Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Respect for Others’ Privacy in Your Memoir

Consider other people’s privacy when writing your memoir, but ultimately tell the story you need to tell.
Respect for Others’ Privacy in Your Memoir
As you write your memoir, you’re likely to periodically make choices about how much to reveal about yourself. That part’s easy: do whatever’s comfortable for you, because you’re the owner of your story. The harder question is how much to reveal about the other people in your life. You do not own their story in the same way that you own yours. Your friends and relatives may never forgive you for sharing what you know about them.
“Don’t worry about that problem in advance,” advises William Zinsser in his essay, “How to Write a Memoir,” which we’ve been discussing here. “Your first job is to get your story down as you remember it…Say what you want to say, freely and honestly, and finish the job. Then take up the privacy issue. If you wrote your family history only for your family, there’s no legal or ethical need to show it to anyone else. But if you have in mind a broader audience—a mailing to friends or a possible book—you may want to show your relatives the pages in which they are mentioned. That’s a basic courtesy; nobody wants to be surprised in print. It also gives them their moment to ask you to take certain passages out—which you may or may not agree to do.”
Remember that, ultimately, this is your story. Zinsser continues, “You’re the one who has done all the work. If your sister has a problem with your memoir, she can write her own memoir, and it will be just as valid as yours; nobody has a monopoly on the shared past. Some of your relatives will wish you hadn’t said some of the things you said, especially if you reveal various family traits that are less than lovable. But I believe that at some level most families want to have a record left of their effort to be a family, however flawed that effort was, and they will give you their blessing and will thank you for taking on the job—if you do it honestly and not for the wrong reasons.”
The major “wrong reasons” Zinsser mentions are 1) whining in self-pity in order to feed your own need for attention; 2) including sordid details in an attempt to make your book more marketable because of the titillation factor; and 3) using your memoir to settle a score. Zinsser cautions memoir writers not to simply air old grievances. However, he concludes, “if you make an honest transaction with your own humanity and with the humanity of the people who crossed your life, no matter how much pain they caused you or you caused them, readers will connect with your journey.”

As you write your memoir, you’re likely to periodically make choices about how much to reveal about yourself. That part’s easy: do whatever’s comfortable for you, because you’re the owner of your story. The harder question is how much to reveal about the other people in your life. You do not own their story in the same way that you own yours. Your friends and relatives may never forgive you for sharing what you know about them.

“Don’t worry about that problem in advance,” advises William Zinsser in his essay, “How to Write a Memoir,” which we’ve been discussing here. “Your first job is to get your story down as you remember it…Say what you want to say, freely and honestly, and finish the job. Then take up the privacy issue. If you wrote your family history only for your family, there’s no legal or ethical need to show it to anyone else. But if you have in mind a broader audience—a mailing to friends or a possible book—you may want to show your relatives the pages in which they are mentioned. That’s a basic courtesy; nobody wants to be surprised in print. It also gives them their moment to ask you to take certain passages out—which you may or may not agree to do.”

Remember that, ultimately, this is your story. Zinsser continues, “You’re the one who has done all the work. If your sister has a problem with your memoir, she can write her own memoir, and it will be just as valid as yours; nobody has a monopoly on the shared past. Some of your relatives will wish you hadn’t said some of the things you said, especially if you reveal various family traits that are less than lovable. But I believe that at some level most families want to have a record left of their effort to be a family, however flawed that effort was, and they will give you their blessing and will thank you for taking on the job—if you do it honestly and not for the wrong reasons.”

The major “wrong reasons” Zinsser mentions are 1) whining in self-pity in order to feed your own need for attention; 2) including sordid details in an attempt to make your book more marketable because of the titillation factor; and 3) using your memoir to settle a score. Zinsser cautions memoir writers not to simply air old grievances. However, he concludes, “if you make an honest transaction with your own humanity and with the humanity of the people who crossed your life, no matter how much pain they caused you or you caused them, readers will connect with your journey.”

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Then just set up a chapter and start writing your memoir. Don’t worry about rules. There are no rules to writing your memoir; there are only trends. These trends are based on techniques and features identified in current top-selling memoirs. At best, they’re the flavor of the month. If you’re capturing your life in print for your family, for your own gratification or to inspire readers, rather than aiming to set off Hollywood screenplay bidding wars, these trends don’t even apply to you. You’ll write the memoir that suits you best, and it will be timeless, not trend-driven.There are no rules, but there are four steps:

1. Theme/framework
2. Writing
3. Editing/polishing
4. Self-publishing

You’ve researched this, too, and you’ve been shocked at the price for getting help with any one of those steps, much less all four. That’s because most memoir sites promise to commercialize your work. They’ll follow a formula based on current memoir trends, because they want to convince you that they can turn your memoir into a best-seller. These sites overwhelm you with unnecessary information not to help you, the memoir author, but to address Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithms so they can sell more.

That’s not what we do at Write My Memoirs. Our small community of coaches, writers and editors are every bit as skilled as any you’ll find, and we charge appropriately for their expertise and the time they’ll spend helping you craft a compelling, enjoyable read. But you won’t pay an upcharge for other websites’ commercialization, the marketing that follows, and the pages of intimidating “advice.” You can sell your book if you like—we have ISBNs available for you—but our organic process of capturing your story takes a noncommercial path.

If you want help with any or all of the four steps above, choose from our services or save money by selecting one of our packages. If you’d like to talk about what’s right for you, schedule a call. One year from now, you can be holding your published memoir in your hand. And at that point, it will be a big deal!

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