Putting the pieces together (aka memoir ‘making’)

During the design phase of a personal history book, I often spread pages out all over my office floor to evaluate the book’s flow. Similarly, in the early stages of a memoir—when writings may consist of disjointed stories and short reflections without any narrative arc—I will spread pages out on the floor to look for patterns. Sure, you can do this on a computer, but I find this old-school approach much more efficient (and satisfying)!

It’s a rare individual who decides to write a memoir and knows out of the starting gate the path their writing will take. No, it’s much more common to decide to write a memoir…then to wander—to wander amidst memories, to wander on the page, even to wander in one’s commitment to the endeavor as a whole.

When coaching my memoir clients, it can often be helpful to talk about ‘making’ a memoir rather than ‘writing’ a memoir. It’s a small semantic shift, but an effective one. Why?

Well, whether we call it imposter syndrome or insecurity, many of us (me included) may find ourselves staring down a blank page and letting our imagination get the best of us—and who doesn’t have thoughts in those moments such as, 

• Why is this so easy for everyone else?

• I read ______’s memoir, and it was powerful and clear—they certainly weren’t all over the place like me!

• Where the hell is this writing GOING?!

But ______’s memoir—hell, every memoir written by a human—was in its early stages all over the place. Disjointed. Lacking a theme or narrative arc.

Every memoirist has wondered where the hell their writing is going.

How to gain clarity on your memoir’s theme

By holding as your goal the idea of ‘writing your memoir,’ you are focused too soon on the end goal, in my opinion. In reality, you are writing towards your memoir. So: Write, then write some more; read, analyze, tweak; then write some more. Then, as you begin to uncover patterns, you can MAKE something of what you have written.

As William Zinsser recommends in this brilliant piece (I recommend reading the whole thing if you have time), begin writing by following the memories as they come to you. Keep writing—short vignettes, slivers of memory, feelings from your childhood, favorite stories you’ve told a thousand times…

“Then, one day, take all your entries out of their folder and spread them on the floor…. Read them through and see what they tell you and what patterns emerge. They will tell you what your memoir is about and what it’s not about. They will tell you what’s primary and what’s secondary, what’s interesting and what’s not, what’s emotional, what’s important, what’s funny, what’s unusual, what’s worth pursing and expanding. You’ll begin to glimpse your story’s narrative shape and the road you want to take…. Then all you have to do is put the pieces together.”

Admittedly, “putting the pieces together’ may not be as simple as it sounds—but it is straightforward and fun, like putting a puzzle together: the puzzle of your life. Not your whole life, of course (a memoir isn’t an expansive tome covering every autobiographical tick on the timeline of your life), but the aspect of your life that has revealed itself in this exercise as holding meaning. 

So, begin writing towards your memoir. One day in the future, I promise, you’ll be able to make it out of the raw materials you’ve penned. 

“I’m scared.”

Before I had even met with a particular prospective client, he told me has was scared. 

He had filled out a form expressing interest in writing his life story. I replied to him within 24 hours, but did not hear back from him until about three months later. At that time, I urged him to set up a free phone consultation, so I could learn more about the project he envisioned. He scheduled that for a week later, then did not answer the phone when I called.

Then he emailed me: “I’m scared.”

That’s it—two words, but two words that hold so much weight.

Have you ever felt nervous about undertaking a life review project? Whether it’s a reflective memoir, an extensive family history, or just a few short stories encapsulating your favorite memories, starting any personal legacy journey can feel daunting.

Working with a personal historian or memoir coach can help alleviate many of the most common fears.

A few fears that my personal history clients have told me about over the years:

Fear that their family members won’t be interested in their life story.

This is one I hear ALL the time. And you know what? It’s often the case…for now. Your family members are living their lives, and likely taking for granted that you—their parent or grandparent—will always be there. But your stories are the gift they don’t yet know they want. Writing them now—even if it’s for them to appreciate later—is giving them an unequivocal gift.

Fear that they won’t remember enough to write a memoir.

Memories can be elusive. Especially for folks who don’t often share their stories around the dinner table or in a journal, accessing those memories might seem like an impossible task. But we professional personal historians and memoir coaches have plenty of tools and prompts at our disposal to help! Consider using this straightforward and EASY prompt that is guaranteed to yield surprising memories; use your senses to help you travel back in time; or consider picking up a journal designed especially to stir memories, like this one from Beth Kephart.

