Launching something big: Memoir Nation

Find yourself in your life story.

I often get asked how I get story ideas, and I rarely know the answer to that question. A story idea is always a drifting, mystical thing that somehow catches and takes root, and then hopefully blooms with a lot of hard work.

My business and life ideas, however, tend to always be specifically grounded in a moment for me. Eight years ago, when my father died, I thought, “If he would have written only 10,000 words, that would have been more precious than anything he left behind.”

In that moment, the idea for my new venture, Memoir Nation, was conceived. The idea marinated for years until it found the right time and place and … the right wonderful partner—meaning

Brooke Warner

, my co-host of the Write-minded podcast for nearly seven years. This past year we’ve worked on launching Memoir Nation, which is equal parts movement, support group, educational center, community, accountability engine, and fountain of inspiration.

Memoir Nation is for every type of writer, no matter if you want to write 10,000 words of your life story or 100,000 words, no matter if it's just your story for friends and family or if you want to publish it traditionally.

One guiding mission for me is how memoirs have changed our culture by de-stigmatizing so many “taboo” subjects like addiction, sexual abuse, mental health issues, and more. Memoirs have opened up national discussions that have led to greater connections, greater care, and even policy changes—so Brooke and I want to help people unearth their stories and put them into the world to change the world.

I always tell writers that the key to good writing is to be vulnerable on the page, and the genre of memoir is defined around that, so to write your life story is to find yourself—and to give yourself to others.

The creative process of launching a business

Launching a business is a little like publishing a book, I have to say:

• When you get an idea, you have to say yes to it—it will always be perfect in your mind, but you have to risk trying to make it perfect in the world.

• It’s easy to get imposter syndrome at many stages, especially on the eve of everything going public (whew, I’m so glad we’re live!).

• It’s best to do everything with a supportive community. I feel immensely fortunate to work with Brooke and learn from her. I’ve also benefitted by such an amazing group of supporters, whether it’s my wife Heather, who didn’t once question this venture or prod me to get a safe job with a safe retirement and safe health care at the precarious age of 60 (all of which I need, trust me), or the many people who talked with me about the idea and encouraged it.

My personal journey with memoir

Memoir Nation is a compelling project for me personally because I’m writing a memoir—my first—and I’m grappling with the whole spectrum of issues most memoirists grapple with: from “vulnerability hangovers” to figuring out how to present living people fairly to how to structure my memoir so that it’s effective as a work of art.

We’ve had so many memoirists on our podcast who have opened up life and writing in fascinating ways to me—Kiese Laymon, Carvell Wallace, Maggie Smith, E.J. Koh, Javier Zamora, Amanda Knox, Jill Ciment, Lidia Yuknavitch, Mary Karr, Dani Shapiro, and Pico Iyer, just to name a handful—so I’m beyond inspired by their guidance and example. (See our archives.)

I find that I am changing as a person as I write my memoir simply because of my self-interrogation and the mystical transformation that happens when you put words to experiences.

Join Memoir Nation!

There are several different packages of support and inspiration that you can sign up for, but I’m going to spotlight one for you now: Out the gate, the $99 level of membership gives you a lot of perks, including a weekly newsletter with lots of memoir insights, tips, advice, and encouragement. It will also get you bonus podcast content and a code for a free future class of your choosing (check out our classes!).

It’s a really good deal for $99, but also, important to us, is that your membership supports the launch of this big venture. If you’ve been a Write-mined listener and you like the content, there’s going to be a lot more exciting things in the weeks and months and years to come, so we invite you to join us at this $99 subscriber level.

We’ve done this podcast for nearly seven years now, and we have actually done it entirely for free and as a labor of love, so we’d love your support as we expand the ways we help writers tell their stories.

We’re giving away a free memoir-writing guide when you sign up, and we're going to ramp up to a big memoir-writing event in January, JanYourStory, a challenge to write 500 words a day to kick start your life story and commit to finishing it.

---

Please become a paid subscriber to this newsletter …

---

Because a quote

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

—Mark Twain

Listen to the new Memoir Nation podcast!

We’ve re-branded the Write-minded podcast, which was recently ranked as the no. 4 best podcast for writers. Now that it is the Memoir Nation podcast, we’ll focus more on memoir—but not exclusively.

Memoir is storytelling, after all, and we’re really focused on storytelling—the craft of it, the creative process, the community, and much, much, more.

I’m available for book coaching and editing!

I have some space on my Writing Consult calendar if you’re looking for help.

I help people develop books and projects from scratch and sometimes do larger edits on finished manuscripts.

I've worked on novels, memoirs, and short story projects. I’ve also worked on helping people figure out what kind of writer they want to be.

Contact me to find out more about my one-on-one work with writers.

Spare a dime to support this newsletter?

Because a photo

Snooping around, you might say …