The History of
Soleil Lifestory Network
helping people turn memories into memoirs
Everybody's got a story. Isn't it time you wrote yours?
In 1988, author Denis Ledoux began presenting a memoir-writing workshop which he called Turning Memories Into Memoirs. Funded by grants from the Maine Humanities Council over a period of two years, he refined the workshop and its support materials to be a consistently motivating and empowering experience that delivered the promise of its name. Turning Memories Into Memoirs® continues helped people of all ages and from a wide range of backgrounds to successfully write their personal and family lifestories and to do so in a timely manner.
In 1992, Denis took the obvious next step: to publish a book, Turning Memories Into Memoirs/A Handbook for Writing Lifestories, that brings the workshop experience to many more people than can travel to Maine to experience the workshop in person. The book has been in continuous publication since its first printing. It has been reviewed in many national publications and is used in workshops and classrooms across the English-speaking world.
By 1995, the success of Turning Memories Into Memoirs/A Handbook for Writing Lifetories led writers around the country to ask for workshops in their local areas and writing teachers to inquire about presenting the workshop themselves.
In 1996, Denis wrote a training manual that combined both the curriculum and the business end of presenting lifstory writing workshops. The first Affiliate Teachers signed on in May of that year. Since 1996, hundreds of teachers have come on board from not only the US and Canada, but Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Israel, Ireland, England, and South Africa.
In 1996 and 1997, Denis was a featured speaker at the national conventions of Creative Memories in Minnesota. From that experience of meeting memorybook enthusiasts who longed for guidance in writing around their photographs came the book The Photo Scribe / How to Write the Stories Behind Your Photographs. Using the same writing fundamentals and techniques outlined in Turning Memories Into Memoirs, The Photo Scribe makes lifestory writing a natural and accessible companion to scrapbook design. The Photo Scribe line became another suite of tools for teachers in their own communities to help individuals to preserve their stories.
Later (2001), Denis wrote the Photo Scribe Teaching Guide and Plan and made it available as part of the Photo Scribe Teacher Kit, expanding affiliated teachers' workshop offerings and rounding out their income mix.
In 2000, based on his continuing teaching experience and that of the Soleil Affiliates, Turning Memories® originator Denis Ledoux rewrote and expanded the training manual so that it consisted of a Curriculum Manual and a Presenter's Manual and included a useful CD of Publicity Templates.
Also in 2000, with the aim of helping teachers to raise the level of their success, Soleil Lifestory Network launched the teacher Certification program. At first, it consisted of attending the Turning Memories Into Memoirs® workshop and participating on an intensive 30-hour business and curriculum seminar.
By 2002, the seminar had proven pivotal to teachers who were experiencing increased confidence and speedier launch times in their independent practices. Its two components--the Business Supports Seminar (and the specially-written Personal History Practice Planning Manual) and the Curriculum Methods Seminar--were split from the Turning Memories® workshop and converted into Tele-classes. By allowing participants to accomplish hands-on work in their communities during the weeks between sessions, Tele-classes provide deeper training and the benefits of peer support and review.
In 2003, Denis wrote the Editor's Manual: Editing Prose as a Professional. It summarized his editing experience of many years and structured for teachers how they might go about adding editing to their memoir businesses. Unique in its genre, the Editor's Manual is an A to Z blueprint for establishing and maintaining a professional editing practice.
Today, Soleil Lifestory Network still offers to writers the help so many need to succeed at preserving their personal and family stories and to teachers of lifestory writing the support so necessary to quickly launch and effectively sustain a memoir-writing based business.
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