Fear that they will have a hard time managing their emotions when writing about traumatic life experiences.

It’s a common refrain that writing about hard times can be cathartic. It can, but as Lisa Cooper Ellison writes in this post, catharsis is just the beginning. Writing about trauma is generally only worthwhile—and valuable, even healing—when we can make some meaning out of it. “Writing well requires an open heart,” Ellison says. “That means you must relive a small portion of the incident as you write about it.” In other words, you will relive some trauma if you write about it—but while there’s no way around that, there are ways to cope with it. Limiting writing sessions that cover traumatic experiences to a half hour or so may help; allowing yourself to write from a distanced perspective will, too. Some people swear by writing groups or trustworthy readers to offer them support when writing about difficult experiences; and others find walking this path with a therapist is necessary. Make sure to include self-care as part of your writing ritual, and be gentle on yourself—if it feels too hard today, wait until tomorrow. Though it likely is a scary endeavor, writing into our trauma can be life-transforming for many. (And remember: You can do all of this just for YOU…write in a private journal, either as a first step, or as the thing itself; no one else need ever read your words.)

Fear about being vulnerable.

Exposing our emotions is scary. Remember that you are in control of what makes it into the final draft of your memoir, so if something feels too exposed, you can always cut it. But also remember that it’s our vulnerability, often, that proves most powerful for our readers. “Revealing oneself is an act of radical generosity: letting oneself be seen allows others to do the same,” Robin MacArthur writes. “And this vulnerability creates connection.”

Are you scared of taking the first step in preserving your life story for the next generation? Set up a free 20- to 30-minute consultation to see if working together can help settle those fears—and get you on the path to preservation.

Why you need emotional distance when writing memoir

Have you ever wondered if enough time has passed for you to begin writing about your life?

“When is the right time to start writing my memoir?” 

“Am I too young to write my life story?”

Questions such as these miss the mark. There isn’t a ‘right time’ or a ‘best age’ to right your memoir. Rather, I suggest considering how much emotional distance you have from the chapter of your life you want to write about. 

I have worked with people who are writing about their lives from a vantage point where they have a LOT of perspective—an 80-year-old capturing his young adult experiences, for instance. And I have coached memoirists who are writing about fresh trauma—a 30-year-old exploring how she ‘found herself’ amidst the dissolution of her marriage less than a year before, for example. Is one of these situations better than the other?

There’s almost certainly a happy medium: writing about your life when enough time has passed that you have significant insights and perspective, but when not so much time has passed that the experiences no longer seem relevant or retrievable in your memory. But how do you know when it’s that time?

2 questions to ask yourself to determine if now is the right time to write about your life

1. Do I have enough emotional distance to be able to write about my life with clarity and insight?

   “I had to step away from my own emotions, from my embarrassment and fear and pain, far enough to get a clear view,” Scott Nadelson writes as he suggests a method many memoirists use: Pretend you are writing about someone else. “If I’d stayed too close,” he continues, “obeying the instinct toward self-protection, then I would have risked nothing, and nothing would have been at stake for a reader.”
   
   If you’ve ever read an entry from one of your old diaries, you know the emotions of which Nadelson speaks (I certainly do!). If you can’t elucidate your experiences without self-judgment or embarrassment, you might not be ready to write about them. 
   
   

2. Do I have access to the memories that will be the building blocks of my narrative?

   “The meaning of our experiences is constantly changing as we grow,” Megan Stielstra has said. So of course when you choose to write about a life experience will color how you do so.
   
   It may feel like you haven’t fully synthesized your feelings about a chapter of your life—and like you, therefore, should wait to write about it. Just make sure you aren’t waiting too long. You want to have full access to your memories, and in particular to the emotions that accompanied your actions, else there will be no immediacy to drive your storytelling, no detail to animate your words.
   
   

Know this: There is no right or wrong time to begin your memoir. If it seems like it may be too soon—because your feelings are too raw, or your perspective clouded—it just may be that you will work some heavy stuff out DURING your writing. That can be a powerful thing both for you and your readers.

