Who Am I To Write a Memoir?

Read time: 5 minutes

Welcome to The Ascend Archives Weekend Edition where I share insights from the brightest minds in business and life and how I'm applying them to my life.

I’ve been playing around with the idea of writing a memoir for a few months now.

The word memoir sounds daunting: entire book about someone’s life?

Who am I to write a book about myself?

However, when I forget about what it sounds like and think about what it would feel like to write a memoir, it energizes me. I enjoy writing, storytelling, reflecting, and distilling lessons. I have fun writing the stories for this newsletter. So wouldn’t a memoir just be a big collection of these stories in one place?

But I’m scared. Scared it’s going to be hard, scared I’m not ready to write it yet, scared I won’t have enough to say, and scared it might not be the best use of my time. Because of these thoughts, I have not taken action. I wrote it down on a list of goals. I’ve floated the idea to a few friends. But I haven’t started.

This week as I was re-reading some of my journal entries from the past month, I realized that me being scared was the exact signal telling me it’s something I should pursue.

It’s time to run towards fear.

So this is me saying I’m gonna go for it. I’m not saying I’ll get it published and not committing to a word count or deadline. But I’m going to draft a table of contents with the stories and experiences I want to explore and I’m just gonna start writing. We’ll see where it takes me.

I also recently signed up to take the final cohort of Write of Passage, a five-week writing bootcamp taught by David Perell, one of the top writers on the internet. I’ll get access to live training sessions, a community of writers, and detailed feedback on my writing. It’s an investment in myself and my writing and I’m stoked for it.

Advice on how to write your personal story

David also has a podcast where he interviews top authors, entrepreneurs, executives, and other creatives to dig into how they think about writing. I listened to a recent episode with Rob Henderson where they discussed his recently published book called Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class. Rob shared how he approached his memoir and what advice he would give to people looking to write their own.

Here are a few things I’m going to implement in my writing:

1. A memoir is not just loose anecdotes. It should center around a theme.

Initially, I just thought I could write a bunch of random stories from my life and throw them together. But that’s not the case. When I think about some of my favorite memoirs, Rob is right about there being a theme. He encourages the author to answer the questions:

1. What do you want the reader to get out of the book?

2. How does each story tie into the theme?

Phil Knight’s memoir Shoe Dog is all about perseverance. Bob Iger’s memoir The Ride of a Lifetime is all about leadership. When I started thinking about my life thus far and many of the stories I’ve shared in this newsletter, a common pattern I saw was around taking action. It’s a very broad topic so I’ll continue to explore it as I begin writing but feels like a good starting point.

2. There are different ways to tell stories from your past.

Rob discusses the voice of innocence and the voice of experience.

The voice of innocence is when you tell a story in the present tense and the characters don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. While the voice of experience incorporates hindsight when recalling the past story. There are pros and cons to each and it’s important to think about what the purpose of the story is.

I love using present tense to really draw the reader in and make them feel like they are right there with you. But sometimes it’s more effective to share the context in past tense.

3. Take the reader on a journey.

When mapping out the memoir, it should follow a story arch just like a fiction book or movie. It’s important to incorporate emotional variance within chapters and across chapters.

For example, one chapter can be a sad story that ends in heartbreak, but that should be followed by an uplifting story about a triumph. If the entire book is about all of my wins then that will get boring real fast.

4. How to deal with writing about others

Rob gives some solid advice about how to handle talking about other people in your stories.

Naturally, many of my stories will include other people: family, friends, colleagues, and teammates. I’m choosing to share these stories but they are not. While I’m happy to share my losses, things I messed up on, and bad decisions I’ve made, I’ll be sure to be cautious about which details to include when discussing situations that could be a bad look for others.

5. How to help jog your memories

Part of the reason I want to write this now is that I want to capture the stories from my past 20ish years while the memories are still somewhat fresh. I’ll never be able to know for certain exactly what happened, but capturing them now vs waiting until I’m 50 or 60 should probably help.

Rob encourages writers to activate other senses to jog memories from the past. When I try writing a story from my high school basketball Regional Championship, I can listen to the music that was on our pre-game playlist. Or if I’m trying to recall those long days in college making sales calls for the Michigan Solar Car Team, I could go back to Ann Arbor and revisit the buildings I spent hours in.

But the strongest sense, according to Rob, is smell. So when I’m trying to recall early childhood memories with my family, maybe I can cook some Matzah Ball Soup to get that smell that takes me back to my mom’s kitchen as a kid.

6. How to decide what stories to include

On one hand, I questioned whether I would have enough to write about. On the other hand, I have 28 years of experiences to choose from. How do I pick what to include?

Rob believes a great indicator of stories you should include is how scared you are to share them. The more vulnerable and defenseless you feel after sharing the story, the more you should put the story in the memoir.

I agree. The point of the memoir and capturing these stories isn’t to just create a highlight reel from my life. I want to document these experiences and pull out the lessons that I can apply for my life moving forward and that I can share with my kids and grandkids one day. The only way to do that is to be vulnerable and keep it real.

7. It’s going to be tough

Writing is not easy. Storytelling is not easy. Recalling the past is not easy.

Rob talks about the emotional toll it took him to revisit his past to write his memoir. It was exhausting going back and reliving moments from his life, especially the more difficult ones. As he was writing his memoir, it sparked dreams and flashbacks that he always had to be ready to write down so that he didn’t forget.

He said that it was an intense time living in the past. He’s glad he did it, but after finishing the book, he was excited to get back to the present and not think about his past for a while.

I’m in a season right now where I’m excited about storytelling and distilling lessons so I’m excited to explore this. But I am interested if I will also experience a burnout of sorts where I’m no longer excited to document and just want to live.

If you have ever written a memoir or are interested in writing one, let me know! Would love to get some more tips and best practices.

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated, what didn’t, or what you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew