How *not* to write your life story

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in career,community,history,home,identity,memoir

Jo Parfitt and her training ground

By JO PARFITT

If you live overseas, chances are you’re already what the author of Diplomatic Incidents calls ‘happening prone’. In an unfamiliar environment the things that happen to us — good, bad or downright funny — tend to be magnified.

Perfect material for life writing!

After twenty years of writing and publishing abroad I make my living sharing what I’ve learned. Especially the mistakes.

These seven don’ts can be a waste of time and talent, and often destroy a good writer’s confidence.

  1. Start writing before you’ve read other books like the one you hope to write.
  2. Start writing before you’re sure there’s a market for books like yours. The Wealthy Author is great at this.
  3. Start writing your own stories before you’ve practised your craft and received feedback. An effective story needs “s-p-i-c-e”: specifics, place, incident, character and emotion.
  4. Start writing your life story before you have a support network in place. A writers’ circle, a mentor or teacher who can ensure you find out where you’re going wrong — and right.
  5. Write the entire book before you know what you’re doing and have received feedback that confirms you’re on the right track.
  6. Start writing before you understand why you’re doing it. Money, leaving a legacy, fame or just wanting to share your story are typical motives but each can require a different approach.
  7. Think that just because someone has already written an Eat, Pray, Love or a Tales from the Expat Harem you can’t do it too. Formulas do work, and are even stronger when differentiated.

What other lessons have you learned from writing about your out-of-the-ordinary life?

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Jo Parfitt is a writer, author of 27 books, speaker, publisher and writers’ mentor currently based in The Hague, Netherlands. Want more advice from Jo? Pick up a free report here.
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Learn to effectively write about your happening-prone life, with Jo’s Write Your Life Stories (aff) home study program… €97 8-session course contains workbooks, video and audio guidance.

and you’re eligible for this expat+HAREM freebie: Get a complimentary PDF copy of Jo’s publication RELEASE THE BOOK WITHIN (a €10 value) by writing “expat+HAREM” in the comment area when you buy the product.


Related posts:

  1. Writing to save your life: defining moments become your story

Tagged as: book market, Cherry Denman, comparable titles, critique group, Diplomatic Incidents, Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, expat writing coach, expat+HAREM series, Jo Parfitt, publishing abroad, Tales from the Expat Harem, The Wealthy Author, writers circle, writing mentor, writing mistakes

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  • MARIE

    yes, you are right
    recently, I have mad my mind to pick up all pieces of paper I have wrote and collect over the years …. my diary and I am trying to make a book out of that material. we see what will happen.

  • http://twitter.com/JoParfitt Jo Parfitt

    I agree with Sean that writing a proposal can be a great way to find out if you can sustain your idea and that you really do have a theme and a focus. In fact, I created a 15 page document that I call From Pipedream to Proposal that I give to my new clients for just this reason. They need to check they have their ‘ducks in a row’ and that they have considered important aspects. If anyone here at Expat+HAREM would like a copy, then just send me an email to ask!

  • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

    Thanks Jo. What I like most about these points is that they are both encouragement (you can do it! your ‘happenings’ abroad are interesting to others!) and caution (know where you’re heading and why and don’t go alone!). The balance of the two equals an engine, and a steering wheel…

  • http://twitter.com/seanpaulkelley Sean Paul Kelley

    Anastasia’s tweet elicited the following two tweets from me: “I would also add that before writing one does a book proposal first. It helps map out the narrative arc much better than without.”

    “I say that because now that I’ve written the proposal, I’ve found I need to go back and seriously do a lot of rewriting.”

    I cannot reinforce this enough. It goes to the heart of many of the seven don’ts listed. It is absolutely critical to be sure of what you are writing and why. Putting together a book proposal forced me to rethink the major themes of my travel memoir/narrative in a way that I did not when I set down to write the rough draft. A 100,000 words later (and some good material to work with) I realized when putting the book proposal together than focusing on the main themes of the book, avoiding redundancy and identifying the main characters was essential. I also had a very real problem on my hands with chronology. During my year of wandering I backtracked a great deal and the rough draft shows this–and it doesn’t work. I had to make some very critical decisions and when I mapped out the chapter summaries in the book proposal I saw this.

    • http://twitter.com/seanpaulkelley Sean Paul Kelley

      Ack, the edit function is Diqus is wonky. I mean to say:

      Anastasia’s tweet elicited the following two tweets from me: “I would also add that before writing one does a book proposal first. It helps map out the narrative arc much better than without.”

      “I say that because now that I’ve written the proposal, I’ve found I need to go back and seriously do a lot of rewriting.”

      I cannot reinforce this enough. It goes to the heart of many of the seven don’ts listed. It is absolutely critical to be sure of what you are writing and why. Putting together a book proposal forced me to rethink the major themes of my travel memoir/narrative in a way that I did not when I set down to write the rough draft. A 100,000 words later (and some good material to work with) I realized when putting the book proposal together than focusing on the main themes of the book, avoiding redundancy and identifying the main characters was essential. I also had a very real problem on my hands with chronology. During my year of wandering I backtracked a great deal and the rough draft shows this–and it didn’t work in a narrative sense. When I mapped out the chapter summaries in the book proposal I saw this.

      How to make sense of your narrative is essential. What experiences to use, which not to. A book proposal FIRST helps flesh this all out.

      • http://www.expatharem.com/identity-messages/ Anastasia

        Very much agree, Sean. Memoir can often seem more like novel writing which makes it confusing to approach a book proposal (usually reserved for more straightforward nonfiction).

        This “11 questions to answer before working on your pitch” came across my desk today and even though it makes me sweat to read the bullet points — they all require heavy thinking! — it’d probably be good to have it somewhere at hand in the early days of writing. If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you’ll at least be aware that you need to answer them in the development process!

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