Today I want to encourage you to celebrate how far you’ve come in writing your memoir, family history or life story. This includes those of you who haven’t started writing yet, who are still researching and organising your information (a big job in itself!).
I was reminded of this after talking to a beloved participant of my memoir course a few days ago. She told me how guilty she felt that she wasn’t further ahead in writing her story.
But the thing is, she’d already written about the first 10 years of her life, which is a lot more than most people will write. So I was feeling quite proud of her. It’s easy to be hard on ourselves when we’re embarking on a big project like this.
I think that as soon as we become students of a course, it’s easy to feel that old pressure we may have felt as kids, when we didn’t get our school work done on time! I certainly feel that on a course I’m currently working through!
But I invited her to reframe the way she was looking at her life story writing process, to celebrate what she had achieved so far, and I want to invite you to do the same.
Celebrate every single word you write, because if you don’t write these words, who will? No one else can write your story in your words. You’re it. So every word, sentence, page, chapter, is just a little bit more information you’re sharing with the world. And trust me, it’s precious information.
Give yourself a nice wee hug, you’ve come a long way.
Charlotte x
PS from now through until the end of November you are invited to join my online course Write Your Memoir for 50% off the usual price. You get access to 50 + lessons, my personal support, and our lovely community. I’m doing this because I’d love to see some of you join up in time for 2025, so I can support you to write your story next year. Click here to read more and here’s a new video I made about my course.
PPS I write these posts to stay in touch and to encourage you to write your memoir. I’m very happy to do this. This is a free service and I love people enjoy these (some people tell me they’ve written their entire books, using these!). Occasionally people email to say they love getting these messages and would like to give me something in return. So this is what I’ve come up with: you could shout me a cuppa via this link. And as I said, there’s absolutely no pressure to, as I enjoy writing these!
Charlotte Squire 