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Saturday, March 19, 2016

Memoir Writing is everywhere

As I struggle to start my own memoir writing business I see snippets of my dream nearly daily in my walk through life. My plan is to find some people and record their stories for future generations. With Ancestry.com has come a boom in people wanting to know their family history. How much simpler it would be if we all just took some time to record our stories.

Life zooms by at warp speed for years. Then we reach a stage where we are no longer interested in telling our story. My goal is to find people in-between who want to tell their story and need a willing audience to listen.

One such snippet happened last month when one of my favorite pastors, Pastor Doug, preached at my favorite weekly worship service (Worship in a New Key -- WINK) about Derek Webb, a Christian singer. I was immediately drawn the the Derek Webb quote on the front of the bulletin: 
"Never oversimplify yourself by using a single word or category to describe who you are. Take the time to tell your story."
Wow! Take the time to tell your story. Better yet, take the time to hire me to record your story.

This week at bible study we discussed Christian writer/theologian Frederick Buechner who said 
"the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."
For me this place is in recording people's stories. 

I love listening to people talk. I often become drawn into a conversation with a stranger where I am learning all sorts of neat things about them, but there is a part of me saying "dang, why am I not recording all of this?"

Whenever I tell people about my plan almost always they say they wish they had recorded their parents/grandparents/aunts/uncles/friends telling their stories. Now is the time! 

My business model is simple. I will sit with people, record their stories, and present them in a book. Projects will include time spent interviewing, transcribing, turning it into a story, scanning photographs and other ephemera, and other tasks unique to each history.

Help me find people who would value this type of work. 

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