I spent a good amount of time just now, thinking up and then discarding 10 alternate angles to start this email about personal stories. The fact it took me so long and I still got nothing proves the point I’m trying to get at:
It’s easy to write stories. It’s hard to write personal stories. At least write ’em well.
But what does that mean?
I’ve written thousands of stories, in the context of this newsletter, in sales emails for clients, in Facebook ads, advertorials, sales letters.
Many of those stories were written well, in the sense that people read them, and were then hypnotized — they became open to suggestion and influence.
Most of those thousands of stories involved my clients, or were retold horror stories I’d found online, and one was about Benito Mussolini, and what happened to his corpse after he died.
But out of those thousands of stories, some were also personal stories, featuring me. Some of those personal stories I managed to write well. Some not. I never knew why.
Because of this, I always felt an extra level of confusion, resistance, and doubt whenever I have to tell a personal story. “Is this a good story? Should I include this bit? Is it relevant? Is it interesting? Am I just including it for the sake of ego? Is it irrelevant to the story but somehow important on another level?”
Today I was reading an old issue of the New Yorker. I came across an article, written by Prince Harry’s ghostwriter, about the challenges of ghost writing a memoir for Prince Harry.
“No thank you,” I said immediately, and was ready to turn the page.
But I have this rule that whenever an article seems utterly repulsive to me, I force myself to read it. And good thing I did. I came across the following passage.
The ghostwriter was fighting with Prince Harry over a detail in a story. The prince wanted the detail included. The ghostwriter didn’t. The prince insisted, because this detail showed an important bit of his character. To which the ghostwriter said, “So what?” And he explained:
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Strange as it may seem, memoir isn’t about you. It’s not even the story of your life. It’s a story carved from your life, a particular series of events chosen because they have the greatest resonance for the widest range of people, and at this point in the story those people don’t need to know anything more than that your captors said a cruel thing about your mom.
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I found way of looking at personal stories insightful. I mean, this is what I’ve always done instinctively when writing stories about other people. But it’s something I could never put my finger on when writing stories about myself.
And I’m only telling you I found this insightful because maybe you too have found it frustrating to write personal stories in the past, and maybe you will find this new way of looking at personal stories insightful also.
There were other valuable things that prince Harry’s ghostwriter said, which might be useful to you, whether you’re trying to bring to life your own personal stories, or whether you too work as a ghostwriter. In case you are curious:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/05/15/j-r-moehringer-ghostwriter-prince-harry-memoir-spare