If you are a memoirist or an essayist, you can take your desire and ability to write personal stories and put it to use in reported articles. Even if you don’t usually write pieces based on your life experiences, using personal anecdotes and vignettes can provide a powerful way to produce articles for publication.
I have used experiences and issues from my life in articles numerous time with great success. For example, I included my concerns about my son’s and daughter’s experiences in competitive activities, like ice skating and dance, to write a regional magazine piece about the positive and negative effects of competition on youth. I addressed the issues by interviewing coaches and psychologists. I also wrote a regional magazine article called “The Ins and Outs of Changing Schools.” This piece stemmed from my concerns about how often my two children had changed schools. I interviewed psychologists and wove our personal story into the piece. (The article won an award!)
You can write about what you know—and don’t know—in the same manner.
Weave your story into your article. I’ve done this most successfully by including an anecdote or vignette based on personal experience into the lead or first paragraph of the piece. I then mention some of my own issues or concerns as I posed solutions or tips from both the expert and myself. I often end the article with a personal story as well.
If you want to learn more about how to write articles based on your life experiences for publication, join the Nonfiction Writers’ University (NFWU).
The next NFWU event, which takes place on May 4, features journalist, author and memoir expert Marion Roach. (Learn more
here.) Previous NFWU member challenges have included detailed instructions and tips on how to conduct interviews and write magazine articles and query letters. These homework assignments, as well as related events, are archived in the NFWU for members to access at any time. To find out more about or join the NFWU,
click here.
The NFWU contains a wealth of information about achieving your nonfiction writing and publishing goals in general.
As a member, you receive 27 months of NFWU challenges, assignments, and coaching and educational-event recordings with a variety of experts in the field as well as introductory gifts worth more than $150. Plus, each month you’ll have access to live coaching and events! Members also get additional bonuses during the year.
Join now to receive two bonuses courses, How to Write a Short Book Fast and High Performance Writer! Click here to learn more and join.
Nina Amir, the bestselling author of How to Blog a Book and The Author Training Manual, is a speaker, a blogger, and an author, book, blog-to-book, and high-performance coach. Known as the Inspiration to Creation Coach, she helps creative people combine their passion and purpose so they move from idea to inspired action and positively and meaningfully impact the world as writers, bloggers, authorpreneurs, and blogpreneurs. Some of Nina’s clients have sold 300,000+ copies of their books, landed deals with major publishing houses and created thriving businesses around their books. She is the founder of National Nonfiction Writing Month, National Book Blogging Month, and the Nonfiction Writers’ University. As a hybrid author she has published 15 books and had as many as four books on the Amazon Top 100 list at the same time.