This blog is really about my journey of LEARNING about memoir, READING memoir and WRITING memoir.
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The sounds of my memoir
Writing memoir evokes memories, visceral and palpable. The sounds, smells and tastes of my childhood have come flooding back which such clarity, I have often felt I was back home, in the Lagos of my youth, the Lagos of the 1970s and 1980s. Writing just a few chapters, these were some of the sounds that…
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What my first literary agent rejection has taught me.
Last week I got my first rejection from an agent I queried. I was introduced to this agent by a contact whose book is coming out next year, and I was delighted to have a direct line to an agent who represents some pretty amazing people. Here is what the agent said in his rejection…
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I found an old poem I wrote that is so telling.
Between 2009-2011, I did a creative writing program which exposed me to different genres of creative writing. During one of the semesters, we explored different types of poetry and were encouraged to mine our emotions and memories, and write our own poems.I must, at this juncture, state that poetry is not really my thing, but…
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“Everyone has a story to tell” -Growing industry makes memoir more accessible.
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Read, read and read some more!
You’ve all heard it right? At the beginning of any writing 101 course we are told: to learn to write, you need to READ! As I began my journey to write my memoir, I realized that memoir was a genre that I had literally not spent too much time exploring. Yeah, I jumped on the…
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When your closest loved ones are main characters
As an aspiring memoirist, this is a conundrum! How does one write about closest family and friends without causing offence? Is that even possible? The thing about memoir is that you are writing from YOUR perspective, about your memories of specific events as best you remember them. By definition, your memory of events could be…
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To translate or not?
My memoir is set for a good part in the South of Nigeria, amongst the Yoruba people and the melting pot of big city Lagos. Nigeria is a former British colony and as such, the official language is English. But there are several local languages ( like Yoruba) which are spoken, as well as pidgin…
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Writing a novel is like driving a car at night.
“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you.…
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Stepping into the void…
In my first ever Gotham class on the art of writing memoir, I was introduced to a wonderful teacher, Elizabeth Cohen, published author of memoir, poetry and non-fiction works, and creative writing professor. Over ten sessions, Elizabeth introduced us to using the finesse and tools of fiction to tell our stories. Our stories can’t just…
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So you wanna write a memoir?
“So, you wanna write a memoir? Go figure out what it’s all about and what it takes.” my husband said to me, and this is what I did. The Gotham Writers Workshop was amazing – they have 3 memoir courses: Memoir I and II, take you through fundamentals of memoir writing, then finally, for those…
Novice Memoirist 