One of my favorite memoirists, Dani Shapiro, writes thoughtfully about this balancing act in her essay “A Memoir Is Not a Status Update”:

“I’ve been doing this work long enough to know that our feelings—that vast range of fear, joy, grief, sorrow, rage, you name it—are incoherent in the immediacy of the moment. It is only with distance that we are able to turn our powers of observation on ourselves, thus fashioning stories in which we are characters.”

So let some time pass. Sit with your feelings. Let them simmer. Write about them—as sloppily and urgently as you want—in a journal. Turn to writing about them with intention when it feels like enough time has passed. (“But how will I know?”, you still wonder…and all I can say is, you just will; trust your gut—and know that if it is too soon, that’s why they call it a first draft 😉)

Further reading on emotional distance in memoir

If the topic of emotional distance in memoir interests you, here are a few other essays I recommend on the topic:

• “Dani Shapiro on the Disequilibrium of a Life-Changing Moment”
  “And so I was, I think, rushing the writing because…the pieces of myself were sort of strewn all around me and I was impatient to begin to put them together again.… But there was an urgency, I think, that would have benefited from slowing down a little bit. Not a lot. Again, not, you know, write this from the distance of your rocking chair someday, but from a place of that little bit of clarity of distance.”
  

• “9 Tips for Dealing with the Emotions When Writing a Memoir,” by M. Shannon Hernandez
  “Raw emotions usually emerge first, and sometimes we can leave them as is—and at other times we need to wrap them in love and understanding and softened tones, so that we don’t offend our audiences.”
  

• “Not Too Close: Emotional Distance In Creative Nonfiction,” by Connor Byrne
  “The first sign that a piece is too distant is an almost analytical tone, for example, “this happened because of this; I should have done this; this has had x effects on my life.” The writer has moved far enough away from the emotional reaction to what they’re writing about that they turn to an opposite strategy: looking at everything rationally, which often sacrifices a feeling of the piece being ‘genuine.’”
  

• “The Hard Art of Seeing Your Own Writing Through Rose-Colored Glasses,” by Mira Pitacin
  “I wrote my memoir nearly in real time, and writing about my own loss in the wake of the events did two things: exorcised the demon out of me, and let the reader know what it really felt like to experience these things in the moment, not seven plus years later, with a wiser, less stinging outlook that comes with time and perspective.”

Do you keep a writing ideas notebook?

So you finally find a stretch of uninterrupted time to write…and when you sit down, you draw a blank. Has that ever happened to you? This simple idea—keeping a notebook of self-generated writing prompts—will keep your ideas flowing.

I share a lot of writing prompts on the blog and in my annual course, and I’ve even written about how you can generate your own writing prompts. But I understand how—somehow!!—it never seems like a writing prompt is at the ready when you need it, right?

There’s an incredibly simple solution: Keep an ideas notebook. Don’t be fussy! Jot down a note the moment an idea bubbles to the surface on whatever you have handy—a napkin, a Post-it, the back of a receipt—then tape or staple these into your notebook. (Pick up a cheap lined notebook kids use for school so it doesn’t feel too precious to approach in this haphazard way!)

What kind of ideas am I talking about, you’re wondering? Anything that may jumpstart your memories or get your pen moving. Here are some real-world examples from my own life:

• As I run errands, I hear a song from my childhood on the car radio. I am flooded with memories and emotions. At a stop light, I snap a picture of the song name on the dashboard with my phone. That alone will be prompt enough to get me writing when I’m in the mood.

• Watching a movie with my family, a character’s reaction or words give me a strong sense of deja vu. Why? With no time to consider it, I text myself a short phrase to remind me of this feeling. Maybe one day it will be worth writing about (maybe I’ll even rewatch the movie to bring me back emotionally).

• I wake up from a dream and in that half-awake state I reach for the notebook I leave on my night stand to scribble a few words so I don’t forget. (Never—not once, and I’ve tried many, many times—have I merely told myself in that moment to remember the dream….and then actually remembered it later.) Dreams can provoke some surprising writing!

• Here’s a common scenario for me: Listening to a podcast, I hear something that resonates and feels like it was drawn from my own life. I grab a piece of paper and jot down the time stamp and episode name. Nothing else is needed, but a word or two about the theme of the conversation may be helpful. When I’m staring down a blank page, I can listen in to that select part of the conversation to get my creative juices stirring again.

