Is My Life Interesting Enough for a Memoir?
The right editor or ghostwriter can help your memoir read like a motion picture of your life.
I hear this all the time. The person asking sometimes replace the word interesting with great, special, dramatic, exciting, or unique.
That question usually implies that memoirs are only for people who’ve lived extraordinary lives or experienced “next-level” events. Or sometimes it implies: Imagine the ego someone must have to write a whole book about their own life!
However, as a ghostwriter of memoirs, I answer this differently.
What drives an author to pen an autobiography varies. We’ve had clients who wished to—
Document their history for future generations.
Share victories and successes as a roadmap for others.
Reveal personal traumas, tragic events, or setbacks to encourage others that they, too, can overcome hardships.
Write as a cathartic process to examine their lives.
At Spiritus Books, we’ve discovered two truths about memoirs.
Everyone has a story worth sharing.
Read that again. Everyone. Has. A. Story. Worth. Sharing.
“I’m boring,” you argue. “Nothing has happened in my life.”
Nonsense. No human being has or will ever take the same journey you’ve taken. If that doesn’t sound like a book worth writing, it will when you add the second truth.
Every powerful story needs a unique hook.
Three thousand years ago, King Solomon wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun.” It remains true today. Many things change—technology, styles, values, languages, etc.—but most stories sample the same basic themes: love, hate, war, peace, problems, solutions, rags to riches, riches to rags, success from humble beginnings, and living through pain, grief, and human suffering.
It’s not a story alone that makes a book engaging and memorable; every powerful story needs a hook that offers the reader a unique and engaging perspective. This involves finding an arc that captivates a reader from the first page to the last.
When you put these two truths together, you can see why readers would fall in love with a story like Liz’s, a single mom who works two jobs to care for her three children while founding a business that ultimately earns millions of dollars. Or how about Peter, a man who saves his spare change for thirty years to make a sizeable down-payment on a home—for a stranger?
When you’re ready to start working on your memoir or autobiography, reach out to us. Whether through author coaching, editing, or ghostwriting, we’ll guide you through the process, help you identify the most powerful arc for your story, and do the heavy lifting for you.
Happy writing…
