You don’t have to be rich and famous to write a memoir

You don’t have to be rich or famous to write a memoir. Ordinary people write memoirs, too, and that’s good because the world needs more memoirs written by regular people. Families need more memoirs written by their relatives.

If you, an ordinary guy, publish a memoir, people won’t likely stop you on the street and ask if they can take a selfie with you. And you’ll probably need to keep your day job—and that’s because you probably won’t land a deal with a traditional, big-name publisher. Here’s why: Ordinary people’s stories seldom bring in a lot of money—and money is the bottom line for big publishers.

Don’t let that discourage you. Nowadays, everyday memoirists have several publishing options, thanks to the self-publishing industry. Another option is to print your book at a local printshop. Or you can write your stories for kids and grandkids and put them in three-ring binders along with photos.

Henri Nouwen observes: “There is much emphasis on notoriety and fame in our society. Our newspapers and television keep giving us the message: What counts is to be known, praised, and admired, whether you are a writer, an actor, a musician, or a politician.

“Still, real greatness is often hidden, humble, simple, and unobtrusive. It is not easy to trust ourselves and our actions without public affirmation. We must have strong self-confidence combined with deep humility.

“Some of the greatest works of art and the most important works of peace were created by people who had no need for the limelight. They knew that what they were doing was their call[ing], and they did it with great patience, perseverance, and love.”  (Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey)

Don’t let fame and fortune be your primary goal because—believe this:

Your story is important.

Studies have shown that kids are more stable

and successful if they know their family’s stories.

(I suspect that’s also true for those who are no longer kids.)

Stories are among God’s most powerful and effective tools. Your story can be among God’s most powerful and effective tools.

There’s a reason you don’t see spreadsheets and charts and bullet points and graphs in the Bible. Research shows that stories impact humans in ways other types of information don’t.

The Bible is full of stories because of the ways our hearts and minds respond to stories. We engage with a story’s message more than we do with databases and tables and lists.

Peter Guber explains:

“Stories . . . are far more than entertainment. They are the most effective form of human communication, more powerful than any other way of packaging information. . . .

“Without stories,” Guber continues, “we wouldn’t understand ourselves. [Stories] . . . give us much of the framework for much of our understanding. . . . While we think of stories as . . . something extraneous to real work, they turn out to be the cornerstone of consciousness.” (Read more at Writing your memoir: A sacred calling.)

You’ll like what Morgan Harper Nichols says:

“Tell the story of the mountain you climbed.

Your words could become a page

in someone else’s survival guide.”

Some of you might not have children, but you have friends, colleagues, neighbors, cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, friends from high school and college, former sweethearts—on and on.

Your memoir can benefit those people, and more.

The big question is this:

Will you write your story?

Or, if you’ve started writing your memoir,

will you finish writing it?

And place it into the hands of others?

Kathleen Pooler’s new memoir, Just the Way He Walked

A few months ago, my friend Kathleen Pooler published her second memoir, Just the Way He Walked: A Mother’s Story of Hope and Healing. Congratulations, Kathy!

I was honored that she asked me to write an endorsement for her book, which I’m happy to share with you here:

“The deeper I read into Kathy’s story, the more I wanted to cry out to God, ‘How much should one person have to endure?’ Battling Stage Four Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, for decades she also agonized over her son’s drug and alcohol abuse.

“Kathy’s unfailing love for her son prompted everything she did to help him, yet he kept having relapses. Often driven to despair, she didn’t understand that her enabling hindered him from taking responsibility for his actions and choices.

“Kathy wrote: ‘It would take years and many Al-Anon meetings and prayers for me to break my addiction to his addiction and be able to set firm boundaries for myself and him.’

“Throughout it all, Kathy never stopped loving her son, always had hope for him and for herself, and always trusted God.

“Because her heart’s desire is to offer hope to those dealing with addictions, Kathy offers a wealth of materials at the end of her memoir. They include sixteen lessons she learned over twenty-three years, several pages of resources for parents of addicted children, and book discussion questions.

