Lizbeth Meredith

Writing a Book with Benefits: Steps I Took to Take Care of My Memoir’s Future Readers 

February 9, 2017

 4 PM PST  5 PM MST  6 PM CST  7 PM EST 

Pieces of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters recounts the Lizbeth Meredith’s two year struggle to bring home her internationally abducted daughters from Greece to Alaska. It’s the story of a 29 year-old woman whose life was marked by domestic violence and childhood kidnapping who faced a $100,000 problem on a $10 an hour budget. More than simply a missing children’s story, Pieces of Me is also the story of the generous community in Anchorage, Alaska and a growing support system in Greece who joined Lizbeth’s efforts to make the impossible a reality.

It is a 2016 USA Best Book Awards Finalist in Women’s Issues.

“Why now?”

I’ve been asked this question repeatedly since publishing my memoir in late September of 2016. And honestly, it wasn’t as though I hadn’t been trying.

I began my journey in memoir in 1996, just after I returned with my daughters to America after recovering them from Greece, where they’d lived in hiding for two years after my ex-husband spirited them away.With my journal in hand and cassette recordings I’d made to track events, I began to write my book.  I was 31 then, my traumatized little girls were 7 and 8 years old. I was young and headstrong and raw from my experiences, and I wanted to share my story in part to get even. I wanted to get even with a justice system that had failed me, both in the states and in Greece. I wanted to get even with the people responsible for my daughter’s kidnapping. And I wanted to anyone and everyone who continued to ask battered women “Why do you stay?” that a victim leaving a violent relationship was not surefire way to end the abuse like I had once believed it was.

But year after year, draft after draft, my reasons  for writing my memoir changed in direct proportion to the amount of healing my girls and I experienced. There were universal themes and messages I wanted to share. There were lessons in dealing with inter-generational trauma that I was compelled to write. And before I knew it, my so-called misery-memoir became the piece of me I am proud to gift to my daughters and to my readers.

In this discussion, you will learn:

*The value of outlining your memoir’s takeaways, those messages your readers will benefit from reading.

*How the passage of time can help clarify your true story that’s encased inside all of the events.

* Tools and techniques that help channel the emotions of events long ago.

* Why including humor and insight is important to your reader’s well-being.

* How writing a book with benefits led to natural partnerships in the launch phase.

Bio

Lizbeth Meredith is a writer based in Alaska with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in psychology. She has worked as a domestic violence advocate and a child abuse investigator, and with at-risk teens as a juvenile probation supervisor.

Lizbeth published When Push Comes to Shove: How to Help When Someone You Love is Being Abused on Amazon and Nook, and is a contributor to A Girl’s Guide to Travelling Alone by Gemma Thompson.

You can contact her at lameredith.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/lizbethmeredithfan or on Twitter at Lizbeth Meredith@LizbethMeredith.