Introducing: Two-Hour Memoir Mentorship

When I started writing An Obesity of Grief in 2008, I had no direction, only a vague idea of the story I wanted to tell. I became frustrated when, after two years of writing, I still hadn’t identified a unifying theme, so I put it away, went to graduate school, and didn’t pick it up again until the start of the pandemic in 2020.

I wish I’d sought out a writing mentor, although I don’t know if there was such a thing fifteen years ago. So, like the saying, “Write the book you want to read,” I am offering the service I needed when I started writing my book!

I came up with the idea for Two-Hour Memoir Mentorship while working with incarcerated writers. As a writing mentor, I helped each of my mentees develop their stories by listening, reading, editing, and commenting, and what I realized is that our interactions—in total—added up to be about two hours per individual.

Two hours doesn’t sound like a lot of time to begin or restart what can feel like an overwhelming project, but I guarantee that by talking out your ideas with me and writing those first pages for my feedback, you will have a better sense of your story’s direction when our time is up.

Two-Hour Memoir Mentorship

Top reasons why people hesitate to write personal essays and/or memoir: 

• “My story’s boring; no one will be interested.”
• “My story’s too complicated; I don’t know how I’d break it down into manageable pieces.”
• “I’m afraid of bringing up memories that make me sad.”
• “What if my family reads it? I don’t want to make anyone angry with me.”
• “I’m not a writer.”

If you’re considering writing a memoir or a personal essay, I can help you begin. With more than 25 years of experience as a writer, editor, and writing mentor, I can help you explore your story and give you direction. (Learn more about my resume at https://zenbaglady.com/about/)

My Two-Hour Memoir Mentorship program can help you get started, get unstuck, or just explore what story or stories you want to tell. Broken up any way that suits your time and project, you’ll get two total hours of discussion, general editing, and feedback. You might decide you want to talk about your idea for two hours, or maybe you want to talk for 15 minutes, then send me up to 10 double-spaced pages of writing for edits and comments, talk for another 15 minutes, and send me your revised pages for final edits and comments.

You don’t have to decide how to use your two hours ahead of time. We’ll start with a free email consultation in which you fill out a short questionnaire and send it back to me. After you receive my response, and you decide you’d like to continue, we will decide together how your two hours can be spent.

Each Two-Hour Memoir Mentorship is $100, to be paid after our initial email consultation. And, of course, you can buy additional Two-Hour Memoir Mentorships as needed, or gift a Two-Hour Memoir Mentorship to someone whose story you believe in and want to support!

For more information, or if you’d like to fill out a questionnaire, send me an email at lynn.haraldson@gmail.com.

I look forward to working with you and helping you bring your story to life!