Member Teleseminar September 25,2015

11 AM PDT  12 PM MDT  1 PM CDT  2 PM EDT

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Many memoir writers are interesting in teaching something they know well–a skill, a philosophy of life, tools for recovery–and want to combine their own story with how-to tips and education for the reader.  In the publishing industry now, there is some flexibility for the hybrid book. I’m pleased that our presenter for September Mary Reynolds Thompson is going to help us understand the principles of writing a hybrid book and share her experience with us.

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Blending memoir with advice is not new. Authors as diverse as Henry David Thoreau and Helen Gurley Brown have already done it, brilliantly. But today, the self-help/memoir hybrid is thriving as never before. Why? Because these books satisfy our hunger for both self-improvement and first person narrative. So how does telling your story in a self-help book differ from writing pure memoir? Do different sets of rules apply? And if so, what are they? In this experiential workshop we’ll explore:

* The different missions of self-help versus memoir
* How to build trust and credibility through story
* Why stories are so much better than lectures
* The emphasis on parables versus paragraphs
* The three essentials of telling your story in a self-help book

Mary Reynolds Thompson, author, certified life coach, and facilitator of poetry and journal therapy, is founder of “Write the Damn Book” and the creator of the Write the Damn Book coaching process that guides writers on the heroic path from procrastination to publication. Core faculty for the Therapeutic Writing Institute and a growing voice in the eco-spirituality movement, Mary is author of Embrace Your Inner Wild: 52 Reflections for an Eco-Centric World (White Cloud Press, 2011), and Reclaiming the Wild Soul: How Earth’s Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness (White Cloud Press, 2014). She can be reached through her websites: www.writethedamnbook.com and www.maryreynoldsthompson.com