attention of our targeted audience.

 

But that title didn’t feel just right. Next, I tried out Quaint I Ain’t: Grandma’s Letters from Africa, because, from the book’s preface: “I discovered I was not the traditional, quaint little grandmother I always envisioned. No, I had stumbled into adventures most grandmas couldn’t imagine—a hippo charged me, a baboon pooped in my breakfast, a Maasai elder spit at me, and I drank tea from a pot cleaned with cow’s urine.” 

But that title didn’t feel right, either—to me or to those who knew me. “Ain’t” is a word I’ve never used, and some acquaintances were shocked that I would use it.

 

In the end, I chose Grandma’s Letters from Africa for two reasons: (1) The memoir was a collection of letters I wrote to my granddaughter, and (2) I hoped potential readers would connect my title with Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen’s Letters from Africa. My husband and I lived near Karen’s home and coffee farm, both of which were central in the famous movie, Out of Africa. (Sigh….)

 

Come back next week when we’ll explore more about choosing your memoir’s title. In the meantime, choose a working title, knowing you can and probably will change it later. Your working title will help you discover your final title.

 

How to compose your memoir’s Back Matter, Part 3

 

Are you making progress on your memoir’s Back Matter? I hope creating those materials has been a fun project for you. (For help with writing your Acknowledgments and Author Bio, check out How to compose your memoir’s Back Matter. For info about writing your Appendix and Glossary, click on How to compose your memoir’s Back Matter, Part 2.)

 

This week we’ll look at Endnotes (also called Notes), a Chronology, and Illustration Credits.

 

Endnotes:

 

Compiling Endnotes can be a pain in the neck but they’re important, especially for citing your sources—providing copyright information for materials you used or people/books you quoted or paraphrased.

 

The folks at Author Learning Center say this: “A citation is a formal way of giving credit for material used or referenced from another source, such as a book, journal, or website. Understanding citation best practices for nonfiction, including why, when, and how to use such citations, will help you create a book that is ethically and legally sound.”

 

Author Learning Center continues with the following reasons to use citations:

 

• “It’s the law: Copyright law protects people’s work. Using too much of someone’s work without giving them credit violates the law.”
• “It helps your readers: Your readers may want to explore concepts or facts mentioned in your book. By properly using citations, your readers can easily find and read the original material.”
• “It’s the right thing to do: Don’t steal other people’s work. Give credit where it’s due.”

Read more at Citation Best Practices for Nonfiction.

 

Endnotes also allow you to add interesting supplemental information to material you’ve included in the main body of your memoir. For example, in Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir, I wrote about arriving at our remote station in Lomalinda, South America, stepping into the house assigned to us, and discovering an old telephone from Pacific Northwest Bell in our own Seattle neighborhood back home. My dad had worked for decades for PNB in Seattle, and I had worked for them during summers in high school and college. I added this in an Endnote:

 

[13] Recently I learned that the husband of my former high school classmate, Jody Sherin, worked at Pacific Northwest Bell, too, and his department sent those phones to Lomalinda.

 

You can also include Bible verses or other references that pertain to a portion of your memoir. For example, I wrote about my family’s first day in South America and the people who had welcomed us, helped us, and fed us that day. And then I wrote, “Through those people and their gifts, our family experienced Jesus’s words, ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’” The endnote for that reads like this:

 

[14] See Matthew 25:35 (ESB).

 

Your publisher will tell you which style guide to use in formatting your Endnotes—perhaps Associated Press Style (AP), Chicago Manual of Style, the Christian Writer’s Manual of Style, Modern Language Association (MLA), or the publisher’s own style guide.

 

For more information about Endnotes, click on:

What Are Endnotes, Why Are They Needed, and How Are They Used?

Chicago Manual of Style’s Notes and Bibliography: Sample Citations

Citation Best Practices for Nonfiction 

How to Cite Sources. . .

 

Chronology:

 

Your memoir’s End Matter can also include a Chronology (Timeline) if your story isn’t in chronological order.

 

Illustration Credits:

 

If not provided in captions or otherwise, Illustration Credits should be included in a page with that information. Some authors put Illustration Credits in their Acknowledgments or Copyright page.   

 

Remember:

Some pros consider Back Matter/End Matter to be optional.

Do what you think is best,

keeping in mind the types of information

your readers would enjoy.

Ask yourself what you like to check out

in a book’s Back Matter,

and then supply that for your readers.

They will thank you.

 

How to compose your memoir’s Back Matter, Part 2

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed working on your memoir’s Acknowledgments and Author Bio. (If you missed last week’s post, click on How to compose your memoir’s Back Matter.)

 

This week we’ll look at two additional components (usually optional) of your memoir’s Back Matter (End Matter)—an Appendix and a Glossary.

 

Appendix:

 

On this page, include additional information and resources for the benefit of your readers.

 

“The book appendix is the perfect place for more details on a subject in the book that perhaps the author didn’t have time to include fully or didn’t have room for,” writes Kevin Osworth.

 

He continues, “The appendix may provide additional resources (books, articles, research) for the reader to explore on their own time.”

 

For examples of appendices, look through books on your shelves and at the public library.

 

At the following links you’ll find more information, including examples: What is an Appendix Page? and The Lowdown on Appendixes/Appendices.  

 

Glossary:

 

A Glossary is a list of words that might be unfamiliar to your readers, along with their definitions. If in your memoir you use technical terms, specialized information, lingo of an era or culture, or foreign words, include them in your Glossary.

 

In my most recent memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir, I included a Glossary for the Spanish words I used in my story. Here’s an excerpt:

  

GLOSSARY

ajiaco   a popular soup made of chicken, potatoes, corn, and spices
alto   stop
arecife   red lava gravel
adiós   goodbye
bif   beef
bodega   storage room
buenos días   hello
campesino   peasant farmer
cédula   identification card
chicha   a fermented drink made from chewed kernels of corn

 

“Keep the definitions simple and reader-friendly,” writes Alexander Peterman. “Make sure the definitions are clear and tailored to the average reader. You do not want to sound like a dictionary or use language that is overly academic or technical. The definition should explain what the term means . . . in the simplest terms possible.”

 

You’ll find additional helpful information in Peterman’s, How to Write A Glossary.

 

If you haven’t already started rough drafts 

of your memoir’s Appendix and Glossary, 

this would be a good time to do so. 

Also, continue working on 

your Acknowledgments and Author Bio. 

Most of all, have fun!