Writing about your hardships and heartaches

 

You’ve had your share of heartaches. Maybe it seems you’ve had more than your share.

 

I know the feeling.

 

In the midst of our sufferings, we rarely find any good. After all, we thought those things might kill us, or at least leave us permanently scarred.

 

But later—ah, later—can we take another look?

 

C. S. Lewis observed that “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny. . . .”

 

Think about it:

 

What did your hardships prepare you for?

 

(And don’t for a moment think that you

are not extraordinary!)

 

Stand back and mull over—analyze—

the pain and sorrow you’ve experienced.

 

Is it possible they served a good purpose?

 

You’ll find added inspiration from Frederick Buechner in his Wishful Thinking:

 

“The grace of God means something like:

‘Here is your life.

You might never have been, but you are,

because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.

 

Here is the world.

Beautiful and terrible things will happen.

Don’t be afraid.

I am with you.’”

 

In your memoir, tell readers how God brought beauty from ashes, joy from mourning, and praise in place of despair (see Isaiah 61:3).

 

Write those stories as an act of worship.

God will use your experiences, your words,

and your message to bring hope to others.

Believe it!

 

“The right words in the right order might be worth a thousand pictures”

 

“Words—especially religious words, words that have to do with the depth of things—get tired and stale the way people do,” writes Frederick Buechner. “Find new words or put old words together in combinations that make them heard as new, make you yourself new, and make you understand in new ways.” (From Now and Then; emphasis mine)

 

Think about it: Written words are merely scribbles and scratches on paper or black squiggles on a computer screen.

 

But words pack punch. They have power. Potential.

 

Words inspire, comfort, entertain, make the heart soar, cause laughter or tears. Words can change lives.

 

Words are a memoirist’s most important tools. We must use them with excellence.

 

Use crisp, bright, refreshing words—

 

but avoid ornamental words,

extravagant, snobbish words,

self-important words to impress readers,

elusive words that make your readers get up and find a dictionary.

 

A good thesaurus and dictionary can be a memoirist’s best friend. Computer programs usually have a thesaurus—a minimal one, but one that can help find a better word quickly.

 

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner,” writes Diane Setterfield. “Wind them around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”

 

James Michener writes, “I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”

 

“The right words in the right order might be worth a thousand pictures,” says Roy Peter Clark in How to Write Short.

 

“Words whispered, shouted, and sung.

Words that move, dance,

and change in size and color.

Words that say,

‘Taste me, smell me, eat me, drink me. . . .

The word has the power to create. . . .

When God says,

‘Let there be light’ (Genesis 1:30),

light is. . . .

It is this creative power of the word

we need to reclaim.”

Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey;

emphasis mine)

 

Look over your manuscript and replace boring, tired words with words that have zing and pizzazz and melody and texture.

 

“Writing is the painting of the voice.”

Voltaire

 

 

Pin down inner qualities that define your memoir’s main characters

 

The people in your memoir, the ones who shaped your life, for better or for worse, are the people your readers want to know.

 

Last week looked at developing your main characters from a sensory perspective (sight, sound, smell, feel, taste), and this week we’ll dig even deeper and tackle what’s even more important—we’ll work on your main characters’ inner qualities. (If you missed last week’s post, click on Write life into your memoir’s main characters.)

 

Readers want to feel like they are alongside you, looking into the same faces you’re looking into. They want to experience what you experienced, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. They want to feel familiar with your main characters.

 

To achieve that, you need to go beyond a physical, sensory description: Develop a multi-dimensional person.

 

Which specific dimensions of your main characters significantly impacted you?

 

• What mattered most to her?
• What did he believe was his life’s purpose? What did he live for? What motivated him?
• What were his values?
• Her convictions?
• Was he selfless or selfish?
• Touchy or grace-giving?
• Faithful or fickle?
• Patient or impatient?
• Forgiving or bitter?
• Brave or cowardly?
• Nurturing or aloof?
• Confident or insecure?
• Gentle or abrasive?
• Generous or stingy?
• Was she domineering?
• Was he humble?
• Was he quick-tempered?
• Was she arrogant?
• Manipulative?
• A peacemaker?
• What was endearing about her?
• Annoying about him?
• Comical, scary, heroic?
• What did she obsess over? And was that a good or bad obsession?
• What did others say or think about that person?

