Write my memoir, you say? But I haven’t lived a very interesting life! I don’t have any good ideas! I don’t enjoy writing, and I’m not good at it!
It doesn’t matter. You have to write your memoir. Not only for the sake of historical preservation, although that is a good reason. More on that later.
None of the excuses listed above is a dealbreaker, and I’ll break down why below.
But I haven’t lived a very interesting life!
So you weren’t an astronaut. So you didn’t Forrest-Gump your way through the twentieth century. So you didn’t get high with Huey Lewis (and/or the News) or Hootie (and/or the Blowfish).
You don’t need to have lived an Interesting Life to write your memoir. Because here’s the thing: you did live an interesting life. You presumably have consciousness, and you walked around for a few decades on this earth with your sentient brain, observing things that no one else observed and will never again: at least not the way you did.
Though your memories may not be that important to you, they will provide future generations with invaluable insight into what life was like in your time. Sure, there’s newspapers and news reports and all that, but none of those can tell us what happened at your grandmother’s house in Sandusky, Ohio, on Christmas Day 1957. And that sort of stuff is endlessly fascinating to anyone with even a whisper of interest in family history.
I had the pleasure of helping my uncle self-publish his memoir, Sweet Love Remembered (available for purchase). He grew up in Eastern Washington in the 1940s and 50s, served in the US Navy for twenty years (including in Vietnam); and began another career as a wine grape grower on the same farm where he grew up.
His memoir includes some stories I’d heard at family reunions, but the vast majority of the book covers things I had no idea about because no one thought to tell me. It’s filled with “slice of life” flavor: the type of stuff that doesn’t work as an anecdote but rather as part of a broader historical landscape. What things used to cost, how people used to communicate, buildings that used to exist, etc. The book includes not only stories about my uncle’s life but stories about my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, and many other family members I knew little about. And now it’s a book I can pick up at any time and tap into incredible pieces of family history that might otherwise have disappeared forever.
I don’t enjoy writing, and I’m not good at it!
Here’s a little secret: no one really likes writing. We like having written.
Sure, there are weirdos out there who say they like writing, and maybe they do, but I suspect they’re performing, or they’re sadomasochists, or both. Yes, writing is occasionally fun, but it’s mostly a struggle punctuated by frustration, procrastination, and rarely, brilliance. It’s hard enough for people who consider themselves writers—it’s especially difficult for folks who don’t write on a regular basis.
The point is, you can still write your memoir without writing your memoir. Instead of plopping down in front of your computer for an hour each day, try pouring yourself a whiskey and dictating your memories into your phone (you probably have a voice memo app already installed). Once you’ve poured out all your memories, you can use cheap software to transcribe the audio in seconds with 95 percent accuracy.
That’s not going to be a fully formed readable memoir, of course: that’s where a ghostwriter and editor (like me *wink*) comes in. They can take that transcript, maybe ask a few follow-up questions, and craft a compelling narrative. And a designer (like me *double wink*) can create the cover and interior layout to give it the look of an actual book. Finally, a self-publishing expert (like me *octuple wink*) can either negotiate with a printer or upload your book to a print-on-demand publishing service to make your book widely available.
This is very close to what my great-great-granduncle John Quincy Adams Young did in 1889 (his name is a story in itself). There weren’t any voice memo apps, of course, and no software to automatically transcribe his words. Instead the job fell to his daughter Mabel Young McIlwain, who used her ears to listen to and her hands to transcribe JQA Young’s story.
And what a story it was: he told about his father, Elam Young, who fought in the War of 1812. JQA Young himself was born in Ohio in 1828, and in 1846 he and his family set off on the Oregon Trail. On the way to Oregon, they decided to winter with missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman near what is now Walla Walla, Washington. In November 1847, JQA Young and family were caught up in the Whitman Massacre, during which thirteen people were killed by Cayuse Indians (who weren’t without cause, it should be said). Among the thirteen was James Young, JQA Young’s brother and my other great-great-grand uncle. JQA Young himself was held hostage by the Cayuse for a month afterward. He eventually made his way to Oregon, in present-day Cedar Mill, where he had a mess of kids and even became postmaster. His house still stands along Cornell Road.
Are you kidding me?! This is incredible stuff. And the only reason I know about it is because JQA Young, perhaps at his daughter’s urging, recorded his perspective of these events for little old me to absorb.
Even if you didn’t live through something as historically significant as the Whitman Massacre, your life matters. When you’re gone, every mundane detail of your life will be captivating to your loved ones. You won’t be around anymore to impart your wisdom or memories or nutty sense of humor; your memoir, if it exists, will become the sole source.
Let me share one more profound way a loved one’s memoir has impacted my life. Diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, my dad decided to record a series of anecdotes about his life. He sat down almost every day and cranked out a hundred stories in no particular order. Soon it ballooned to two hundred, with contributions from friends and family. Mere months before his death in 2016, I helped him bind his stories into a volume that I and many other family members will cherish forever. I can no longer ask him about his childhood, but I can reach for his book of anecdotes anytime I like and feel connected to him again.
You don’t need to have lived an interesting life to write a memoir. You don’t need an innate writing ability. You don’t need to have an interesting outlook or conceit or structure—the narrative doesn’t even need to be chronological. You just need a bit of time, discipline, and perhaps some outside help to get you across the finish line.
Writing a memoir is not a vanity project: precisely the opposite. It’s an incredible, selfless gift for the loved ones who will survive you: and it could help descendants learn a little about themselves.
So please please please write your memoir. And if you want any help, give me a holler.