Everyday Stories

I’m working on a collection of memoir stories at the moment, most of which involve periods in my life where there was a problem of some kind. These are not hard to find. There have been plenty of times in my life when I’ve been unhappy, and always because I wanted something to be different than it currently was. The primary challenge when writing one of these kinds of stories is to avoid complaining, which is to say, agreeing with the character on the page. He hates what’s going on. I, the author, have to love the whole story if I want to tell it.

However, sometimes things work out just as I’d like them to. Sometimes a person falls in love, or finds the perfect house, or has some success of one kind or another. I felt there was a place in this collection for a story about one of these moments, but as I worked on it, I found it had no juice at all. It felt like I was bragging, which is a lot like complaining. Instead of saying, “Look what happened to poor me!” I was essentially exclaiming, “Look what I did!” It was boring. The reader doesn’t care what I did. I barely care what I did, frankly. Yet, I was sure there was an actual, interesting story to be told.

So, I went back and found the problem that came before the success. There’s always a problem. The success really wouldn’t mean anything to me, wouldn’t have been memorable, if there hadn’t been some conflict, which not surprisingly turned out to be my own lack of faith in myself. I’d just forgotten about that part because it’s a lot nicer to remember the relief than the suffering. In fact, when the relief comes, my first thought is usually, “Never make the mistake of doubting yourself again!”

It's good advice, and if I follow it my memory becomes usefully distorted, the way mothers supposedly forget the pain of childbirth, remembering only the joy of the new infant in their arms. But any woman, if she wanted, could go back and recall the contractions, the pushing, and the “rim of fire” as they baby crowns. And then what if something goes wrong? There’s that too, isn’t there? Yes, the mother knows doubt and pain and then joy. It’s pretty dramatic stuff, really – new life. Yes, it happens every day, everywhere in the world, but it’s still compelling every single time, and it’s why every story is worth telling if you know how.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com