Thousands of us love reading of all kinds: fiction, history, memoir. Sometimes all three are combined into one glorious book. We all know someone who is writing: a novel, a blog, a series of poems, a mystery, children’s book, cookbook, screenplay and more. And everyone knows someone in a readers’ or writers’ group. Now there is one website which can fulfill the function of writers’ group, readers’ group, and how to get published in one URL. The website womensmemoirs.com is for everyone who is a writer and/or a reader!
Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler, the authors of the award-winning collective memoir called Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story, have gathered all the information needed for how to write, edit, promote and publish all in one place! Tools and online support are provided. They have essays, excerpts from ongoing manuscripts, book and movie reviews.
I personally am intrigued by memoir, which necessarily has to deal with “coming of age”: writing down and publishing one’s deepest personal experiences without camouflage or embellishment. Why not write memoir as fiction? What has changed since, say, the 90’s to make people expose themselves, their wounds, their banal thoughts, for perfect strangers to enjoy? Why the hunger, perhaps obsession, to hear about a woman’s terminal cancer, or a youngster’s frightening abusive parents? There is social networking which touches upon too much information, but there is also the brutal honesty of memoir.
The process of writing is an arcane one, capturing a story that is compelling, pulling the reader in to care about what is being retold. The same can be said about a great movie, or a play, or even an entrepreneurial idea for the next Facebook. For some, writing is a process of healing and recovery. For others it is also a work of art, not dissimilar from a painting or sculpture. All sorts of skills are required to put words onto paper, and www.womensmemoirs.com provides all the tips to getting you where you want to go. Check out this website today: for the eleventh of eleven writing tips for the first eleven days of the New Year. They are wonderful to read! Check out “Eleven Memoir Predictions for 2011” published on January 1 but read (or re-read) today, 1/11/11!