Protagonists

I once heard the memoirist Frank McCourt describe how, when he was still a high school teacher, he’d help his students find good stories in their everyday life. He’d ask one what they did yesterday after school, and they’d invariably say, “Nothing.”

So, he’d push them on this. “What did you do when you got home? Do you see anyone? Did you talk to anyone?”

The student would shrug, and say, “I talked to my mom.”

“What about?”

“Not much. She was really busy.”

“Did you want to talk to her?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Ah,” he’d say. “Now we’ve got something. That’s interesting. How often does that happen, and how do you feel when it does?”

He went on to say there was always a story waiting in these young people’s lives, but they rarely perceived them. McCourt would eventually win a Pulitzer Prize for his first memoir, Angela’s Ashes, so he was perhaps more tuned to finding narratives where someone else might not, but his examples struck me nonetheless. A common fear many of my memoir students share is that their life isn’t that interesting, that nothing they’ve done or experienced is worth writing about.

This is never true. Everyone’s life is worth writing about. The only question is how you see it. There’s a lot to be said about the art of the memoir and personal essay, but all that craft stuff is useless unless you believe your life experiences are valuable. Walking around thinking that nothing happens to you, and nothing you do is interesting, and that no one would care about anything you’ve thought or seen is like casting yourself as an extra in the movie of your own life.

You’re the star, the protagonist. I know you don’t always feel that way. I’ve often thought that if my life were a movie, I wouldn’t watch it. But that’s what every hero believes in the middle of the story, when things seem darkest, when all looks lost. We cheer for that hero anyway, cheer harder maybe because we know the truth. We know it for them, and despite all our grumblings, we know it for us.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com