 

For example, Frederick Buechner writes, “Like her father, my grandmother had little patience with weakness, softness, sickness. Even gentleness made her uncomfortable, I think—the tender-hearted people who from fear of giving pain, or just from fear of her, hung back from speaking their minds the way she spoke hers.” (The Sacred Journey)

 

A word of caution: Readers don’t need to know everything about your main characters.  As Roy Peter Clark says, “To bring a person to literary life requires not a complete inventory of characteristics, but selected details arranged to let us see flesh, blood, and spirit.” 

 

Know what information to include and what to exclude.

 

For example, if your memoir focuses on your grandmother’s commitment to nurture her kids and grandkids, develop her from that perspective. Readers probably don’t need to know that she struggled with insecurity or impatience or lack of courage.

 

Peel back layers. Readers want to know what was happening between the lines. What was happening beneath and beyond the sensory details? What was going on inside? What were that person’s thoughts?

 

You don’t need to flesh out every person in your memoir, but readers want to feel connected to your main characters. Your job is to create realistic characters—to accurately portray those most important people without overdoing it.

What was it about the person’s beliefs,

goals,

fears,

experiences,

successes,

failures,

quirks,

character

or values

that impacted your life?

 

Revise and polish your memoir in those places

where your main characters need to come to life.

 

Develop characters your readers can visualize,

but go beyond that:

Create living, breathing, vibrant,

memorable characters—

people who are believable, knowable, and well-rounded,

people readers can relate to.

 

Tuesday Tidbit: Your memoir’s takeaways can change lives

 

Where do you put takeaways in your memoir? (If you missed last week’s post on what takeaways are, click on Your memoir’s all-important takeaways.) 

 

“Takeaway happens within a reflection,” point out Brooke Warner and Dr. Linda Joy Myers. (To read more about the importance of reflection in memoir, click on Reflection and the words we use.)

 

“Takeaway can be a reflection, but not all reflection is takeaway,” they continue. “… [W]herever there is reflection, there is an opportunity for a takeaway, but that doesn’t mean that necessarily all reflections are going to be takeaways.”

 

In other words, takeaways accompany segments in your memoir in which you reflect. You will reflect multiple times throughout your memoir. Some if not all of them will be opportunities for you to include a takeaway for your readers—those bits of wisdom to live by.

And don’t beat around the bush! Pinpoint your message. Clarity is your goal. (Please, please, read my blog post about writers who circle all around The Point but never state The Point. Click on What’s the point?)

 

Dedicate quality time to crafting your takeaways. Specify what was the most important message or lesson you took away from that experience (the one you’re reflecting on). Boil it down, write a concise message for your readers.

 

Here are examples of takeaways:

“Life is composed of cycles and seasons. Nothing lasts forever.” Dr. Henry Cloud

“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'" (Mary Anne  Radmacher) 

“We find by losing. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old.” (Frederick Buechner)  

 

In this example from Steve Pemberton’s A Chance in the World, I’ve underlined the takeaway: “Looking back, this was a galvanizing moment. The Robinsons had taken away any semblance of my childhood, something I could never get back. But now this new edict, vile and ignorant, threatened my future. At some point in our lives, we all have to make a decision to take a stand, knowing full well the potential harmful consequences. For me that decision came in the fall of 1982, at the age of fifteen.”

 

Most memoirists place takeaways throughout their memoirs. If you have a conclusion, a postscript, or an epilogue in your memoir, reiterate your most important takeaways in them, too.

 

Your takeaways are the most powerful part of your memoir.

They offer readers hope,

or wisdom, or courage, or laughter,

or a solution, or a new way of living or loving.

 

Your takeaways, then, communicate to readers:

“I know this is true because I have experienced it,

I have lived it. It changed my life.

Perhaps it will change your life, too.”

 

 

At first your takeaways will resemble diamonds-in-the-rough. Your job is to cut and polish and make those gems sparkle. Doing so adds to their value for both you and your readers.

 

There you have it: Your Tuesday Tidbit.

 

How can you retrieve your faded memories?

 

Writing your memoir can surprise you by bringing past events into a new light. As you make time to remember and ponder, new insights into old experiences will surface. Puzzle pieces will fall into place.

 

Frederick Buechner explains what he discovered when he penned his personal stories in The Sacred Journey and Now and Then.

