“Will anyone want to read my book?”

“I don’t know how interesting my story is.”

“I want to write my memoir, but I doubt anyone will want to read it.”

Listen:

I’m learning (or attempting to learn) Quechua¹.

Last week, we learned that the word for “child” is gendered – but not according to the child’s gender. It’s according to the parent’s.

Here’s what I mean:

“Wawa” means son or daughter in relation to the mother.

“Churi” means son or daughter in relation to the father.

The same is true for siblings:

“Turi” means brother in relation to a girl.

“Wawqi” means brother in relation to a boy.

I’m still struggling to wrap my head around this. While I do, though, I’m reeling at the sheer fact that language contains so many assumptions, so many things we take for granted, so many things we never even consider questioning.

Language is the lens through which we see the world. And as Brené Brown points out, most of our lenses – our implicit biases – are super-glued to our faces. We often don’t even know they’re there.

Many of us walk around assuming that other languages are just different sets of words for the same things.

But as soon as you start to learn another language – especially one with zero shared roots to your native one – you start to see how many different ways there are of seeing the world. Even seeing something right in front of you.

*

What’s a given for one person is mind-blowing to another.

We often assume that other people take for granted the same thing we take for granted.

That our “normal” is their normal.

It’s not.

The truth is, we have no idea what other people would be surprised about in our daily lives, in our day-to-day thinking.

So all we can do is write truthfully.

Write faithfully what we experience.

Pay attention to what we’re assuming – whether that’s our chosen lifestyle, our ingrained beliefs, or even something as central to our being as our first language.

What’s normal to you is amazing to someone else.

Keep writing.

If you could use some structure, guidance, and support as you write your memoir or novel, reach out to me below.

I’d love to talk to you about how I can help you bring your story to life.

1. Fun fact: Quechua is the language of the Incas and the second most common language in Peru ↩︎