We hope you had a memorable Thanksgiving. Perhaps you were secretly gathering more stories for your memoir! Here at the National Association of Memoir Writers, we celebrate the stories that give meaning to our lives and help us to capture and preserve the moments that illuminate the history of our era, the moments that shaped us into who we are.
We love supporting you in your creative writing life to write and publish the stories that help you to heal, offer a legacy, and contribute to the conversations and insights of our times.
Stories are how we know who we are, and one way we gather the pearls on the necklace of our family legacy and identity. For me, writing gave me away to claim my identity, and to find and anchor myself in a family rife with loss and abandonment. I knew there had to be a way to understand my history, and I discovered that writing and researching my family’s story gave me a way heal and grow beyond the patterns of the past.
New Benefits and Sale Pricing!
We have some new benefits this year for members of the National Association of Memoir Writers that we hope you will enjoy!
Join us for our lowest price of the year!
This year, new memberships are just $149 $99 and membership renewals are $139 $97.
Our sale begins this Saturday, November 30 and will end on Monday, December 2.
Cyber Monday Membership Sale Giveaways
Join or renew your membership during our Cyber Monday sale and your name will be entered into our drawing. You could win:
Two 30 minute coaching sessions with Linda Joy Myers
A half-hour introductory coaching session with me (a $75 value.) We are giving away two of these coaching sessions. Take advantage of one-on-one time with Linda Joy to get your memoir on the right track.
One 30 minute publishing consult with Brooke Warner
Brooke Warner is publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What’s Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Brooke is a TEDx speaker, weekly podcaster (Write-minded with co-host Grant Faulkner of NaNoWriMo), and the former Executive Editor of Seal Press. She currently sits on the boards of the Independent Book Publishers Association, the Bay Area Book Festival, and the National Association of Memoir Writers. She writes a monthly column for Publishers Weekly.
Four 30 minute coaching sessions with Jerry Waxler
Jerry Waxler has offered to provide a free half hour session to help you strengthen your story, or develop your strategies, or address any other issue that you feel would help you keep going towards translating your life into a story.
Book: Song of the Plains by Linda Joy Myers
Song of the Plains is a weaving of family history that starts in the Oklahoma plains and spans over forty years as Myers combs through dusty archives, family stories, and genealogy online. She discovers the secrets that help to explain the fractures in her family, and the ways in which her mother and grandmother found a way not only to survive the great challenges of their eras, but to thrive despite mental illness and abuse. She discovers how decisions made long ago broke her family apart–and she makes it her life’s work to change her family story from one of abuse and loss to one of finding and creating a new story of hope, forgiveness, healing, and love.
When you purchase a new membership or renewal during Cyber Monday, you will also receive:
Audio and transcript of four session course taught by Linda Joy Myers and Brooke Warner: Brain on Fire.
Brain on Fire—My Month of Madness is a powerful memoir by Susan Cahalan about a mysterious illness that ended up being a brain disease. Her memoir is written using various techniques, from journalistic reporting to subjective moments where memory and reality blur. Reading Brain on Fire can teach you about structure and narration—from short chapters to writing from various “I” narrators to the story arc that makes this book such a page-turner. Journalistic techniques: Susanna researches everything that had to do with her breakdown and medical recovery and educates us in a contained way. She weaves telling with showing, and writes in scene –sometimes what she remembers, other times through the POV of someone else. In this course you learn about powerful techniques that make your memoir reach the hearts of others.
Learn to Write Your Memoir in 4 Weeks: A Step by Step Guide to Record the Stories of Your Life a Self-Study Workbook by Jerry Waxler
Here’s a how-to book with 28 “easy” steps to writing your memoir. Jerry Waxler wrote this in 2007 and has been using it in memoir workshops ever since. If you are looking for some simple guidelines to help you make sense of the magnificent journey to tell your story, this brief workbook could help you return to the basics.
My Memoir Organizer Download
The best way to keep track of the stories you are writing is to organize them in a binder where you can read them like a book. Printing out your stories and reading them as they will be seen in book form is a great way to experience all your hard work and experience how others will read your story!
For Cyber Monday, we offer a newly designed cover that can fit into your binder “MY MEMOIR.”
This year’s topics include:
- Childhood memories
- Roots and Legacies
- Mother
- Father
- Holidays
- Love and Marriage
- Houses
- Secrets and Hidden Truths…
- and more
You will receive over 90 writing prompts, a timeline, a list of dozens of memoir topics and writing tips to get you started and keep you going to “The End” of your memoir.
This year we are offering an immediate download so you can get started writing right away! Start the year with a way to organize your writing and your new inspirational prompts.
More benefits for being a member include:
- A NEW benefit with our web designer, Sam Baja. Special for NAMW members: discounted rate to build and maintain your author website/blog.
- FREE access to Live Monthly Teleseminars and FREE downloadable recordings of over 100 archived Teleseminars
- Free downloadable recordings of our past Telesummits, with valuable topics such as “From Story to Sold! Becoming a Successful Memoir Author.” And you get access to some of the experts’ teleseminar transcripts.
- Special Member Discounts for Workshops, Online Classes, and Webinars
- Receive three FREE e-Books on the memoir-writing craft by renowned authors Linda Joy Myers, Sharon Lippincott, and Jerry Waxler.
- PDF download of the NAMW e-Book: Memoir Writing as a Healing Journey by Linda Joy Myers, Ph.D.
- Exposure to cutting-edge news and information about the memoir-writing field
- Opportunities to share your successes and new publications with other memoir writers and ask questions on our NAMW Members-Only Facebook group and Member Group Coaching
This year, new memberships are just $149 $99 and membership renewals are $139 $97.
