I have always loved memoirs. I like personal stories that share insight into the different ways that people live. Memoirs work better for me than biographies or autobiographies because they are more poetic and usually more personal. I don’t care about the facts and stats of someone’s life; I care about their thoughts and passions. Memoirs give me insight into those things. Great memoirs that really resonate with me also give me new insight into myself.
One memoir writer that I just recently discovered is Sue William Silverman. Her first memoir, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, is the story of her years growing up in a childhood where she experienced sexual abuse. Her second memoir, Love Sick, is about her struggle with sex addiction which resulted from this abuse. I haven’t read her first book yet but recently finished Love Sick and definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the topics of abuse, addiction and relationships.
But what does this have to do with writing? Well, Silverman’s most recent book is all about the art of writing a memoir. The book is called Fearless Confessions and it looks like it’s a great book for people who are interested in learning to write their own memoirs but who aren’t quite sure how to go about it (or who simply need a bit of inspiration for that). I haven’t actually read the book yet but I’m awaiting my copy of it in the mail and will return here with a full review once I’ve read it.
The reason that I wanted to bring it up now, though, is because Silverman is currently in the midst of a blog tour. Fearless Confessions is being reviewed, discussed and given away on different blogs all throughout the month. I love following blog tours and I think that this memoir looks really good so I wanted to share that information with others. The details for that tour are here. If you check it out, do come back and let me know what you think!

August 6th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
“it looks like it’s a great book for people who are interested in learning to write their own memoirs but who aren’t quite sure how to go about it (or who simply need a bit of inspiration for that).”
Thanks for sharing this bit I will be looking into buying this book because I have been searching and wondering how to go about or even begin to write a memoir. I am in the process ha ha I have approximately 40K words of childhood memories written out and then I stopped because I just don’t know where to go from here.
Have a wonderful weekend!
@jackie - Hope the book helps you to get those thoughts organized. Keep me posted on how your memoir comes along!
August 16th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
[...] presents Book for Memoir Writers: Fearless Confessions posted at Real Words, saying, “Info on a book about memoir writing from an author with two [...]