One of the best parts of my job is talking to amazing people who are experts in their lived experiences. These are people who have gained rare and valuable wisdom after surviving incredible challenges.
One of the worst parts of my job is realizing how many of them don’t believe they deserve to tell their story. They feel lost and overwhelmed because they can’t find the support they need to write their book. When you don’t have support, you don’t finish your project. This can lead you to self-doubt, as well as saying terrible things about yourself that you would never say about a friend.
The problem is not that you don’t know what you’re doing or that you don’t deserve to write a book. The problem is our culture. Here are three cultural beliefs that can become the reasons we don’t finish our memoir.
Group-Project Mentality
The first reason is our culture’s group-project mentality. Like most of us, I bet you dreaded group projects when you were in school.
Maybe you were the person in the group who did all the work. You carried the entire load, everyone else took credit for it, and you all received the same grade. Or maybe you were the shy person in the group. You knew you could make some amazing contributions, but couldn’t bear to put yourself on the line.
Either way, the problem is the same: you didn’t feel comfortable asking for help. This can sabotage your ability to write a book and everything else in your life. When we don’t ask for help, we struggle to accomplish anything greater than what we already have.
The Concept of the Lone Writer
Every author you admire had a team, in one form or another, to help them. If you’re learning this for the first time, that’s because of the second problem in our culture: the concept of the lone writer who shuts themselves away in a snowed-in cabin to work on their book.
Our culture tells us that we should be like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Obviously, the axe-murdering horror story doesn’t apply here. What does apply is the romanticized belief that when we write, we should be a lone wolf. Just us, a laptop (or typewriter), and no other support.
This isn’t how it works, but recent changes in the book publishing industry have led people to believe otherwise. Before the economy crashed in 2008, authors would reach out to a publisher and say they had an idea, also known as a book proposal. If an editor was interested in the book proposal, they were paid to help the author finish the book—and finish it well. That means the editor not only provided the writer coaching, support, and accountability, but also helped them edit and develop their ideas.
Unfortunately, publishing houses had to find ways to increase their margins after 2008. Editors were expected to take on more books, which meant they had less time to provide the one-on-one coaching and support that authors were used to receiving.
This leaves us with the belief that it’s just the author and the publisher, with no one else in between. It wasn’t true then and it’s certainly not true now. Books are never written in isolation, and trying to be a lone wolf is not going to work for you. The reality is that you’re going to need some support.
Inspiration Doesn’t Strike Like Lightning
A third problem is the cultural belief that inspiration will hit us like a bolt of lightning. We see this in the media all the time. Someone opens their eyes and suddenly has an idea for their book. They race to their computer and start typing, but this is not what happens to authors in reality.
Instead, there is an entire process for writing a book. We call it the Memoir Method. The Memoir Method is a system that shows you how to develop a strong idea, structure it in a way that speaks to readers, and put the pieces together to form a book. Yes, it feels great when we experience a sudden burst of creativity, but the most efficient and prolific writers don’t wait to feel inspired. They don’t need to wait because they have a system.
When we wait for creative lightning to strike, we don’t make progress. Even if you set aside two hours every Saturday morning to work on your book, what happens if you sit down and don’t feel any inspiration? You’re not going to move forward. If, on the other hand, you sit down for those two hours and know exactly what you need to work on next—whether you feel inspired or not—I find that nine times out of ten, the inspiration comes.
Our culture tells us that inspiration will strike when it’s ready, and that if it doesn’t strike, we’re not ready to be an author. This is not true. It is just a cultural lie. These cultural lies mean that we’ve been working with a lot of bad information, so it’s no wonder we struggle to finish our book.
You Need Support
The one thing they have in common—the group-project mentality, the concept of the lone wolf author, and the belief that inspiration strikes out of nowhere—is that all of them lead us to the conclusion that we don’t need support. They tell us we can do it on our own if we’re determined to work hard enough.
All that does is blame your lack of progress on you. You are not the problem. If you’re not making progress, it’s because you don’t have the support you need. You deserve to have support and invest your time, energy, and money into your dream of writing a book. Investing in your book will not become a detriment to the other things in your life, such as children. In fact, if you have children, think about how grateful they would be to have that book.
At Page & Podium Press, we’ve written books for people who passed away before their book was published, with the help of their loved ones. Your stories are precious. If you never share them, we never hear them. In my experience, loved ones, such as children, would want you to put your stories first.
You can still invest time, energy, and money into your book while you work on your career. This experience will give you so much clarity about your purpose in life that it will help you reach any career goal you have. Even if you feel like the time you spend on writing takes away from the time you spend on your hobbies and rest, you’re going to heal when you start putting words on the page.
What you need is industry support. There’s plenty of great information on Google, but that’s not enough to support your writing. Real industry support means having a professional who knows your specific book, struggles, and difficulties, and who can talk you through the process and get you where you want to go.
If you think that working with Page & Podium Press is the best way to get industry support, I invite you to check out The Memoir Method Group Program.
I would love to have you as part of the program, and hope you’ll head over to download our checklist and learn more. I’m also more than happy to chat with you about whether this program is the right fit for the book you want to write.
If your memoir feels like it’s on hold because you’re too busy diving down the Google rabbit hole to find the answers to your writing and publishing questions, then I have a free download just for you!
The Memoir Method Checklist will guide you through every stage of writing and sharing your memoir with the public. From developing and outlining to publishing and promoting, following this checklist will help you write a memoir that you are proud to publish. If you download it today, you’re get a free bonus training video that dives deep into all the things you need to do to clarify your memoir’s theme, messages, and intervention before you outline your book.
Happy writing!