"They gave me more of a sense than I had ever had before of how as far back as I could remember things had been stirring in my life that I was all but totally unaware of at the time.

"If anybody had predicted when I was an undergraduate at Princeton that I was going to be ordained as a minister ten years after graduation, I think I would have been flabbergasted.

"Yet as I wrote . . . I found myself remembering small events as far back as early childhood which were even then leading me in something like a direction but so subtly and almost imperceptibly that it wasn't until decades had passed that I saw them for what they were. . . .

"The events were often so small that I was surprised to remember them, yet they turned out to have been road markers on a journey I didn't even know I was taking.

"The people involved in them were often people I had never thought of as having played particularly significant roles in my life yet looking back at them I saw that, for me, they had been life-givers, saints." (Frederick Buechner, Originally published in Telling Secrets)

God longs for us to remember what He has done (Psalm 105:5), but we so easily forget!

 

Memories are vital components of memoirs, so how can we retrieve the faded ones?

 

If you kept a journal in the past, you have a treasure. It will be packed with events and details and personal insights that you might have forgotten over the years.

 

Old letters—that you wrote or received—can also help remember significant events and people.

 

Look through your Bible, devotionals, or Bible study materials. If you’re like me, you’ve jotted memories and dates in the margins.

 

Some people print and save special emails they’ve sent or received.

 

Here’s another idea to help you retrieve your memories of a key place: Sketch a floor plan and/or the neighborhood. Maybe you’re writing about your childhood home or about Boy Scout camp. Or maybe you’re writing about an office building in a bustling city. Sketching that place will help remember details.

 

While you draw, memories will bubble up and percolate.

 

Don’t believe me? Give it a try! As you sketch, jot down notes about who was with you and what significant events took place there.

 

But that’s just the beginning!

 

Memoirists go beyond remembering the past. Memoirists search for significance. Relevance.

 

Pondering, unraveling, piecing together, reflecting—all are necessary ingredients in memoirs. Tell readers what you now see, in retrospect. Look for deeper meanings and connections, as Frederick Buechner did, above.

 

Looking back, what did you learn about yourself?

 

What patterns did you discover that you hadn’t noticed before?

 

How did the place and people shape your life? And prepare you for your future?

 

Maybe, like Buechner, you'll notice that you'd been on a journey you didn't even realize you were taking.

What was God doing? What did you learn about Him? Like Frederick Buechner, did you discover God’s purpose for your life?

 

When you pull your memories out of hibernation, give yourself plenty of time to examine them and answer the above questions.

 

Look for relevance you might have missed in the past.

Search for profound lessons you learned.

Notice defining moments and turning points.

Make time to discover insights.

Identify healing and blessings that were there all along.

Uncover your richer, higher, deeper, wider story.

And then share it with others.

Your life: holy threads, consecrated strands, hallowed fibers, blessed filaments

Your job, as a memoirist, is to do the hard work of discerning and writing about "the designing hand of God and his intervention in our lives" (Ravi Zacharias).

Think about God's footprints alongside ours, His fingerprints all over our lives: Divine intervention.

Sounds good, doesn't it? We like having God intimately involved in our lives.

But " . . . divine intervention is nowhere near as simple a thing as we might imagine," writes Ravi Zacharias (Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives). 

Think about this: 

Sometimes our footprints, and those alongside ours, are muddy, or worse.

Sometimes tattered, holey shoes left those footprints.

Sometimes God's fingerprints all over our lives are sticky, smudged, scarred, bloody. Sometimes the fingerprints we leave behind are, too.

Divine intervention "cannot be only a journey of unmistakable blessing and a path of ease," Zacharias continues. "To allow God to be God we must follow him for who he is and what he intends. . . ."

Each of us has countless blessings and yet, each of us has experienced heartaches, disappointments, failures.

Sometimes life knocks the air out of us.

Too many experience betrayal. Unfaithfulness. Rejection. Abuse.

Some know hunger and sickness and handicaps and homelessness.

We know loss, grief, exhaustion, confusion.

Hopelessness. 

At such times we can be tempted to despair, thinking God doesn't love us enough, or that His plans for us are not good enough. We think we deserve better from Him.

Other times our lives seem hum-drum. We're boring people living boring lives. We wonder if we matter, if we are worth anything of value.

