Writing can be a lonely task, but some writers lean into that a little too hard, keeping all their cards close to their chest during the writing process and refusing to talk about their memoir until it’s published. To talk about your memoir, or any work in progress, might feel awkward and intimidating, but that’s exactly why you should be doing it—not later, but now. Talking about your memoir takes practice, and you want to build that muscle right alongside the writing process itself. This week, we’re looking at why keeping your family and friends in the loop during your writing process can make your work stronger—and your experience far more sustainable.
Why People Fear Sharing
It’s very common for writers, especially ones who hold themselves to high standards, to work on their memoirs for a long time before telling anyone. Of all the many reasons for this, one of the most common is a fear they’ll never finish. Sharing that you’re working on a memoir can make you feel vulnerable to judgment, but that vulnerability can be reframed into something much more useful.
There is something unsettling about letting people know you’re writing about them. We can anticipate distrustful reactions, which can increase our own anxiety. But often, we’re simply making disclosure out to be scarier than it actually is. Memoir writers who have worked with us at Page & Podium have told us that sharing their writing with people in their lives—including the people featured in their memoirs—has been mostly a relief.
The more we talk about our memoirs, the easier it gets. Not only that, but it also helps many writers home in on what their books are about, the purpose writing them provides, and what their next steps should be. It can illuminate ways their books can help other people or elevate their thought leadership.
The following tips will ideally help you make progress on your book, not only in terms of writing and publishing it, but also as you make that completed book as excellent as you want it to be.
Craft Your Elevator Pitch
Fitting an explanation of your book into your back pocket can be as useful as a Swiss army knife—it assists both in your writing and down the road in your marketing. Conversations with friends and family about your memoir can fluster you when you’re not prepared, and that can be demoralizing and give us nasty cases of impostor syndrome. Then, we may not want to talk about the book at all.
The term “elevator pitch” may sound a little corporate, a little salesy, and using it might feel that way at first. It’s easy to feel like compressing your book into that pocket-sized summary makes it less artistic. But once you have one, it can give you not only security in conversation, but essential insight into what finishing your book will look like.
Here’s a little Mad Lib you can use to create your elevator pitch:
“My book is about [topic], and by talking about that topic, I hope to convey [message].”
The hard part, of course, is honing and plugging in both the topic and the message to the template. But you only really need to get it to 80% accuracy to begin with. Once you’re there, you can start sharing it. And the more you share it, the more you can shape it into something that really resonates with both you and those you’re speaking to. Clients who use this method were usually delighted that they needed fewer words to explain themselves. The experience provided them with mental clarity in addition to a clearer message, and the result helped ease their conversations and move their writing forward.
Ask Questions Without Crowdsourcing Your Story
The second tip for talking with friends and family about your memoir is to ask them for their recollections. I’m not suggesting you crowdsource your memoir or asking everyone how they remember certain events from your past. What makes your memoir shine is your ability to hold onto your own perspective.
However, these conversations can help jog your memory about the way events unfolded from multiple points of view. Think of these talks as gathering data. You aren’t trying to fact check so much as you’re looking for information that you may have forgotten, or more profound understandings of events that seemed less important to you.
The other good thing that happens when you ask friends and family about how they recall events is that you generate buzz about your book. People love to reminisce together, particularly if the memories are neutral or even nostalgic. A bit of interpersonal connection can provide powerful support as you write.
Ask What Moments They Think Would Matter
Writers agonize over deciding what parts of their lives are worth writing about, which should be made central to the plot, and which should be left out of the final book. Having someone else share what events they imagine fit your message and topic can help you manage overwhelm, especially if they know you well.
Asking others what they think made heavy impressions on you can be tricky, and you won’t always anticipate their responses. That’s to be expected, because we writers spend a lot of time in our own little thought bubbles. Though your memoir is primarily about your experience, sometimes people will bring events to the surface that you’ve forgotten about. Do those events have to be at the center of your memoir? Absolutely not. But sometimes, and especially if they’re smaller anecdotes, they can provide color and help bring motifs and throughlines to light.
