WRITING FAMILY HISTORY & MEMOIR Alizette Torres Josh Martinez

1.) Your product is you, the crucial transaction in memoir and personal history is the transaction between you and your remembered experiences and emotions

2.) work through some of life's hardest knocks, loss, grief, illness, addictions, disappointment, failure and to find understanding

3.) In a family history one big decision would be to write about only one branch of your family

4.) Think small, don’t rummage around in the past talk more about your goal and future

5.) Don’t be I pat to start writing your memoir, the one you had in mind before you began then all you have to do is put the pieces together

6.) Your biggest stories will often will often have less to do with their subject than with their significance, not what you did in a certain situation but how that situation affected you and shaped you the person you became

7.) When you write your memoir and worry about that story isn't big enough and interests anyone else, the small stories that still stick in your memory have a resonance of their own

8.) Look for small self contained incidents that are still vivid in your memory

9.) If you remember certain memories its because they contain a universal truth that your readers will recognize from their own life

10.) Reread over your memoir it will tell you what interesting and whats not, what's emotional, what's important, and what's unusual