You’ve written, edited, illustrated, and introduced your memoir; now it is time to share it with the world!

Learning how to write memoirs is a great personal accomplishment, but most of us actually write in order to share with others. Getting a book of memoirs published can take years, yet for most people there is little or no indication whether people will read them. Remembers When – a place to share your memoirs – provides a virtual location where you can post your memoirs as you finish each one, and get feedback and encouragement from your family and friends right away.

After your Remembers When memoir site was set up (see Lesson 14), you received instructions on how to post your stories and photos. If you are missing your instructions, they are included as Remembers When Lesson 16 Worksheet: “Posting your memoirs.”

If you have decided to publish your memoirs in a different way, say to a blog or personal Web site, the general instructions may still be helpful, though specific directions will depend on your Internet host. Here are some key points to consider when choosing your memoir host.

1. Fully develop each memoir before you post it as we’ve discussed in lessons 1-15. Don’t write “live” in a blog; that makes it too easy to end up writing a journal instead of writing memoirs.
2. Assign tags to each post so people can self-sort your unordered posts. Remember your “categories” from the tabs in your notebook. The advantage of tags is that a story might have multiple categories.
3. Be sure you can receive feedback from people who read your memoirs, but don’t let the feedback show in your posts. Your memoirs are intensely about you. Comment fields are easy to hijack and become someone else’s story. If possible, use an email address for feedback.
4. Keep your introduction post first and only show one story at a time. Readers simply won’t scroll through pages of content to get from story to story.
5. Tell people! Send all your friends an email with the URL of your memoirs. Post the information on any other forums you participate in, like Twitter, Facebook, your church, your civic club, and even your office. It is fun to have people read what you’ve written, but they have to know where to find it.

And, most important of all: Get started writing that next memoir. Don’t let your one story languish all by itself in cyberspace.