Other things you might find yourself taping into that ideas notebook? Fortune cookie slips. Magazine articles. Quotes from friends. Random handwritten memories. People you want to call (trust me, sometimes the best way into a story of your own is to ask someone else for their version). A letter from a friend. A page from a datebook. 

You get the idea, yes? 

For me, the messier this ideas notebook is, the more inviting I find it! So what if pieces of paper stick out the sides, or if the notebook bulges unevenly?! That just means there are treasures awaiting—self-made prompts you know will move you, because you felt the stirrings already. 

How about this one?

If your kid’s half-used, spiral-bound notebook isn’t up to par (it’s what I used all last year, haha!), check out this one I’ve designed just for you.

Before you gift someone our Write Your Life prompts (or, “Who this gift is NOT for?”)

You want your loved one’s stories—how could that be perceived as anything but loving? (HOW you ask for them can make all the difference.)

I lovingly (and painstakingly) created Write Your Life over the course of a whole year:

• I took notes on what was working—and what wasn’t—with my personal history and memoir clients. 

• I read, reread, and annotated books on the craft of life writing, on how to write memoir, and on how to write clearly. 

• I paid for and participated in multiple classes from other companies to explore what resonated and what didn’t (video delivery vs. email, for instance; lots of elevated writing guidance vs. more approachable tips, as another example).

• I tested different approaches with a handful of volunteers, and really listened to (and incorporated) their feedback.

• I tapped into more than 20 years of writing and editing experience to distill what would work best for novice and aspiring writers.

The decisions I made along the way helped me create a year-long subscription of open-ended memory and writing prompts accompanied by straightforward tips, inspiring examples, and just enough encouragement to keep participants going.

And while I did NOT design Write Your Life for people who call themselves writers, I DID design it for people who want to at least attempt to write.

The weekly prompts demand some commitment. That commitment can be enjoyable and fulfilling, without a doubt. But it can also be challenging for someone who really doesn’t have any interest in writing!

So before you click “BUY,” consider who it is you are buying for: 

1. If it’s for YOU, ask yourself: Even if the prompts are inspiring (they will be 😉) and even if you can make the time (you can 👍🏼), “Will I write?”

2. If it’s as a GIFT for a loved one: Will they look at the prompts as a loving invitation to share their memories, or will they resent the ‘homework’ of needing to write? (If you’re unsure, maybe ask them first.)

Clearly I don’t want to discourage you from enrolling in Write Your Life. I created it with love and with the intent of helping people who couldn’t necessarily afford my personal history services. It’s my genuine hope that people enjoy it and find it fruitful!!

During my early market research, however, I read plenty of bad reviews and Reddit threads about gift recipients of Storyworth (the main player in the email-prompt-a-week space) not completing their subscriptions—in fact, many, many of them had barely answered more than a question or two even after a full year had passed. Here’s a sampling:

Over the years, too, I have had a number of clients who came to me after they felt they “failed” at Storyworth. (For what it’s worth, they didn’t FAIL—they were attempting to preserve their stories in a way that wasn’t serving them, that’s all; they all SUCCEEDED in sharing meaningful and fun stories during one-on-one personal history interviews, an approach many non-writers consider easy 🤗)

This is NOT a bash of Storyworth—in fact, their company is completely in line with my own mission and values, though we are aiming to serve parallel yet different audiences. Rather, it’s to show that writing is not for everyone—and gifting an expectation of writing to your parents, say, may come bound up with more guilt and pressure than you would ever intend.

With all that in mind, where do you fall?

YOU’RE READY!

If YOU want to write about your life—with thoughtful questions, helpful writing guidance, and plenty of low-pressure inspiration—and you’re ready to commit, click here to enroll in Write Your Life.

YOU WANT THEIR STORIES, but…

If you want to invite your parents’ stories, but you’re not sure if they’ll welcome all that WRITING (!), consider interviewing them yourself (it’s a rewarding experience!) or hiring me to interview them on your behalf. Schedule a free consultation to see how we might work together to preserve your family member’s stories.

YOU’RE CONSIDERING GIFTING

If you are THINKING of gifting Write Your Life to a loved one, but you’re still not sure if it’s a good idea, why not simply ask them what they think? Or, schedule a brief chat with me to weigh the pros and cons.

TEST THE WATERS?