Anecdotes can help texturize your book, providing variations in tone; if you’re writing something heavy, someone may be able to suggest humorous memories for comic relief. Those moments can be difficult to identify when you’re steeped in traumatic memories, so those outside perspectives can be invaluable to giving your memoir dimension. You don’t have to include them, but they can inform your process.
This is also another opportunity to practice discussing difficult topics. Connecting with others over the project helps you stay accountable, and you can apply that practice to the marketing and promotion phase later on.
Talk About Your Memoir with Featured People
For the sake of transparency, many of the clients we work with share passages from their book with people involved in them. This isn’t about getting anyone else’s approval or getting editing help. This is to help you maintain goodwill with people who have been instrumental, though not necessarily in a negative or positive way, to your story. Overall, it can be an air-clearing experience that creates a more relaxed vibe. Letting the relevant players read what you’ve written about them can soothe anxiety for both of you.
There are two main ways that Page & Podium clients have chosen to share their memoirs with others. Some prefer sitting with the person and reading those key portions of their books aloud. This can be a great strategy, because as you read to them, you will get a sense of their reactions. Another tried and true method is emailing, but if you go that route, I would strongly encourage you to be really clear about what you hope to learn from them. Are you simply sharing in the name of transparency? Would you like to hear whether they remember any details differently? Are you curious whether you’ve gotten your message across? The more specific you can be, the more likely their reply will help make your book better.
There’s another reason that when you send your work to someone, you should explicitly say what you need. It’s because if you don’t, they will have to guess—and often, they will guess that you want them to mark up the passages. Grammar tips aren’t all that helpful at this stage; you’re still developing your voice, and you will likely go through comprehensive editing after a revision or two.
Talk About Your Memoir Process
At Page & Podium, we value the importance of balancing process and product. Writing our books isn’t just about honing the writing itself. We also learn and grow as we reckon with our memories, the way we deal with trauma and nostalgia, how we make meaning, and how we become thought leaders. Writing the memoir becomes about the whole experience of bringing a book from concept to publishing—with all the challenges, emotions, and effort that comes with it.
Product matters, of course. Anyone reading this is deeply invested in making sure that they end up with an excellent book, and communicating that excellence to readers. But it’s just as important to tell people about what you went through as you wrote it. As you complete the book, people will want to know about the process. That uncovers an easy entry point for communicating with the people relevant to your memoir.
As you discuss your process, it helps you identify what wisdom has come from the experience. An easy go-to is talking about your writing schedule: when you write, how often, and for how long. Talk about what writing is like to you—whether you take yourself to a café or find the quietest corner of the house; whether you enjoy listening to jazz or put on a white noise machine; whether you write every day or in a great big chunk once a week. That will segue into discussing the actual work you produce.
Talk About Your Memoir With Others About Finding Meaning
Reserve this for the people closest to you: when you talk about your memoir with people closest to you, discuss the meaning you’ve found as you write about different events in your life. These discussions are for your inner circle, the people you trust with your heart and emotions.
The discoveries you make as you work on your memoir can be jarring, yet rewarding. Writing about things that have happened in your life, even if you’ve gone over and over them in your head for years, can inspire epiphanies and trigger strong emotions both negative and positive. That’s because writing a memoir about a single topic will show you connections between what you’d considered disparate parts of your life, and those connections are often more complex than expected.
These talks aren’t about improving product or process, but to give your discoveries the light and air they deserve. They are what make memoir-writing so healing, and when we share them with the people we care about most, it brings us closer to them.
Unfortunately, there is never going to be a fully frictionless way to start talking about your memoir. We can drown in fears and insecurities, and feel so vulnerable we freeze. When those anxieties meet other people’s suppositions, it’s a recipe for awkwardness. But the only way to get better, just like anything else, is to practice. And if you’re looking for support as you write and gather up the courage to share, you can always get in touch with P&P at the pageandpodium.com contact page.