". . . Incident follows incident helter-skelter leading apparently nowhere," Frederick Buechner writes, "but then once in a while there is the suggestion of purpose, meaning, direction, the suggestion of plot. . . ." (The Alphabet of Grace).

That's what Zacharias calls us to see: "the designing hand of God and his intervention in our lives" so that "we know he has a specific purpose for each of us and that he will carry us through until we meet him face-to-face. . . ."

Yes, sometimes life is overwhelmed with sadness, other times life is blah, but if we let Him, and work with Him, God uses all of it to shape and polish us, to mature us and beautify us, even though we might not understand it at the time, or even see it.

Zacharias challenges us to imagine our lives as exquisite fabric: vivid, brilliant colors with threads of gold and silver intertwined. He wants us to see God as the "Grand Weaver . . . with a design in mind for you, a design that will adorn you as he uses your life to fashion you for his purpose, using all the threads within his reach."

You are important to God. You are His workmanship, His treasure. Your life is sacred.

God is custom-making the fabric of your life. Look back over the years and search for each thread and color: the dark ones and the pastel ones, the heavy ones and the light ones, the coarse ones and the golden ones. Those are holy threads. Consecrated strands. Hallowed fibers. Blessed filaments.

Search. Make it your quest to discover the excellent, one-of-a-kind pattern the Grand Weaver is creating out of you.

Go back: Look for spools of thread, God-designed, for you alone. Watch and listen for the sound of the shuttle going back and forth in God's hand. He's making something beautiful: YOU.

The more you grasp

how important you are to God,

and that He's crafting you

into His masterpiece,

the better you can write

your God-and-you stories,

the better you can share them with

your children,

grandchildren, great-grandchildren,

and generations yet unborn. 

On authoring change: Listening and looking at your life candidly, searchingly, and feelingly

 

What kind of difference could you make, or do you want to make, or need to make, with the time you have left on this earth?

 

Here’s another question for you:

 

“ . . . How do you turn your dream of making a positive and meaningful difference in the world into a reality?”

 

Nina Amir asks the question and then she answers it for you: “You author change.

 

“You write and publish a book that inspires positive action or change. . . .”

 

Here’s another question for you:

 

“Can we listen to ourselves in the silence? Can we sit and wait for the whispers of our souls to come creeping, slowly, falteringly, letter by letter through our pens? Can we allow our truest selves to tell their stories through the gateway of broken language . . . ? Catch it before it is gone, capture it in a jumble of letters. . . .” Edith Ó Nualláin

 

Always remember: Your story is part of God’s much larger story.

 

Jesus said, “Go tell your family everything God has done for you” (Luke 8:39). That means writing a memoir is a holy work, a ministry.

 

As a memoirist, you have the privilege of working with sacred stories—stories that are for the most part stories of everyday events and ordinary people. It’s a holy calling to tell the next generations about God’s involvement in their lives and their families’ lives (see Psalm 145:4 and Deuteronomy 4:9).

 

“The writers who get my personal award are the ones who show exceptional promise of looking at their lives in this world as candidly and searchingly and feelingly as they know how,” writes Frederick Buechner, “and then of telling the rest of us what they have found there most worth finding. We need the eyes of writers like that to see through. We need the blood of writers like that in our veins.”  

 

What have you found that’s most worth finding?

 

Write it in your memoir before it’s too late. “Catch it before it is gone.”

 

“The world needs change agents,” says Nina Amir. “It’s your time to make a positive and meaningful impact with your words.”

 

Your words, your stories—your memoir—could do that. It’s your time, Nina says.

 

It’s your time!

 

Covid-19 and those “Beneath life’s crushing load”

 

Tragedies caused by Covid-19 can certainly be called one of life’s crushing loads. As of this morning, more than 1,700,000 people have died around the world. I estimate that for each one, at least fifty family members and friends are grieving. That number comes to 85,000,000 people mourning those deaths. That’s probably a low figure, and it will continue to grow.

 

Add to that financial disasters to businesses and employees, the enormous emotional and physical toll on first responders and healthcare workers, and people being evicted from their homes.

 

Add to that the isolation so many are experiencing from families at Thanksgiving and Christmas, teachers exhausted as they teach online instead of in person, and students struggling to keep up with their lessons.