If you really want to capture stories from your parent, grandparent, or other loved one, the best way is to ASK them about their life. Here is some related reading that may help you along, with no financial commitment at all:

• Essential questions to capture your parents’ memories

• All your kids need to interview their grandparents, including family history questions designed to promote intergenerational connection

• Fun questions to ask mom and dad

• 3 great first questions to get open a personal history interview

• Best practices for conducting family history interviews at home.

• Three easy ways to get your family stories

• How to get a parent who doesn’t want to talk about their memories to open up

• Four ideas for family interviews

• Tips for interviewing a pair of your grandparents together at the same time.

• How to conduct family history interviews over the phone

“Write Your Life” delivers weekly memory & writing prompts via email

Last year, I spent weeks researching courses for writing about your life. I found nearly a hundred of them, and even paid to enroll in a few to see what they were like.

Originally I wanted to be able to offer suggestions to people who reached out asking my advice on life writing courses. Somewhere along the line, though, I got motivated to create something different.

• Instead of a full-on memoir course, I wanted to teach how to write about your life in smaller narrative vignettes.

• Instead of focusing on the nuts and bolts of writing—grammar, character, dialogue, etc.—I wanted to cut to the chase and get students writing their memories from the outset.

• Instead of teaching writers who want to publish and sell their work, I would target regular folks who want to capture their stories for their loved ones—and for themselves.

• Instead of providing run-of-the-mill family history writing prompts like Storyworth and their slew of copycat competitors (I offer such prompts for free!), I would create thoughtful, open-ended prompts accompanied by examples, tips, and inspiration—with real value added from my years of experience as a writer and editor.

• And lastly, instead of charging hundreds of dollars for a course you might not even have the gumption to finish, I wanted to create something truly affordable and different.

I believe with all my heart that your story matters. Your mom’s and granddad’s and spouse’s stories matter. And each one of you—every one of us who is living our story—should be able to write about them.

What makes the Write Your Life courses different?

These courses are tailor made for you. They will help you write about your life, to get your stories down on paper, and to think beyond the often trite questions in those ready-made memory journals.

You’ll look forward to getting your weekly prompts, and you will actually complete your stories.

Introductory themes are CHILDHOOD MEMORIES and FOOD MEMORIES, with new themes starting every few weeks. Themes build upon one another or stand on their own, depending upon how much you want to write.

If you enroll in Write Your Life, you’ll get weekly memory prompts, writing tips, and inspired ideas that are:

encouraging

The memory prompts go above and beyond a simple directive. You’ll explore how memories resonate for YOU. Writing beyond first impressions allows you to go deeper, to discover more than you could first have imagined. Memory cues, sample explorations, and inspirational notes provide encouragement without worry (for things like “what if I can’t remember?” or “but, I am not a writer!”).

Your stories matter—and you CAN do this!

helpful

With concise, RELEVANT writing tips from a professional, you will feel supported on your journey of capturing your stories.

This is not a course to help writers polish and fine-tune their skills. It is a course for people who want to write but don’t normally consider themselves a writer—and the writing advice you receive will be helpful but not unwieldy. Our goal: To help you write stories that are engaging and enlightening—that will entertain your ancestors with anecdotes, sure, but that go further by delving into life lessons, values, and the journey to becoming you!

flexible

You choose what day of the week you would like to receive your weekly lessons. You choose which themes to explore in depth, and which to write shorter snippets about.

You may write in a journal or type on your computer.

And you have a whole week to ruminate on your memory prompts and write your stories. Enough time to let the details bubble up, to call a sibling or parent to talk about the past, or to search for an old family photo album with pictures to help jog your thoughts—but not so much time that you don’t get to it at all. Because next week, another memory prompt and writing exercise is coming!

affordable

At just $132 $99 for a WHOLE YEAR course, pretty much anyone can take advantage of this learning opportunity. There’s no recurring subscription fee or annual membership required (unlike other weekly family history Q&A prompts we know of). And since prompts are open-ended and you get a PRINTABLE page each week, you can invite a friend or family member to write along with you.

Why email? Because most of us have a phone or computer, and it’s a convenient delivery method. There’s no videos to watch or long book to read; our lessons get to the point quickly and clearly, and you get to writing all the more quickly, too.

