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memoir motivation

Here’s the One Word Holding You Back from Writing or Completing Your Memoir—

by
Young woman hiding her face behind a black trash bag

And one sentence that will motivate you to start again.

Doubts are familiar territory to memoir authors, and they can occur at any and all points in the process. You’re either hoping to start writing your memoir, in the middle of writing it, or finished and maybe in the editing, publishing or marketing stage. Even if you’re in that final phase, you may be doubting whether anyone will want to read your story, and that uncertainty and insecurity can stop you in your tracks and keep you from completing your memoir. I am going to share the secret sentence that will motivate you to continue, and I’ll try to get you over the one word holding you back from connecting your memoir to readers. Just one word has the power to freeze you mid-project.

Alone or Not?

We live our lives in isolation in the sense that we know only our own truth. Our reality is ours alone; each of us has a separate and distinct existence with experiences that are unique because they happen in a moment at a location with specific people and, most of all, to that one human that we know as “me.”

But how many people are out there in the world? More than 8 billion. They’re all human, all somewhere between birth and death, many living under conditions similar to yours. There’s no reason to feel small; we each account for one important person in that sea of humanity. But there is a reason to pause and think about our uniqueness.

The Birthday Problem

A little math. I’m no math whiz and don’t understand why what I’m about to tell you is true, so hang in there with me. What’s referred to as the “birthday problem” illustrates how coincidences are more likely than we intuitively expect. This first part is easy math: with 365 days in the year, the chances are only 1 in 365 that a random person you meet shares your birthday. And yet it takes only 23 random people in a room to increase those odds to 50 percent that two will have the same birthday. It’s a paradox involving probability and various mathematical concepts too advanced for my little brain. But there it is, just 23 people for it to be 50/50 that you might run into someone with your birthday.

With that in mind, think about whatever is your biggest reveal in your memoir. Is that what’s making you doubt the desirability of your story? It may be a family secret or an avoidable mistake or an embarrassing medical condition. Perhaps your book is the first time you’ve shared your story with anyone, much less everyone. Now think of the 8 billion people and the birthday paradox. Certainly someone out there has been through what you’ve been through.

And that relatability is one reason you’re writing the memoir, right? Because somewhere in your mind you know that people will not only empathize but relate to the way you’ve faced your challenges. That’s the whole point for some memoir authors: to help the next person facing the same difficulties.

Finally, the Reveal

So the sentence that will motivate you to keep writing is this: You are not unique. You are not alone in this. Other people recognize your struggles. They’ve experienced them or know someone who has. And the word that will free you if you neutralize it is: Shame. There is no shame in however you handled a situation. There is no shame in the fact that something terrible happened to you or someone did something offensive to you.

Without making sweeping generalizations, I think the shame can play out differently for men as compared with women. Jordan Ritter Conn’s new book, American Men, follows the stories of four men who hadn’t previously let their guard down to talk about their challenges. Conn concludes that men don’t like feeling, much less showing, vulnerability. They compartmentalize, shove thoughts away from their conscious thinking, never talk about aspects of themselves even to the people they love most. Back to coincidences, actor Andrew McCarthy also has a new book—Who Needs Friends: An Unscientific Examination of Male Friendship Across America—that tackles more or less the same topic.

Women have been conditioned to feel ashamed of all sorts of things. If they were sexually assaulted, it can become a big secret and they even can feel responsible for causing the crime by, for example, letting a man in their house. They can feel ashamed of sexual feelings of any variety, or of having ambition, failing as a mother, succeeding in a nontraditional industry, and on and on. Men can have shame around these same issues, and with their fear of vulnerability it can be doubly tough to get past the shame.

In Good Company

Writing a memoir is therapy. It helps you cut through shame. It gets you comfortable with feeling vulnerable. And when readers assure you that you’re not unique in the experiences you describe, you’ll feel a freedom that will be worth every minute you’ve spent writing.

 

Why Do People Write Memoirs?

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Person leaving footprints in the sand on a beach

Facebook has several memoir groups, and on one of them a member posted the question, “What is the primary reason for writing your memoir?” Quite a few people responded in the comments.

Memoir as a Family Legacy

Some reflected the thoughts of many of our Write My Memoirs members—to write a memoir, as one commenter put it, simply for “posterity.” Another person hoped her memoir would become a “family heirloom.” She noted, “If I never amass a fortune to bequeath, at least I will be able to share my story.” Similarly, someone said she was writing her memoir “for my kids and grandkids to have a record of me should they someday want to read it.”

Memoir to Honor Someone Close

Some memoirs have the theme of capturing the life of someone who had a significant impact on the memoir author. The memoirist may intend to honor a parent, mourn a child who died young, or maybe relate the story of a great friendship or marriage.

In the comments on the Facebook post, someone wrote about writing her memoir to bring awareness to deaths from Agent Orange. Her husband was a sailor in the US Navy who died from the effects of the chemical. Another said her memoir commemorated the short life of her sister, who died at 19, and someone else said she was documenting all the good advice from her mother.

Memoir to Serve as a Note of Caution

One typical reason people write memoirs is to help readers learn from the author’s mistakes or warn them about dangers the author encountered. A number of responses fell along this theme.

One commenter said she was writing her memoir to help people who have been shunned by their families. Her family shunned her after she left what she calls a religious cult. Another person wanted to caution people about “medical gaslighting” and the medical community not believing you when you describe symptoms. Yet another person had addicts for parents and crafted her memoir to offer ways to break the cycle of addiction.

Memoir to Heal, Share and Reflect

Many lives are infused with humor and interesting anecdotes, and if you’re sharing those stories you might as well compile them into a memoir. One commenter had 30 snippets of stories she’d written over the years, so she went through them and laced them together. Another wanted to relate her quirky tales from being a lesbian southern belle. One said he simply wanted “to tell the world my fascinating story,” while another wanted to write about his “unusual existence.”

One commenter wanted to write her memoir before it was too late. “I feel the need to tell my story for future generations,” she said. “As a child during the Cold War, I was part of an exodus of unaccompanied children from Cuba fleeing Communism….We are elderly now. If we don’t write about it our stories will die with us.”

A couple of commenters mentioned writing as a way to heal; memoirs are well known to help people heal from trauma or work through grief. One commenter said she was motivated “for self-healing and to share life experiences.” Another said sharing her life story was “nothing short of transformation, for myself and others.”

For some people, writing a book is a goal. One commenter said she wrote her memoir “to prove I could do it. I first dreamt about publishing a book when I was a little girl.”

And for people who are natural writers, a memoir is an obvious task. “I write because writers can’t not write,” one commenter remarked. “And I write my story because I believe we all have stories that matter.” At Write My Memoirs, we agree with that!

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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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