Life Can Hurt

That's right, life can hurt. It's not news to anyone out there, I'm sure. But when you are writing your autobiography or memoir, this fact can come suddenly into startling relief. Going back over painful memories is the last thing a lot of people want to do, but I find that actually they usually find it quite therapeutive. Now, I'm no shrink and I don't profess to help people with their psychological hangups. (I'd be the last person!) But the memoir-writing process itself does help. I've had clients talk to me about things they've done that they're ashamed of. But when it comes down to a book, what is most interesting is not what you did but WHY you did it. This is the thing that your readers will relate to more than anything. When we look deeply into your motivations for the things you did, your life starts to come more clearly into focus for you. You start to see it in a new light and put the various puzzle pieces together into a logical whole. So, yeah, life can hurt, but memoir-writing can heal.