The senior managing director of Terra Nova Capital Partners in New York City, Claire Gruppo possesses experience in both banking and publishing. An avid reader of nonfiction, Claire Gruppo is writing a memoir.
Memoir writing has unique characteristics. It focuses on your life and experiences yet strikes a balance between honesty, narrative focus, and style. To recount a certain event accurately, you must draw on your memories and conduct interviews with relevant persons. If you embellish the story or leave out details, readers may distrust you and doubt the truthfulness behind your writing.
Memoirs emphasize a certain period of your life or frame your entire life through a specific lens. To achieve that end, pick incidents from your life that connect to that theme. When arranging those events, tell a story with a clear conflict and effort to resolve it. Even if you do not overcome that conflict, demonstrating the effects of your struggle will sustain readers’ attention.
Once you have planned your memoir’s focus and contents, portray them in your writing style. You can convey your personality through your writing more vividly than you can with an anecdote. Employing your writing style adds interest and emotional weight to the events they portray and may help readers understand you.
