Memoir and Soul Work

Posted on | September 4, 2009 |

My latest book is due out at the end of December. Write Your Memoir: The Soul Work of Telling Your Story is a book that is not like the other how-to books on the market, since it uses the concept of archetypes and shows the reader (and budding memoirist) how to enlist the help of that strongest of all allies - our own unconscious.

Most people think they can just write about their lives, relate the amazing things they’ve survived, and then publishers will flock to offer them contracts.  This might be true if your name is Madonna or Bono, but it won’t be quite the same for the rest of us.  The trouble is that focusing on ‘the market’ is the surest way to become confused about what your life story has to convey to others.  And it’ll certainly shield you from recognizing, as you write, the things that are true that you’d rather forget about. This is what you life has to convey to you.

If, by contrast, we choose to focus on the way we learn more, at a deeper level, about life, living, and ourselves, as we write our stories - - then we’ll be doing the ’soul work’ the title suggests.  Writing our memoir will lead us, inevitably, to new understandings about who we are.  We are, often, not quite as blameless as we thought; and sometimes we turn out to have been better and more loving than we ever gave ourselves credit for.  But we tend only to grasp this when we actually start writing, and see the words we’ve written. Memoir writing can surprise us.

I’ve taught personal and memoir writing for 25 years.  Or, as I like to say, I’ve taught soul work for 25 years.

Write Your Memoir is available for advanced purchase on Amazon.com.

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