“Just the Way He Walked: A Mother’s Story of Hope and Healing is a book you’ll want to share with others in need of inspiration and mentoring through Kathy’s tenacious faith and hope.” (Linda K. Thomas)

Here’s another endorsement:

“If family alcoholism and the author’s physical illness were this story’s only focus, readers would miss the pot of gold at the end—a rainbow of hope, one metaphor in Kathy Pooler’s excellent memoir, Just the Way He Walked. Though no sunshiny fairytale, Kathy’s courageous story takes the reader through the ugly to reveal the beautiful, reason enough to keep turning the pages in anticipation of a happy ending. . . .” (Marian Longnecker Beaman, author of Mennonite Daughter: The Story of a PlainGirl)

And here’s the book description from Amazon:

“Just the Way He Walked: A Mother’s Story of Healing and Hope is a story of how one woman’s simultaneous battles of Stage Four Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and her young adult son’s addiction to alcohol and drugs test her resolve to never, ever give up hope. Written for parents, particularly mothers, of children who are addicted, this is a story of love, faith, hope, and breaking the cycle of addiction. Family relationships, father-son, mother-son, single parenting, the impact of addictions on families, and the need for education in breaking the cycle of addiction are all explored. The message of resilience and faith in the face of insurmountable odds serves as a testament of what is possible when one dares to hope.”

I hope you’ll recommend Just the Way He Walked

to friends, family, and your church’s staff and library.

It’s sure to be a rich resource for many.

And do Kathy a favor:

Leave a review on Amazon,

Barnes and Noble, and Goodreads.

Kathy is a retired family nurse practitioner and cancer survivor who’s passionate about sharing hope through storytelling. Several years ago, she also authored a memoir entitled Ever Faithful to His Lead: My Journey Away from Emotional Abuse.

You’ll want to follow her blog, Memoir Writer’s Journey (click on that link), and her author page on Facebook (click on that link).

Prepare to be amazed: What your process of writing can reveal

“What is your journey,” Rebecca S. Ramsey asks memoir-writers, “the big change you experienced that you want to share with the world?”

Rebecca’s question is important because memoir is about change, transformation. Your memoir needs to include your transformation.

Jon Franklin can help better understand what we call “the story arc.” He writes that a quality story “will consist of a real person who is confronted with a significant problem, who struggles diligently to solve that problem, and who ultimately succeeds—and in doing so becomes a different character.”

In other words, “A story consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that he confronts and solves.” (Writing for Story, Jon Franklin, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a well-known pioneer in creative nonfiction)

So, the big question for you is:

What new person did you become

because of your experience?

Rebecca Ramsey asks it this way: “What were the little struggles and big struggles that got you from the beginning to end?”

You’ll need to articulate that in writing before your memoir will be ready to publish. But that’s easier said than done—many people struggle to identify those turning points and defining moments.

Rebecca herself admits the answers weren’t clear when she began writing her memoir, The Holy Éclair: Signs and Wonders from an Accidental Pilgrimage.

How did she figure out that transformation in her life?

After much work (writing The Holy Éclair took her ten years), she discovered this: Writing helped her answer those questions. Something about the process helped her recognize the ways her life changed.

You don’t need to have all the answers

before you start writing.

Give yourself time to discover your story and write it—

even if it takes ten years like it did for Rebecca.

Within the process of writing,

ask yourself Rebecca’s questions

and search for the answers.

They are there.

Don’t give up. You’ll find them!

Your stories can help others through the coronavirus pandemic

At a time like this, when people around the world are frightened and grieving over the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic, your stories can inspire courage. And tenacity. And faith. And hope. And practical, ingenious solutions in trying times—but only if you share your stories.

Below is an account I included in a collection of family stories for my grandkids, hoping it will help them somehow, somewhere, someday, in the same way my grandmother’s and mother’s stories helped me in an especially trying time.

“Mommy, tell us a story about the olden days!”

I wonder how many times my mother heard those excited words from my little brothers and me over the years. And she enjoyed telling us stories from her childhood. We loved sitting close to her and imagining scenes she created for us.

Many of her stories were from the 1930s, set in southeastern Ontario, Canada, in a farming area known as Glengarry County, the home of a number of Scotsmen and their families.

