If you write it...the readers may come

Memoir doesn't always start at childhood, at the point of trauma or near the end of life.

Writing about your life comes from a pull that is irresistible.  A pull to understand, to interpret for a possible reader and a need to digest.

Writing about your life comes from a germ of a story that you know you want to read.

Wanna believe in the amazing, the improbable and the outside chance?

My writing partner, Steph Jagger didn't wait for her life, that was wonderful by any measure, to fall apart before she tossed the script she'd been living into the wind...

and embarked.

Prompted by a small blue metal sign that some version of appears at the culminating point of every skihill chairlift, Stephanie Jagger read it, savoured its deeper intention, and committed to using it as a metaphor for a multi-month journey chasing winter around the globe:

Lift Your Restraining Device

Photo Credit: theverticalfeat.squarespace.com

Her The Vertical Feat, a memoir of her downhill ski marathon across five continents resulted from an unmistakable magnetic pull to the page where consolidating what she did, with how she evolved, became the purpose of her next life.

But the writing was for the writing’s sake. 

Regardless, the manuscript found its own way to a wider audience, affording women who hesitate to launch themselves into a vortex of change, a window on being rescued by themselves.

Consider this….

August 27, 2014: we meet on Skype and discuss our book status, our writing process, visions for our businesses and the role of our manuscripts in our professional and personal growth.  “I think I’ll rewrite it one more time,” she told me. “Then I’ll start looking for a self-publisher that does a really spectacular job and print some copies as a very expensive business card.”

November, 2014:  we meet in Los Angeles at the Open Books Event, by then we are a threesome, a pack, our own tribe we name the Wolfpack, with a addition of Carly Butler, also a memoirist-to be.  Steph firmly shoots her hand into the air when Danielle Laporte (www.daniellelaporte.com) asks who will be sending a proposal to an agent in the next month.  Steph wins a CD.  She commits to the universe. For a Jagger, a commitment made openly is a commitment fulfilled.

December 1, 2014:  we have read, changed, read and reread the lengthy proposal. Steph presses send.

December 4, 2014:  she is signed by a big-shot Manhattan agent.

January 14, 2015:  she begins meetings with representatives of the five mega publishers in New York City.

January 16, 2015:  she gets a book deal.  A monster of a book deal.

Write it and let the universe decide if your little bits of paper, taped together, clipped into a purse or folded in your bedside table are meant to find an audience.

Because if they are…they will.

Patti

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About Unknown

Patti M Hall is an author, educator and writing coach living near Toronto, Ontario with her two very tall sons.

Hall is a non-fiction writer specializing in the stories of individuals who demonstrate resilience in the face of trauma and personal challenge. Hall is dedicated to helping other people tell their stories through whether that be through authoring books, teaching writers or coaching aspiring memoirists.