1:1 Memoir Coaching with Marilyn
“Working with Marilyn has been a life-changing experience for my writing.”
~Maurene Hinds, Author/Instructor
What’s my 1:1 coaching style?
I deliver in-depth feedback with a loving touch. I am a stickler for craft AND I understand the insidious ways shame and silence can keep a story’s deepest, most vulnerable truth hovering beneath the surface of the page. My feedback is always in service of this truth, and I will gently but fiercly push you to go deeper. I will not just say, “Go deeper.” I will provide you with thoughtful suggestions for bringing this deeperness to the page.
Here’s the nutshell version of how I work with writers:
- I give you in-line feedback on your pages as well as an additional editorial letter that summarizes the bigger editorial picture. We then meet on a coaching call (Zoom) to discuss your pages and determine your Next Steps. We meet every other week.
- I ask questions to help you find the story that wants to be told. I hold space on our call for your story to emerge. I consider this space–and your story–sacred. Inevitably we laugh; sometimes we cry. Good tears, the holy kind that accompany truth.
- I provide craft lessons, suggested readings, and writing assignments as needed to help you hone your craft and write your memoir forward month in and month out.
- I work with clients for months, often years, to help them through every stage of their memoir journey.
If you would like to explore 1:1 memoir coaching with me, click the button below and fill out my Client Intake Form. Once I receive it, I’ll be in touch!
Your 1:1 Memoir Journey…
A memoir is not written overnight. For most of us, it’s not written in six months or in a year. That’s because writing a memoir is a journey of discovery: through the act of writing, you discover the deeper meaning at the heart of your story. This meaning deepens your understanding of the story you are telling, and you revise accordingly. It’s a beautiful messy transformative process. Whether you’re writing your first draft, stuck in the murky middle, or ready to revise, I will meet you where you’re at and help you write the story that wants to be told, in your voice, as only you can tell it.
Map Your Memoir
Create a roadmap for your memoir that helps you envision your story before you write.
If writing a memoir is a process of discovery, why would I encourage you to map your memoir before you write?
Writing a memoir is also about seeing beneath the external surface story to your story’s internal transformational arc and figuring out which scenes tell this deeper story.
It requires deep vision work that will take you—to continue the roadmap metaphor—off-roading. What happens when you go off-roading? You see a larger scope from a different vantage point: Why must you write this book? What have you come to the page to say? Who is your ideal reader? Where does your memoir fit in the marketplace? Getting clear about these kinds of behind-the-scenes questions will help you see the full scope of your memoir so you can write it forward.
Whether you’re just beginning your memoir journey, are somewhere in the middle, or returning after time away, Map Your Memoir will help you get from where you are to where you’re going.
Write Your Memoir
Write your memoir forward with 1:1 monthly memoir mentoring.
1:1 monthly memoir mentoring is currently full. Please reach out via the Contact page if you would like to be added to my waiting list.
Revise Your Memoir Phase 1
Create a Re-vision Map that gives you big-picture clarity about what’s on the page and how to fix it.
Congratulations! You’ve completed a draft of your memoir. Now what? Revision, of course. But where to start?
Intuitively, you might be tempted to dive back in and begin revising your manuscript from, well, the beginning.
But revising from the beginning leaves out an essential—and time saving—part of the revision process: big-picture clarity.
Now is the time to step back and assess the breadth and depth of exactly what’s on the page, identify the issues that need fixing, and create a revision plan—hello, Re-vision Map—for how to fix them and what to fix first. (Hint: Counterintuitive as it may sound, begin with the issues that are most systemic and hardest to fix!)
So, what’s the process? How does Revise Your Memoir, Phase 1 work?
Revise Your Memoir, Phase 1 is based on Author Accelerator’s 3-D Revision Plan.
Client Feedback
Working with Marilyn 1:1 has been a life-changing experience for my writing. Before working with Marilyn, I’d spent years floundering on a draft of a memoir. While I’d made some progress, I needed support with the overall structure of the book and the motivation to keep going. With Marilyn’s guidance, I was able to solidify a working draft of the structure, which allowed me to move forward with the story. After previously working on a draft for more than six years, with Marilyn’s guidance, I completed a full manuscript in six months.
Marilyn is truly gifted when it comes to seeing the truth of the story and helping to bring that truth to the page. Throughout the process, Marilyn’s encouragement and insightful feedback have been invaluable. She’s helped take this story to deeper levels by identifying the heart of each section and chapter. The final manuscript will be much fuller and far beyond what it would have been without her guidance.
As I head into the revision process, I look forward to applying Marilyn’s thoughtful comments and suggestions as I continue working with her. She is an absolute joy to work with, and I’m immensely grateful to have her guidance on this writing journey.
Fierce in her devotion to my work, Marilyn asks incredible questions to get to the heart of every scene, and she helps me bring my narrator’s emotional truth to the page. Within the safe container of her coaching style, my writing voice emerges more courageously. Incredibly organized, she remembers small details of scenes and recalls them for me as I move forward.
When I receive Marilyn’s comments on my writing packets every other week, I have a “date night” with myself. I pour a glass of wine and then I pour over her insights, thoughtful questions, suggestions for revision. In between our coaching calls, I share my ahas, craft questions, successes, and frustrations in my 1:1 classroom. She responds with love, compassion, and support.
In less than a year, I finished the first draft of my memoir. I know how my story begins and where it ends. I understand my protagonist’s inner desires, her obstacles, fears, and her arc of transformation. I will continue to work with Marilyn on my first full-length memoir revision.
Personally, I have excavated aspects of myself I had long hidden away. I did not know when I began my memoir that I was writing a story of reclaiming my Soul. Now that I do, I am a better person, a more aware spouse, a better writer.