The Depression hit their lives very hard. Mom tells of having to wear shoes that were too small, shoes that left her feet disfigured. Grandpa worked the family farm and he also served as the postman, but still money was scarce. They raised chickens and cows and grew vegetables but sometimes their cupboards were nearly bare. I imagine that was especially true in winter months.

I also know that my grandparents knelt to pray every night before bed. I’m certain they prayed to God to keep their four daughters from going hungry during those lean years.

I remember one of my mother’s stories more vividly than others. She told about a time when their parents’ food supply had dwindled down to almost nothing, and they worried terribly. On one of those days, Grandma cooked a pot of soup for their family of six. I can picture her slicing up carrots and potatoes, and maybe an onion, maybe a piece of meat, or a soup bone. Maybe she put in dried beans, too.

Mom told us that the next day, all Grandma had for her family was that same soup but it wasn’t enough, so she added a carrot or two. The next day, the soup was still all they had so Grandma added a potato, or maybe an onion. This went on day after day and eventually Grandpa got a paycheck from the post office so they could buy groceries.

My mother must have thought of those days often when she was a young adult because sometimes our family had almost no food in our cupboards. Mom followed in her mother’s footsteps: She poured out her needs to God and she boiled a pot of soup. Each day she stretched it by adding an extra carrot or potato or onion, or maybe some of her canned tomatoes, while she told us the story of her mother stretching their soup in the same way back in the ’30s.

I grew up, married, and two years later had a baby, Matt. Twenty-two months later, our daughter Karen arrived more than a month early, unhealthy, and we ran up big medical bills. My husband, Dave, was a first-year teacher and our new health insurance wouldn’t cover Karen’s birth or extended hospital stay. 

In those days, 1971, Dave earned $7,200 a year, and we paid $90 a month for an old rental house. We had to be extremely frugal. I had one dress, one pair of jeans, one T-shirt, and I had scraped up enough money to buy turquoise polyester knit fabric to make myself a pants-suit.

We ate the cheapest food, never went to movies or restaurants, never spent money on hobbies. We bought only necessities, but money was still scarce.

In those days, we had no credit cards to see us through such times. Instead, we had to live within our means (which is not a bad thing; more people should try living that way).

In February, 1972, after we paid our bills on the first of the month, we had $28 left to buy food and everything else for the rest of the month. I was worried. I was stressed.

However, thanks to my mother’s story, I knew we could present our needs to God and that with His help we would make do with what we had, just like my mother and her mother before her. I assembled a big pot of soup: I had a soup bone with a little meat on it. I added carrots, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and maybe some peas or corn. Each day for a week I thought of my dear grandma and my mother as I added a new ingredient—maybe rice or another potato or carrot.

And, indeed, we did make it through that week, and the rest of the month, until Dave got his paycheck the first of March.

God said,

“Be very careful never to forget

what you have seen the Lord do for you.

Don’t forget them as long as you live!

And be sure to tell your children and grandchildren.”

(Deuteronomy 4:9)

That’s what my grandmother and mother did!

My grandmother had shown her daughter, my mother, how to trust God and make the best of the resources He had given them. My mother remembered her mother’s example, trusted God, and made the pot of soup stretch, and, perhaps most importantly, she told me the story of how God provided for them. Because of that, I handled my own little family’s need for food in the same way they did—I trusted God and stretched our soup with the resources He provided. (From Come and Listen: Let Me Tell You What God Has Done for Me [Psalm 66:16] by Linda K. Thomas)

What stories can you write for your kids and grandkids about your grandparents battling on—not giving up—through heartbreaking times? How did God give them strength and courage to persevere?

What stories can you tell about your parents’ tenacity in confronting overwhelming challenges? What stories can you write about yourself when you were younger? What helped your parents and you trust God for what seemed impossible?

Did your great-grandparents live through the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918? How about the awful Great Depression? Do you know their stories?

What stories can you write for your family about World War I? Pearl Harbor? World War II? The Vietnam War? The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks—9/11? What was God’s role in the midst of those desperate times?

Your stories could make all the difference

in the way your family members tackle their own calamities.

Write your stories!