Oh, yeah, and I don’t expect you to write while staring at a screen. Each week you’ll get a beautifully designed PDF page to print out and work from (and in the end, you’ll have a year’s worth to return to or share with others!).

Why wouldn’t you enroll?

Memory journals from your local bookstore are a nice idea, but frankly I have seen too many of them gifted and never filled out. I inherited two of them from my own mom, each with fewer than three questions filled out, some with only a few words. Disappointing, to say the least…

Subscriptions like Storyworth are great if you just need a nudge without any real writing guidance or support—and if you want a simple, “free” book at the end (though, from my experience, many people never finish the prompts, and therefore never get their book). THIS course—which I took over a year to develop and which incorporates years’ worth of my professional experience guiding life writers one-on-one—is designed to encourage you to finish…whether it’s within the initial year or later ✍🏼❤️

Consider enrolling in Write Your Life yourself, or, if you want your parents’ stories, consider gifting* them with these Write Your Life prompts—trust me, inviting your family elders to share their stories with you (and preserve them for the next generation) is one of the best gifts you could give them!

Before you gift: Writing isn’t for everyone!

Remember, this is a WRITING subscription. If you know your parent or family member loves to write (even if it’s just in a journal), this may be a wonderful option for them. If, on the other hand, they groan at having to write a short note, you might not want to “gift” them something that can feel like a burden. Consider asking them if they’d be interested first, or gift them a starter package of personal history interviews, where their stories will be RECEIVED by an engaged and generous listener…

Rather Talk about Your stories than write?

If writing still isn’t your thing but you want to preserve your stories, consider TELLING them in a personal history interview. Reach out to see how we can work together—it is my honor to listen to you (or a loved one) share stories, and preserve them in a book!

A Year of Memory & Writing Prompts

Explore our year-long “Write Your Life” email course

discover & enroll

“We all know who’s in the pictures”—a poor excuse for skipping captions

This is a three-part series about choices I wish my clients hadn’t made during their personal history book projects. (For what it’s worth: in my first draft of this post, I referred to “mistakes” I wish my clients hadn’t made—and then I remembered, memoir is, by definition, a personal accounting of one’s life, and far be it for me to dictate a writer’s personal preferences.) That said, clients come to me not only for help finishing the projects they envision, but for my expertise in elevating their projects to be the best they can be. So, I thought sharing a few of these differences of opinion might be instructive for those waffling over similar decisions.

Challenge 1: Should I include “the hard stuff” from my life in my memoir?

Challenge 2: Should I include a family tree in my life story?

Challenge 3: Should I include captions in my memorial tribute book?

If you’ve ever discovered a box of old family photos and wished you knew who was in them, perhaps you’ll understand my disappointment with one client’s decision not to include captions in her tribute book. This spread is from another client’s heirloom book—see how unobtrusive a caption can be?

“Please stop asking me about captions.”

First, let’s sketch out the type of book I was working on: My client—let’s call her Maria—came to me wanting to create a memorial tribute book honoring her mother, who had recently died. I interviewed Maria and her sister to capture their memories of their mom.

The stories they shared included anecdotes about their four other siblings, their father, and a smattering of aunts and uncles who lived in the small village where her mother lived all her life. Maria and her sister had moved out of the country where they were born decades before, and their own young kids knew their grandparents only from the annual trips the family would take—and didn’t really know the rest of the extended family at all.

Maria’s intentions with creating this tribute book were twofold: She wanted a book the family could pull out and read from on the anniversary of their mother’s death, a tradition they hoped to begin on that first-year anniversary; and they wanted an heirloom they could pass to their children so they could remember the grandmother they lost too soon. “I want my kids and their kids to know my Mami,” she told me.

In the earliest manuscript phase, I asked Maria to identify all the people she mentioned in her stories—to create a list of names and how they were related to her mother. I intended to use this both within the text and in captions for clarity. Each time she submitted corrections to the manuscript, it seemed like she forgot to answer this one query from me, so I would ask again. And again. Finally she told me, “I don’t think any of that is necessary.”

Hmm, okay. I decided to wait and ask for details in the layout phase.

The book was written, edited, and designed, and a first-draft proof was sent to Maria along with questions from me as the editor. My comments included things such as:

[PAGE 8, CAPTION: There are 24 people in this beautiful wedding photo. I think we should identify them, from left to right, so the next generation knows who is in the photo and how they are related. Please provide names in order of appearance in the photo.]