 

Add to that careworn parents trying to work from home and supervise kids and help them with their schoolwork—all at the same time. Families are struggling financially because breadwinners have lost their jobs. Thousands every day wait in line for food. Others have enormous medical bills. Those recovering from the virus can have long-term health issues, making it difficult for them to get back on their feet.

 

And doctors and scientists are concerned over a sometimes-deadly syndrome related to Covid-19 which effects children’s “heart, lungs, blood vessels, kidneys, digestive system, brain, skin or eyes.”

 

Now there’s news that the coronavirus has mutated in England, and probably has reached other nations as well, and that the new strain spreads much more quickly than we’ve seen so far.

 

And that just scratches the surface when it comes to Covid-19.

 

In addition, in recent months our nation has experienced political unrest, violence in streets, racial tensions, and significant disagreements among Christian denominations.

 

That’s a lot of heartache to bear.

 

And I’m sure you’ll agree: All of this has added an element of sadness to this Christmas season.

 

In my family, we have our own layers of sadness, but really: We have little to complain about compared to millions of families that have many more problems than we do.

 

I ran across this artwork (see photo below) in an antique Christmas book and its caption took my breath away. “Ye, beneath life’s crushing load,” words from the beloved song, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”

 

The words are so familiar to me—I’ve sung the song for as long as I can remember.

 

But this year, those words take on deeper meaning. I’m glad they caught my attention and jostled my heart and made me care more deeply.

 

Sometimes we want to block out the grimness of a time like this—we desperately want to ease our pain. We grab hold of distractions like Christmas parties and movies and music and decorations and gift-giving.

 

And yet, it’s good to step aside from our giddy Christmas festivities to pray for those suffering around us, in our nation, and around the world—those staggering beneath life’s crushing load.

 

But let’s go beyond that—let’s remember the suffering and sadness we have experienced in the past, and let’s remember the ways God stuck with us and got us through to the other side of the pain.

 

Remember the people He used, the Bible verses, the sermons, the stories He used to minister to us and keep us from going under.

 

Let’s always remember the good God brought to us within our past heartaches and sufferings. And then let’s comfort others with the comfort He has given us (1 Corinthians 1:3-4). How? By telling them our stories.

 

“Listen to your life,” wrote Frederick Buechner. “See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and  hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” (Frederick Buechner, Now and Then)

 

Marlene Bagnull wrote, “I discovered the answers he [God] had given me could be a source of help and reassurance to others who asked . . . ‘How Much Longer, Lord?’ . . . I sensed the most difficult things for me to share could be the very words someone else needed to read.” (Marlene Bagnull, Write His Answer)

 

Which people did God use to comfort you when you were staggering beneath life’s crushing load? Thank God for them, (and thank them, too, if you can). Then pass it on: Share your stories with others.

 

Search your mind and heart for stories you need to include in your memoir, stories that will bless and encourage readers.

 

You don’t know what’s in the future—you can’t know now what will be happening in the lives of your kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, and all the others who will someday read your memoir.

 

Right now you can’t know what crushing loads your readers will be carrying.

 

But this is what you can do right now: Ask God to help you remember the good He brought out of your past heartaches and disasters. Dig deeply, layer by layer, and find the gems. Connect the dots.

 

Spend time recalling specifics of your situation,

Bible verses that made a difference,

God’s answer to prayers,

and people who loved you and stuck by your side.

 

And then, ask God to help you write your stories.

Ask Him to use them to give others

courage and hope and faith,

stories that will help them persevere

beneath life’s crushing load.

 

Do you hear that? Will your readers hear that?

Some sounds have died out. Have you ever thought of that?

In your memory, some sounds live on—they are a perfectly normal part of your everyday life—yet they could be sounds your kids or grandkids have never heard.

I thought of that recently when I saw a post on Facebook, and that reminded me of something I found a few years ago: 11 Things That Your Kids Have Probably Never Heard.

Sounds like:

• a rotary dial phone
• a manual typewriter
• a cash register
• and that bell that used to ring when we pulled into a gas station

If those memories make you smile, you’ll enjoy Kara Kovalchik’s 11 Things That Your Kids Have Probably Never Heard.

Enjoy that list, but add to it. Make a list of your own unique sounds and include them in your memoir.

Think about the sound of milking a cow—the sound of warm milk squirting into a metal bucket. I suspect most of your readers have no idea what that sounds like.

