The Importance of Choosing

December 20, 2021 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / 2 Comments

With the New Year around the corner, many of us are excited to start new writing projects or dive into old ones. If you have multiple writing projects on your plate, it can be challenging to decide where to spend your precious time and energy. How to Focus Your Writing Time and Energy That can be even harder if you’ve been working on your memoir for a long time. Stories grow and change over time, and sometimes we need to let go of an outdated vision in order to make way for a new one. Other times, the beating heart of the project is still there, waiting for us. The trick is in consciously deciding. Oftentimes, we put off choosing in a misguided attempt at keeping ourselves safe. But that just keeps us stuck. And it keeps our dreams on the back burner. So […]

What are You Really Writing About?

November 9, 2021 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / 2 Comments

What is Your Memoir Really About? With memoir, it can take some digging to get to the heart of what we’re really writing about. There’s the story of what happened, and then there’s the meaning we’ve attached to it. In memoir, it’s not enough to tell us what happened—we need to know what that event meant to you. To help with that clarity, here’s an exercise I did with a recent class at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. “Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand. What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the larger sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.” Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story […]

Writer’s Block? Try This

October 8, 2021 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

In my Memoir Mastery course and Mastermind workshop group, we’ve spent the past month talking about structure. There’s the craft and technique of writing memoir and then there’s the pulling together of all the pieces. That can be daunting with a book length project. It can be easy to fall into overwhelm. Memoir Writing Tips Today I’d like to invite you to bring curiosity to your project. To approach your memoir with inquiry instead of overwhelm. Instead of shutting down into “I don’t know how,” try opening into inquiry: “How can I?” This can be a powerful reframe, helping us write from an open and expansive place vs. a stressed and constricted one. Here’s an example of how this played out for me this week: For the past month or so, I’ve been circling around a structural problem with my current memoir. Forcing […]

Reboot Your Memoir

May 7, 2021 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

Community and Support for Your Memoir One of my big takeaways from the pandemic is the importance of community, especially for us writers. Today, I’m excited to share two offerings that have come out of this challenging year. First up is Reboot Your Memoir, a 4-week class I’m offering this June to help you reboot and reinvigorate your memoir. (Keep reading for more info). I’ll also be offering a beautiful new Writer’s Circle community for accountability and support designed to support the serious writer. Priority will be given to Memoir Mastery alumni, and we’ll start in July. More info coming soon! Reboot Your Memoir Writing your memoir can be an especially rewarding journey. At times, it can also be quite challenging. On bad days, it can feel like you’re shooting at a moving target. There’s a reason so many memoirists get stuck, particularly once the initial […]

Memoir Mastery: How to Write a Compelling Memoir

November 13, 2020 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

How to Write a Memoir As a writer, teacher and long-time memoir fan, I’ve found that writing your story can be an incredibly rewarding journey. It can also be quite challenging. And trying to write a memoir without support can feel like wrestling an octopus. Where do you start? How do you narrow down your story, much less shape it? What do you do when the initial excitement wears off and you find yourself in the mucky middle? And how do you navigate the emotional terrain of delving into the heart of your life experiences? That’s why I created my Memoir Mastery course. For years, I grappled with the disconnect between writing a short piece and completing a full-length manuscript. Writing a book was much more complex, and my MFA program taught us how to write short pieces, not book-length manuscripts. Which meant […]

Get that Book Written

January 8, 2020 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

How are your New Year’s resolutions coming? Are you harnessing the energy of the New Year to write a book? Are you using it to get started on (or heck, restart) your memoir or nonfiction book?If not, what are you missing? Do you need a better system? Accountability? Support? The Real Reason People Hire a Writing Coach I’ll be honest with you—the real reason people hire me is for accountability, support and community. Most of us know already know what we should be doing, as well as how to go about it (i.e.: write every day, or as often as we can). If we need more info, we can find it online. There’s a zillion writing experts out there, and most of us offer plenty of tips, tricks and free advice. When people come to me, they’re looking for a clear plan and […]

How to Write a Book in 10 Simple Steps

December 5, 2019 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

How to Write Your Book in 10 Simple Steps

How to Write a Book in 10 Simple Steps Always wanted to write a nonfiction book? This guide will show you how write a book in 10 simple steps so that you can get those ideas out of your head and onto the page. Taking the time to work through these steps will save you tons of time, money and energy as well as keep you from having to do unnecessary rewrites. STEP 1: How to Clarify Your Book’s Audience, Purpose and Goals A. Let’s start by getting clear on your book’s purpose. Grab a pen and paper and jot down your answers to the following questions. Please don’t edit yourself. What’s the purpose of your book? Perhaps it’s to help heath-care professionals navigate the increasingly-high level of bureaucracy in their office. Or maybe you want to teach stay-at-home moms how to […]

Does This Sound Familiar? (+ free training 9/18)

September 11, 2019 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

Something I often talk about with my clients is our tendency to move the goal post (i.e.: expanding the scope of a writing project by making it longer, fancier or more complicated than it needs to be). Sound familiar? (I do it, too.) We’re human, after all, and this is one the primary ways the inner critic shows up, by catapulting us into fear and overwhelm. Which is what happened to two of my clients this week. M. and K. are both fabulous women, strong writers and successful business owners writing books on their topic of expertise. Intimidated by the vastness of the project before them, both started piling more to-dos on their writing plate. Once I helped them see how they were moving the goal post, we could get back on track and start moving forward, one manageable step at a time. […]

When (and How) to Ask for Feedback on Your Writing

July 31, 2019 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

As I mentioned in my last post, sharing your writing too early (or sharing it with the wrong people), is one of the fastest paths to writer’s block. Lord knows I’ve been there myself, as well as coached plenty of writers back from the brink of despair caused by well-meaning (but unhelpful) feedback. Along the way, I’ve come up with the following process for protecting yourself and your writing. Stage 1: Shitty First Draft When your writing is new (and still vulnerable), the last thing you want to do is ask for detailed feedback. Why? Because you’re just getting your ideas down on the page at this point—you’re still playing, still exploring. Chances are, you don’t even fully know what you have quite yet. The writing is changing and growing, and so are you. That’s why the only kind of feedback I recommend […]

15 Ways to Get Unstuck and Reboot Your Writing Project

August 20, 2018 / Tanja Pajevic / blog / No Comments

In our last post, we discussed whether or not to keep going with your current writing project. Now let’s talk about the logistical pieces involved in getting unstuck and rebooting your writing project. Here are about 15 ways to help you move forward—one compassionate step at a time. 15 Ways to Get Unstuck and Reboot Your Writing Project Schedule a set time to restart your project and put it in your planner. If this feels too big, start with 5 or 10 minutes. Treat this as a sacred date with yourself. It is. Start with one easy, small goal. Start with 5 minutes if you’re drowning in overwhelm. Use that first writer’s date to pull out your writing and leaf through it, familiarizing yourself with your project. If you’re ready to start with something bigger, start with 15 or 30 minutes. If the […]

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