Hello everyone I'm new here. I'm in the process of writing a memoir. It started out just as therapy for me, but I'm a decent writer and it's turning out rather good. (In my opinion). I have it saved on as a document on my phone right now. I'm currently only 4 chapters in and I'm already thinking about sharing it with the world. I just don't know a thing about publishing. Where do I start? First of all I wanna find someone who can critique my work, as I've never shared it with anyone before and I don't really know if I'm editing it correctly or if other people would find my content interesting. Although I feel that they would because it is a very unique and controversial subject matter.
Welcome, greetings, and salutations to the forum, sirette. You should be able to get your story seen, once you have completed the posting rules for the Workshop, that are located in your PM. It is fairly easy to meet those requirements. Once you have, you can post a bit of your story, and you will get feedback from the community. Good luck with your works, and I will C-ya around.
Memoirs are extremely difficult to get published. There's just not much of a market for them unless you're a known commodity (celebrity) with a high profile. There are probably a few agents that rep memoirs but not many. I think they fall partially under the non-fiction model, which basically means that the onus is on the writer to provide their own market and prove that a readership exists, whereas fiction can slot into an established genres like horror, romance, sci-fi, etc.... I might be wrong about that, but if you were writing non-fiction--say a book about gardening--you would have to prove to publishers that people are willing to buy your book. Usually you would do that with an online presence. A successful blog of twitter feed with thousands of followers for example. Not sure if memoirs work the same way but I'd bet there's some overlap.
I'm not really sure if I would categorize it as a memoir. it's more like a novel written in first person narrative, but it is practically a story of my life from my teenage years until now about the tragic events that led me into who I am today. I was originally writing it for therapy for myself, but I think many others could relate to my story It's about a real life problem that's so controversial many people don't talk about it. I'm just completely new to writing. I've never taken any creative writing classes so I really don't think I'm qualified to give anyone else constructive criticism, as is required to post your writing on here. I just need some pointers I guess.
If it's an interesting story written well, it can sell, but it's an uphill fight, as Homer wisely noted. Troll gave you excellent advice. I would recommend looking into self-publishing through Amazon/Createspace.
You'll be fine. Critiques are better from a reader's standpoint than a writer's anyway. And the best way to get pointers is to have your own work critiqued. Beyond that, the only advice you'll receive will be noncontextual. As for the memoir/novel thing it's either one or the other. Sounds like you're doing a novel... even if it's your life story it will flow better in a narrative form. And you can make things up! It's win win...