People acquainted with only gas or electric “fireplaces” might not know about crackling and hissing sounds that real logs make in real fireplaces.

Those who grew up pre-photocopy machines will remember the sound a mimeograph machine makes.

Did you grow up listening to air-raid sirens? I did.

In my recently published memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir, I included sounds of howler monkeys, Honda 90 motorbikes, bulls chomping on hibiscus plants outside my kitchen window, and mosquitoes buzzing my ears at night.

In my other memoir, Grandma’s Letters from Africa, I recall awakening to the Muslims’ pre-dawn call to prayer from a nearby mosque. I remember the rustle of sun-baked grasses and of lying “in your cot at night, listening to the night sounds—the hollow, terrifying roar of the lion, the bark of the zebra, the ghostly laugh of the hyena, and the pad, pad of invisible feet.” (Camera Trails in Africa, Martin Johnson, 1924)

Frederick Buechner writes of sounds from college days: “I hear the clatter of feet on stone steps and wooden steps, the rifle-shot slap of books dropped to the writing arms of seats in lecture halls. . . and [in the dorm] the playing of everybody’s phonograph at once—‘Honeysuckle Rose,’ ‘People Will Say We’re In Love,’ ‘As Time Goes By.’” (The Sacred Journey)

For your readers’ sake, for your memoir’s sake, do the necessary work to make sounds come to life.

Need help remembering? Close your eyes and go back to that time you want to recapture. Or look through old photos, or read books written in that era. Ask friends and relatives to help you remember.

Also, click on Amber Lea Starfire’s blog post. Even though she’s addressing journal-writers, her advice works for memoirists, too. She’ll help you pin down sounds from your past.

Most of all, have fun writing.

 

Your memoir’s value to readers: Recognizing their story in yours

Our “stories all overlap and mingle like searchlights in the dark. . . .” writes Frederick Buechner. “My story and your story are all part of each other. . . . All our stories are in the end one story, one vast story about being human, being together, being here.”

And he asks what every memoirist must ask: “Does [my] story point beyond itself? Does it mean something?” (The Clown in the Belfry)

The memoirist must be able to answer “Yes.”

You see, it’s tempting to think a memoir is all about you but, at some point in your writing, take a high, wide look from above. For your readers’sake, identify your story’s universal principles, truths, struggles, quests, and values.

Why? Because when your experience exemplifies universals, readers recognize their story in yours. 

A good memoir “always connects the reader's heart with a deeper truth,” writes Jeff Goins. “Memoir is about something that is bigger than you. It's about a part of life we can all connect to.”

Human lives overlap. We all hover within universal human emotions, conditions, and happenings. We all experience joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures, courage and cowardice. We all have chosen wisely as well as foolishly. We are proud of certain moments and ashamed of others. 

Readers, like all of us, feel alone in their wobbly efforts, false starts, dead ends, and meandering lives. One reader might think she's the only one longing to find love or acceptance or success. For another reader, personal transformation hurts and it’s easy for a man to assume he's along in worrying through times of change. Another reader might be struggling to overcome fear.

When readers pick up your memoir, whether they realize it or not they want to see where their lives intersect with yours. They want to relate to you. Within your story, readers can discover they aren't alone: They’ll recognize themselves in your story when you write about issues that concern them, when your story is about more than you. They want to learn from you and apply what you learned to their own lives. Your job, then, is to look for ways your story resonates with all of us.

This is an example of what I mean: “During my intense grieving moments, other people’s stories gave me words to describe the ache that was indescribable. They gave me hope that a new day would dawn, and I would not be stuck in the black forever.” (Dana Goodman, author, In the Cleft: Joy Comes in the Mourning)

In that way, memoirists have the privilege of being what Anaïs Nin calls “the guides and mapmakers.”

Within your story, look for universal principles and truths about honor, tenacity, valor, generosity, kindness, commitment, self-discipline, sympathy, integrity—the list could go on and on.

Stories need takeaways, gifts you offer readers, those “A-ha” moments when the lights come on, when they identify and apply your life’s lessons to their own lives.

Your memoir’s universal appeal and takeaways

can spark defining moments in your readers—

inspiring them to take action, opening for them new opportunities—

and leaving them changed for the better.

As a memoirist, you have the privilege of lighting their way.