Why Write a Memoir?
Almost a year ago, I sat down at my keyboard. Never once in that moment did I sit down with the intention of writing a book. I was just writing to write.
My husband was in the middle of an exhausting job hunt. When we were supposed to be navigating becoming empty nesters and starting to prepare for retirement in our mid-50s, we instead had to navigate our rapidly draining retirement and life savings after what was, at the time I started writing, a year and a half of unemployment. Getting lost in the blank page was an escape into my memories when the stress of our situation simply became too much to carry. Typing gave me a private refuge when everything else felt out of control and, what now seems a bit dark, a way to get our family history down before I was no longer here to tell it.
What I didn't anticipate was the sheer avalanche waiting behind that first sentence.
Once the floodgates opened, more than thirty years of life came rushing onto the page. There was our time in the Navy, living as a young wife three thousand miles away from home, utterly alone in a strange town for months on end while my husband was deployed. It was a lonely, grueling chapter, but I fought my way through it. Then came civilian life, cross-country moves, career pivots, and our three boys. At one point, I had three toddlers under the age of five, two of them with special needs, navigating endless therapies and medical hurdles in a city far away from any family support system.
When the stress of those years threatened to pull me under, I survived by looking backward. I drew strength from the people who have kept me grounded my entire life: the parents, grandparents, and generations before me who weathered their own storms. Along with the heavy chapters came the camping trips, the dogs, the inside jokes, and just enough absurdity to keep the whole thing from sinking into pure despair.
Before I knew what was happening, what started as personal therapy had grown into a sprawling family saga. Somewhere along the way, I had to face the reality that what I had created was, by definition, a memoir. Even if that narrow label felt far too tidy for the chaotic reality of our lives.
But then I asked myself just why anyone would want to read about my story, a question you even see on YouTube channels: “Don’t write a memoir. Nobody cares.”
The self-doubt took over.
I had always assumed memoirs belonged to a very specific crowd. For starters, I thought they were written by famous people. Presidents wrote memoirs. Movie stars and rock musicians wrote memoirs. People whose names sold the book before anyone even knew what was inside wrote memoirs. If the author wasn't a celebrity, then surely they had survived a historic expedition, escaped a cult, or built a Fortune 500 company selling Ta-Ta Towels on Shark Tank. Let's be real, though. I should say “ghostwriters” wrote memoirs.
I am none of those things. I have no grand claim to fame (well, maybe in my own mind I do). I am simply a wife, a mother, a daughter, and a woman fiercely loyal to her family and to the memory of the people who shaped her. I’m not a lawyer, nor do I have connections in the publishing industry. I’m just a simple person putting words down on paper.
But I kept writing anyway and eventually sent the manuscript to beta readers to see if any of these words resonated beyond my own living room.
When the feedback started rolling in, one specific comparison appeared again and again: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.
I had never heard of the book. Intrigued, I ordered a copy.
From the opening pages, I could not put it down. I laughed, I cried, and I found myself intensely, furiously angry with people I had never met in my life. I had zero personal connection to the Walls family, yet I was turning pages late into the night, desperately rooting for those kids to make it. I understood some of their parents' choices, condemned others, and repeatedly fought the urge to reach straight through the paper to shake someone by the shoulders.
That was when the obvious finally clicked. I didn't pick up that book because I cared about Jeannette Walls beforehand; she was a total stranger. I cared because she told her family's story with enough radical, unvarnished honesty to make me care.
That is why we read other people's lives. We don't need to have lived the exact same path to recognize the grit, the grief, and the fierce, imperfect love in the margins. You don't tell a story because the world already knows who you are. You tell it honestly enough that, for a few hundred pages, they do.
Which brings me to an unfortunate development: I have apparently declared Jeannette Walls my direct rival.
For an unpublished author gearing up to launch her debut, pitting myself against a beloved international bestseller feels like an exceptionally sound business strategy. I would need to convince 12,500 people to buy my book at $8,000 apiece, or find one eccentric billionaire, to even come close to her numbers. According to Gemini's math, anyway.
I will happily link to The Glass Castle because it really is a fantastic read. However, if you click that link and buy a copy, I feel obligated to point out that you are under a binding social contract to buy approximately twenty copies of The Unbreakable Anchor when it lands on Amazon this November. I need to keep the playing field somewhat level. :)
Putting a true story out into the world means accepting that you cannot know how it will be received until you let it go. But after living the madness, surviving the seasons that forged it, and finding my own anchor along the way, I am ready.
Fair is fair, and November will be here before we know it.
We all have stories to tell and stories worth leaving for the next generation. Write them down. Save the ridiculous stories along with the important ones. Write down the names nobody will remember how to spell, the family jokes that make absolutely no sense outside your kitchen, and the stories everyone swears they'll never forget. Because someday, somebody will.
And if you'd like to follow along while I attempt to turn thirty-plus years of family chaos into an actual published book, come aboard. Subscribe to The Anchor newsletter and follow me on social media. I can't promise this will all go according to plan, but at this point, where would be the fun in that?
-TJ Nilsdatter
Comments