When most people imagine a memoir writer, they tend to imagine a celebrity, someone who overcame tragedy, or someone who completed an incredible task. Those kinds of memoirs top bestseller lists and sit on drugstore shelves. Traditional publishers won’t take anyone’s story.
Connie Mae Inglis has a different approach to memoirs. She states that a memoir is not about the person whose name is on the cover. It’s about a universal truth told through individual experiences. For example:
Recovering from religious trauma through building a family and neurofeedback training (The Ninth Child by Lisa May LeBlanc)
Mixing business and faith through operating an international furniture company (Go Big by Richard Magnussen)
How faith evolves through caring for an adult child with bipolar disorder (Born on a Bridge by Connie Inglis)
Each of those is a real memoir. Two are books we have published. The third is Connie’s memoir podcast.
The authors are ordinary people. If they have the makings of a memoir, you do too.
Writing a memoir is deeply personal. Nobody has lived the life that you have, so nobody is able to tell the experiences you can. Because of that, handing out blanket advice on why you should write a memoir would be so generic that it would be useless.
Instead, I will show you some of the reasons Lisa, Richard, and Connie wrote theirs.
All three authors wanted to show their history. Lisa and Richard wrote their memoirs with family members in mind. They all wanted to preserve family stories so future generations could understand them.
Lisa and Connie wrote with healing in mind. By writing about difficult times, they were able to process past events with a new perspective.
All three wrote to inspire others. They wanted to comfort people struggling with isolation and inexperience in challenging times. They wanted to show the hope at the end of the journey.
There are more reasons, of course. If this post has made you start thinking about your memoir, you should take Connie’s four week memoir class. If you sign up now, you will get access to an hour-long video and a hand-out to improve your memoir.
The class starts on November 5th. Each week brings a new lesson, interaction with other students, worksheets, and more.
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