“I’d love to write about my life, but I don’t know if that would interest anybody.”

“Who would want to read about my childhood / career / travels / divorce / etc?”

When I lived in Brooklyn, one of my roommates taught math at City College. He taught the same class every semester: freshman-level calc.

“Don’t you get bored?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you rather teach different courses once in a while?”

“No,” he said, “I like this course. I get to see the look on their faces when calculus really clicks. When they understand it for the first time.”

He went on, “When you really understand calculus—like really, truly understand it—it blows your mind.”

*

I think this is true about everything.

The Civil War, our metabolism, our relationships, our daily lives. If we really, truly understood any of those things, we would be in awe.

*

This is definitely true in creative writing. It’s not the event or the plot or the premise that keeps readers reading. It’s how we interpret it. How we tell it.

It’s the search for truth and meaning.

Douglas Adams wrote in Hitchhiker’s Guide:

“Since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation—every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.”*

We can take any starting point—your third-grade lunchbox, the moment you got laid off, a story your grandmother told you—and do a deep dive into it, and come out with something valuable and fascinating.

We humans LOVE when understanding clicks into place. That’s why many of us read.

It doesn’t matter what the starting point is. You can discover deeper truth anywhere.

So don’t waste time doubting how “interesting” your life is. Write it down, and seek to understand it better.

That is what will make readers want to keep reading.

I’m Kimberly, and I’m a ghostwriter and book coach who specializes in novels and memoirs with themes of relationships, mental health, and spirituality.

If you could use some structure, guidance, and support as you write your memoir, or someone to do the actual writing, send me a message.