The Journey of Memoir Starts with You
When you decide to write a memoir, you begin a journey into the heart of who you are. You draw upon memories, desires, imagination, and story writing techniques to paint a picture of your life, or a portion of your life. You start down the long and winding path toward becoming a writer, and eventually a published author. Published author—yes! This is the goal of most memoir writers. You may want to learn from investigating your story, or even settle some old scores (internally and externally. But mostly, as a memoirist, you want to share your wisdom and what you learned in your life—if only you can get it done! That is the challenge.
For fifteen years, starting in 2012, Brooke and Linda Joy collaborated to teach Write Your Memoir in Six Months, a biannual memoir intensive, and spearheaded many shorter courses about memoir, including their "What Makes a Bestselling Memoir" series, Mastering Memoir, Mastering Structure, and others. In 2026, Linda Joy and Brooke decided to focus individually on their own communities—Linda Joy on National Association of Memoir Writers and Brooke on Memoir Nation.
Brooke will teach Write Your Memoir in Six Months in the fall of 2026, enrolling ten memoir students. Linda Joy is offering various courses this year, largely focused on her new book, The Heart and Craft of Writing a Healing Memoir, which will be part of the Sibyl Writing Craft series through Sibylline Press, due to release in January 2027.
As coaches and writers ourselves, we know that good, consistent writing emerges and blossoms in an environment of structure, accountability, and encouragement. These are the cornerstones of Write Your Memoir in Six Months and every class we teach, collaboratively and individually. In Write Your Memoir in Six Months, you and a cohort of nine other memoirists will embark upon a journey together that will culminate in a draft of the book you’ve been wanting, needing, and longing to write. You will encounter three stages—the excitement of getting started; the muddy middle where you may encounter a few snarls and saboteurs; and then there’s the long-range view to the end, when you’re weaving all the pieces together and the finish line is in sight.
Here are the five things any memoirist needs for this journey:
Consistency—your body in front of the computer regularly.
Accountability—someone who’s expecting you to deliver on your commitment to yourself.
Goals—when you have goals, you’ll know when you reach them.
Guts—the sheer determination to write and write, consult, edit, rethink, and write some more.
Patience—it takes time, and so much patience, to write a book. But you can only do it one sentence at a time.
