How It Works

Once you've communicated that you're interested in writing your memoir through the projected, we'll set up a brief 30-45 minute meeting. In this meeting we will: -Review consent forms together (you do not have to sign anything at this meeting.) -We'll talk about your goals for your memoir, if you have any initial ideas about how you want it to look, address any concerns you have and we'll discuss the different format styles. -We'll discuss our schedules and address any accommodation needs. -We'll schedule a follow up

The first draft you will receive will be a rough draft--it won't be pretty. All that I want from you when you review it, is to confirm the information is correct and identify anything you're wanting to add/is missing, or if you want something out. Spelling, grammar, name changes are all done after the final draft is complete and in our editor's possession.

At this step, while your book is with our editor, we will need to come up with a book title and design a cover. Ideally, this is something that you decide. The title is typically 5 words or less and is something that you feel captures the essence of your story. Titles from the first collection include: "Rising From The Ashes", "Unbroken & Still Relentless", and "she". The cover can vary. You're welcome to draw your own cover, use photographs or a template. I'm also a visual artist, and would be happy to create the cover based on an image in your head. The cover and any photographs that will be included in the book will be printed in colour.

I'll contact you for our follow up and if you decide that you want to go ahead with the project, you'll need to sign the consent forms and then we will schedule your first interview.

Once we've got a rough idea of what the memoir is going to be like, we will continue conducting interviews to start flushing out the details. This is a very important part and why interviews are essential--as a ghost writer, I need to be able to capture your voice. This part is also very important because we start diving into the real heart of the book. Getting the facts of the story is just the beginning, in this part, we will be exploring your emotional memory, the impact of each story on your life, and exploring things in more detail. This process will be the longest part of the journey we're on together. This might be a good time for us to go through old photographs if you're wanting to include any photos in your book (a max of 10.) Looking through photos can help you remember more details and lead to more stories. I consider it an honour to look through your photos with you and I'm happy to do that even if you don't want photos included. If you find it helpful to talk and look through pictures, we will do that. I'll have a lot of questions to tease out the finer details and will need clarification on various things. If you're comfortable with it, we can communicate via text, phone and/or email to answer quick questions that may come up as I work on the draft.

Once our editor has finished and we've formatted the book, you will have an opportunity to review it for a final time.

The interview process is very important and not one that I like to rush. It takes time for people to get comfortable talking to a potential stranger about the most personal details of your life. The length of the interviews varies for each person but will never exceed two hours. Typically, interviews are 45 minutes to 1.5 hours long. Ideally, we will meet once a week to conduct these interviews. Once I have sufficient information to work with, I will begin the "skeleton" draft of your book.

We'll go through as many drafts as it takes until your memoir looks the way you want it to. I want you to be happy with the result, so if there's anything about it that you don't like, we will fix it until you do. Typically, I will send you a chapter at a time for review so as to keep it from being too overwhelming. Eventually though, you will be given the entire memoir to read through and provide feedback on. Once you're happy with the draft, we'll move onto the next stage and I will pass it on to our editor. Name changes are not made until this last stage. I make a legend of the names and what names they've been changed to and then part of the editor's job is to ensure all the names have been changed correctly.

Once you've approved the final version, I send the book off to the printers. I like to confirm and provide the opportunity to change your mind regarding being included in the memoir collection for the public. Whether you initially wanted to be a part of it or not, let me know what you would like to do in case you've changed your mind. If you do choose to have your memoir included in the collection, we will be having a book launch once the collection has been published. Your attendance at the launch is not mandatory, but we would love to have you there to do a reading and/or talk about your experience in the project. Transportation to and from the event will be arranged at no expense to you.