All of us has a story behind us…and we let our story be told by other people rather than tell it for ourselves. Do not let others tell your story. Tell it yourself.
To begin telling your personal story, you first need to decide exactly what message you want to put out there. This, of course, will depend greatly on your particular story.
I am in the midst of editing my story I have published. It took me two years to write. I just began writing and it came to me that I could write it in chapters where I wrote about earliest childhood (birth, adoption and the people who immediately became my family). Because I am a poet, I went though my poetry that fit into this category and added them. The memories came in a flood. I used poetry as ephemera within the story. Sometimes I can express myself more deeply through poetry writing. Beyond all the correct spelling, the correct everything, there was a lonely woman on a quest. I wanted my real story out there.
Here is how you tell your story:
First, decide what title you name your story. What has your life been about? What is a one, or two, word title you could use to explain the main theme of our story? I have long wondered why the title of my book is “Shhhhhh: A Creation Story”. I know why the 6 ‘h’s… I was 60 years old when I started it. I had spent a decade trying to get some balance in my life. I had an awesome career. I had finally figured out the right kind of relationship for me. I had become ready. And my one deep soulful relationship had happened. I was newly retired. I had moved to Maine. I was, for the first time in my life, ‘peacefully’ happy, greatly loved, and greatly loving in return. I was in the right space to write. I was safe. It was safe to delve into the depths of my psyche and dare to write my truths. It was my story about me, not someone else’s story about me that I had adopted. This was me about me. Raw and real. Even as I write that I felt safe, I was not wholly safe. Criticism, perfectionism, fear, still wandered a few of the halls of my heart. That was the WHY of the ‘Shhhhhh’. The Creation Story. Ah, yes, for I really felt like my life had been about creating myself and that, somehow, I had come through many obstacles to become who I was. And I finally loved who I was.
What kinds of obstacles have you come through to be who you are today? What are those things/were those things that changed you, that healed you(?), that makes you who you are? Who are the people in your past and present that helped you become you? What deep defining moments brought you here? And who do you, yet, hope to become?
You simply pick up some paper and start writing memories, moments, miseries and, yes, sometimes unmentionables. Just write and write and spend nights and days and months, and, yes, even years, writing thoughts and keep them bundled up all together. Eventually you will find some chapters. And you pile the written stories and memories into those chapters. I wrote on napkins, on toilet paper, on cardboard, on anything I could find when a memory or thought stirred. I gathered each ‘chapter’ in a file folder, then into binders when they got too large to fit int heir original gathering space. I spent days and weeks and months sorting out each chapter. Then, I simply sat at my computer and began typing, cutting, pasting, until I had things in logical order. I put everything in a flash drive, took it to a Staples and had it printed all out. Then I edited and edited and edited. When I thought I had written it all, I had not. As I had been writing, I realised that my educational background took over and suddenly, I knew I had to go over each line with a fine-tooth comb because something more than spilling my guts had happened. I had just self-analyzed myself. I was able to divorce my Ego. Then I was able to free-flow thoughts. Then I was able to go back and read it all objectively. As I did this, I realized the WHY of myself. I was able to go back in and use my own writing to heal myself.
I realized, in my writing and preparing to publish, I had some hope to offer some of my sisters who follow along, might walk some same path I walked in life, and might give up hope. My life story is a story of hope… and the struggle it might take to get it.
I did not write my story for me. It became whispers of someone who had been through ‘stuff’ that could whisper, “You can do it!” “You can bear it!” “Here I am if you need me to brace your back!”
Begin, sisterfriends, simply begin. One crumpled thrown=away sheet after another until it sorts itself out and becomes the truest story of you that will ever be told.
©Carol Desjarlais 3.29.23
P.S. I am in the midst of doing a decent edit, yet, again. I will share when it is ready for good publication.
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