Memoir writing is very healing.

It's important to tap into your emotional truth.

Everyone has different emotional truths.

This is my 20th year teaching memoir writing at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I’m always in awe of the stories people yearn to tell. It’s this yearning, or burning need to write, that finally gets them to the page.

A memoir is written in the first person and follows a clear theme or focus. It’s about a slice of life, not an entire life. Not everyone is inclined to write a memoir. It is not for the faint-hearted. The strongest writing is fearlessness, courage, and a willingness to take risks. A memoir is a conversation with yourself. I often suggest that students begin posing a question that they want answered.

Trauma memoirs are a category in themselves. The most effective ones are paced both narratively and emotionally, without letting the darkness overwhelm the story. Mary Karr and Joy Harjo have done this beautifully in their memoirs. In her recent memoir, Saved By A Song, Mary Gauthier writes that when trauma is dislodged through writing, it releases some of the infection.

One way to keep the narrative from becoming too heavy is to incorporate humor. Another is to move between the past and the present, blending the narrator’s adult........

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