You Can Write a Memoir

by Susan Carol Hauser

Passionately encouraging readers to reclaim the precious moments of their personal histories, Hauser shows readers how to transform them into intimate, compelling narratives. Using inspired samples... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0898799988
• ISBN13: 9780898799989
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Writer's Digest Books
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

detailed and thorough

This book is extremely well-compsed and offers a thorough and helpful guide to someone interested in reclaiming memories and making them last forever in written form. Hauser offers helpful techniques and uses examples from student essays and one of her own to illustrate writing techniques and styles, and also to "encourage you to look at writing --yours and that of others--in a certain way." This book is not designed as a writing template to which you can conveniently attach your own memories. Instead, it urges you to search within yourself for your own style and voice. Near the end Hauser offers this to potential writers everywhere: "reading a book about writing is, I imagine, a lot like reading a book about swimming: In the end, reading is not enough. To learn to swim, you have to dive into the water, get wet, sink frequently, and gasp for air now and then." If you're interested in learning to develop your technique and style as a writer, I recommend this book.

Great help for getting started

I've wanted to write a memoir for some time, but really never considered myself much of a writer--regardless of how much I thought I might have to say. Sitting down and getting started was difficult--way too many negative thoughts and really no idea of how to start. This book helped me through that. I don't know if what I'm writing is great stuff (does anybody when they're just starting out?) but I'm getting it DONE, which for me is the hardest part. (Love the cover, too!)