Now, the question is, what do you do when you feel a calling to write your story and share it with the world? Perhaps your parents aren’t happy with the idea of you sharing your story with the world, or someone in your family might not be pleased that you are airing the dirty laundry.
It could also be that someone who is part of your story doesn’t like how you narrate your story the way it happened to you, which will undoubtedly be different from how they experienced the same incident, which can happen when you plan to write a memoir.
A Memoir is Meant to Inspire Others
Essentially, a memoir is a story that is meant to help others navigate difficult situations that you have already navigated in your life. So, how do you tell your story without upsetting other people, especially your loved ones, who are a part of the story?
Writing a memoir is truly one of the most difficult things you can do in life. The reason is that you will essentially be risking your belonging with your family and friends and the tribe that you were born into by telling a story that might not cast them in a favorable light.
Why Is It Challenging to Write A Memoir
Now, while you still care for the safety of your belonging to your tribe – life might still be calling you to write something that is true for you. Usually, this happens when you want to help others and to get things off your chest and onto the page.
Writing a memoir and sharing it with the world can be incredibly helpful for your own mental health and well-being. By getting it out on the page, you can create a distance between you and what happened. What do you do if you still value the relationship with your family and are afraid that they are going to be affected by your choice of writing a memoir?
Writing vs. Publishing – Focus on Writing First
Now, the thing that you should know, which is incredibly important here, is that writing and publishing are two entirely different things. Writing a memoir doesn’t necessarily mean that you must publish it broadly and that you are going to publish it exactly the way you wrote it the first time.
However, you should know that the first draft of your book is incredibly critical. You will need to write things for yourself and yourself alone.
After you have completed your first draft, you can change the names and places to protect your loved ones before publication. Check out the different publishing houses if you are opting for traditional publication, and start preparing the query letters that you need to send out to different literary agents.
Overcome the Resistance
You must learn how to overcome the resistance that you might feel when you sit down to get that first draft out. As much of a human as you are, in the back of your mind, you might worry about how your parents or loved ones would feel if they knew what you were working on.
The idea that you’re upsetting people cannot become a roadblock and prevent you from sitting down and actually jotting down the sentences – one after another. If you are busy with your daily life, you can always hire an experienced memoir writer to pen down your story for your readers.
Embrace Yourself for the Change
There are countless ways that writing a book, especially a memoir, can change you as the person you are. It works as a therapy, and the book is the beginning of who you are meant to be. Writing a book will change the status quo, which is why it might scare you, too.
Writing a memoir can essentially change your life in many different ways. Even if you never publish it – the mere act of writing the book and getting things out of your system will have a serious effect on your life. There are ways that you might not be ready for this change and effect.
It can challenge your set of old beliefs or assumptions that you needed to stick to a few decades ago to survive. But – today, those pain points and fears are essentially out-of-date; still, the little you inside of you might not know this.
The First Step is the Hardest
Starting anything is the hardest – but once you are into it, nothing can stop you. When it comes to the starting line, think about it in terms of writing the first draft. You can calm yourself down by telling yourself that you are just writing the draft and that you don’t necessarily have to publish it.
Tell yourself that you don’t necessarily know what to do once you have completed the draft. Don’t let your fear of what you will be doing after the draft stand in the way of you doing the thing that you know you need to do.
At this point, you don’t want to have second thoughts about how, when, and at what capacity you are going to publish your memoir.
Give Yourself the Space to Write
As we mentioned before, the beginning is always the hardest, especially when it comes to sharing a painful event of your life with the world. You must give yourself the space to write, and don’t let your fear of impacting other people stand in the way of you getting your story onto the page.
Right now, your only focus should be to get the first draft out. You have all the time in the world later on to figure out whether or not it is the right thing to do if you were to publish your memoir.
You might want to talk to a lawyer and ask whether or not you could get in trouble if you were to publish the memoir. There might be places in the memoir where you might need to change your sentence slightly so as not to get in trouble with the law later.
Making a few adjustments here and there in your memoir later can actually change everything. Adjustments can put you outside of legal danger and also calm the hearts of your loved ones who might remember the incident differently.
