Memoirs & Autobiographies
A life worth living is worth writing down.
Tell Me About Your StoryA memoir is a different animal
A business book is built to sell. A memoir is built to last.
The reader isn’t a prospect. It’s your daughter at forty, reading it after you’re gone. It’s a grandchild who never got the chance to meet you. It’s a stranger who pulls it off a shelf because the first page won’t let them set it down.
That changes how it’s built. A memoir doesn’t need to convert anyone or shorten a sales cycle. It needs to be true, and it needs to hold a reader the way only a real story can.
Most people think a memoir means writing down everything that happened, in order. That’s a transcript, and it puts readers to sleep—even the ones who loved you. A memoir has a spine: a question the life answers. Finding that spine is where the work begins.
Some stories can’t wait for a perfect draft
If the person whose story this is happens to be older, or unwell, the first thing we do isn’t write. It’s record.
We sit down and capture the voice—the actual sound of them telling it, in their own words, at their own pace. The craft can come later. A voice can’t. Once it’s gone, no writer on earth can bring it back, and the families who wish they’d started sooner never wish the opposite.
If that’s where you are, tell me on the first call. We’ll move capture to the front of the line and build the book around what we save.
The memoirs I build
Not every life wants the same kind of book. Some want the whole sweep; some want one unforgettable chapter held up to the light. Here’s a sample of the forms I work from. We’ll find the one that fits the story and the family together.
The whole life, beginning to end, told in scenes instead of a timeline. For the family that wants the record entire.
Eight to fifteen hard-won lessons, each one carried by the story that earned it. The fastest to build, and the one grandchildren actually read cover to cover.
Not one life—the line. The thread that runs from your grandparents to your grandchildren, and how each generation bent it. The answer to “how did we get here?”
For when the family says, “We don’t want a book about Dad—we want Dad.” Shaped from recorded sessions so the book sounds exactly like him, because every word is his.
One chapter of a life told at full depth. The war years. The company. The marriage that made you. One bounded story with real stakes. The shape most published memoirs take.
A real question frames the whole book. A box in the attic. A father you never knew. A trip back to the old country. The reader follows along as you find out, in the order you found it.
Six of the eight forms I work from. There are two more for the stories that need them: a portrait built from facets, and a braided memoir that runs two timelines against each other. We’ll know which one is yours within a conversation or two.
For the family, or for the world?
Some of these books are private, printed for the family, the grandchildren, the people who already love the person at the center. No agent, no bookstore, no reviews. Just the truth, beautifully kept.
Others are aimed at readers who’ve never met you, the kind of memoir that earns a place in a bookstore. The two call for different choices about length, shape, and how much of the world we build on the page. We decide which one you’re making early, because it changes nearly everything that follows.
How a memoir gets built
Capture
We start by recording. I interview the subject across the eras and turning points that matter, and we save the voice telling it, raw material first, before a single chapter takes shape. For an older or ailing subject, this comes first, full stop.
Shape
From the sessions, I find the spine (the question the life answers) and build the structure around it. You approve the shape before any chapter gets written, so we’re never deep into a draft that’s built wrong.
Write
I write the book in the subject’s voice, scene by scene, on the structure we agreed to. You read as we go. Memories surface mid-project that we couldn’t have planned for, and the good ones get woven in.
Edit & Print
I take the draft through a line-by-line edit, then guide the rest: photos, cover, and whether you’re printing a private run for the family or publishing for a wider readership. You end up with a finished book in hand, not a folder of recordings.
How I work
Confidential
What gets shared in these rooms stays in these rooms. Memoir work goes to tender places: the failures, the regrets, the things never said out loud. Everything you tell me stays between us unless you decide otherwise.
Gentle
I ask carefully and I listen more than I talk. The hardest stories often turn out to be the ones the book most needs, and we get to them at your pace—never before you’re ready, and never in a way that feels like an interrogation.
Honest
A memoir that hides every flaw reads like a eulogy, and nobody believes a eulogy. The most moving books are the honest ones. I’ll gently push for the truth that makes the person real, and you’ll always have the final say on what stays in.
Timeline & investment
They run longer than a business book because the material is deeper, the interviews more involved, and the shaping more delicate. After our first conversation, once I understand the scope of the life and the kind of book you want, I’ll give you a real figure. If the clock is a factor, we can start with a focused capture phase right away.
Things you may want to know
How long does a memoir take?
What if the person whose story it is, is elderly or ill?
Who decides what goes in the book?
Does it have to include the hard parts?
Can it be just for my family, not published?
When I can’t fully remember a conversation, can we still write the scene?
Tell me about your story
One conversation is all it takes to find the shape that fits a life.
Tell Me About Your Story
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