Maria’s response was firm: “We don’t need that, because we all know who the people in the picture are.”

So, I would again begin to probe:

Me: “Who are you ultimately creating this book for?”

Maria: “My son and daughter, and my sister’s children. And, God-willing, their children.”

Me: “Do you think they will know who these people are?”

Maria: “No, but I can always tell them if they are curious.”

Me: “But why not make it foolproof? Why not document their names, so generations from now there will never be questions about their family history?”

Maria: “I REALLY don’t want to.”

We had a few circular conversations like this, before I finally gave in. 

Maria’s book is a gorgeous, heartfelt tribute to her mother. I have no doubt she and her siblings will read from the book on the anniversary of her mother’s death and feel closer to her. And I know from our conversations that the process of creating the book—of sharing her memories, and giving herself space to sit with them intentionally—was healing for Maria; she told me so numerous times.

But I can’t help but regret that, as I imagine it, one day her grown grandkids will flip through the book and wonder, Who is that next to our great-grandmother?

Friendly reminder: Your personal story is part of a broader family history

This is a three-part series about choices I wish my clients hadn’t made during their personal history book projects. (For what it’s worth: in my first draft of this post, I referred to “mistakes” I wish my clients hadn’t made—and then I remembered, memoir is, by definition, a personal accounting of one’s life, and far be it for me to dictate a writer’s personal preferences.) That said, clients come to me not only for help finishing the projects they envision, but for my expertise in elevating their projects to be the best they can be. So, I thought sharing a few of these differences of opinion might be instructive for those waffling over similar decisions.

CHALLENGE 1: SHOULD I INCLUDE “THE HARD STUFF” FROM MY LIFE IN MY MEMOIR?

CHALLENGE 2: SHOULD I INCLUDE A FAMILY TREE IN MY LIFE STORY?

CHALLENGE 3: SHOULD I INCLUDE CAPTIONS IN MY MEMORIAL TRIBUTE BOOK?

Why include a family tree in a book focusing on just your stories? Well, because it will give your descendants an easy way to map the supporting “characters” in your stories—and because your personal history is one piece of a broader family history, too.

“We don’t need a family tree—it’s my story, and mine alone.”

I work on all types of legacy books with my clients—from heavily-researched family histories spanning multiple generations to short autobiographical sketches of just one person, from tribute books memorializing a loved one who has passed away to heritage cookbooks. One thing remains constant in all of these projects, though, and that’s how I view each of them as an heirloom to be passed on.

Recently I finished up a memoir with a client—let’s call him Tom. He came to me with some memories jotted down in a notebook and a vague idea of how he wanted to write about his life. I coached Tom over a two-year period, and when his final manuscript was being copyedited, he decided he wanted to print books for his family members. So our journey of photo gathering and book design began.

Tom’s stories spanned his school years to his days as a grandfather, and his many cousins played supporting roles throughout his book. He told vibrant and funny stories about his own grandfather, who lived next door to him when he was a child, and affectionate tales about his maternal uncle, in whose footsteps Tom followed in becoming a teacher.

So when I suggested we create a family tree to serve as a graphic cheat sheet for his readers, I was surprised when Tom said no. It wasn’t a matter of cost, and at first I couldn’t get to the bottom of why my client was so vehemently opposed to charting his family in this way.

Eventually Tom shared that he always felt overshadowed by his older sibling, and he wanted this book to be his, and his alone. He was already the star—it was his memoir, after all. I tried reassuring him that he would be at the root of the family tree, and that we’d be using it to show all those people who were related to him. But he held fast, and I got it.

Tom’s memoir is a wonderfully crafted narrative, a quilt of memories that are woven together to shed light on how his experiences shaped the person he became. He gained insights from writing about his life, he told me, and was grateful to have taken the time to find new perspective on some of his decisions.

The irony, to me, is that he printed enough copies to distribute to his children, his grandchildren, and his cousins, and that they will in turn pass them on to their own descendants—making Tom’s personal history one piece of a broader family history. Who knows, maybe one day one of them will piece together a family tree that will make following the family history (and, dare I say it, Tom’s memoir) easier to follow.