Your Story Matters

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

I’m helping a lady write a book. Which is to say, I’m editing her book. It’s a memoir about her life, but I won’t give away any of the juicy details. She called me the other night to chat about the book, her progress, her timeline, and the feedback I have so far. She was a bit concerned that readers won’t be interested in her story, because it’s a lot like a lot of other stories. Her concern with her uniqueness is not altogether unique, or surprising.

Many things we experience are, at the bottom, quite similar. Deep sadness, profound joy, heartache, triumph, illness, grief, the list goes on and on. We’re all more alike than many of us think, and she was realizing, as many of us eventually do, that she was not as unique as she may have thought. I mean, she is and she isn’t. “I’m just not sure the story is that interesting so far,” she said.

“Maybe it’s interesting to you,” I answered, “but what makes your story different? A lot of people have moments of triumph, like you did, after a terrible thing happened. Show the reader how you got through the terrible thing. I want to feel how you felt, and go with you as you figure out how to triumph. See?”

She was on the precipice of quitting. Writing a book is challenging. It’s time consuming and thankless and extremely frustrating. “I understand…