On With Your Story

It that’s what you think, think again.

An eventful weekend. Satuday I attended a regional Toastmasters conference where a champion speaker Jim Key talked about using the power of stories in speeches. To the frequent objection, “But I don’t have any interesting stories,” he offered this: “Stuff happens, pay attention.” He added, “Live an interesting life, on purpose. Have a child, get a dog.”

This objection about not having stories comes not only from Toastmasters but also from ordinary people about telling and recording their life stories. Jim meant that everyone has interesting stories, if they think about it.

The truth of this became apparent to me at a retirement party I attended the next day. My daughter’s soon-to-be mother-in-law retired from a 30-year career teaching Spanish to high school students. She also taught adult Spanish classes. This admirable woman raised three sons as a single mom, she’s an excellent photographer who exhibits at local shows, and she travels the world. Attending her party were past and present students, friends from her high school days, teacher friends, church friends, Red Hat friends, sons, daughters in law, and grandchildren. She has lots and lots of stories in her and more to come. At the party, she announced,”In my twenties I did what my mother wanted. In my thirties I did what my husband wanted. In my forties I did what I wanted–and in my fifties I stopped feeling guilty about it. In my sixties, well watch out. And in my seventies, life will be even better.”

Every person in the room had great stories, too. A woman in her eighties raised a developmentally disabled son and last year she traveled around Cape Horn. Another woman told a funny story about training her daughter’s dog–a Mastiff mix who is “165 pounds of stupid.” Another woman talked about her son in the Army who is serving in Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. They communicate on Facebook.

Stuff certainly does happen. And it’s interesting.

The May issue of the Biographer’s Craft newsletter is out. I love this free newsletter, edited by James McGrath Morris for “writers and readers of biography.” It is packed with relevant news and interesting articles. The May issue contains a story about how David O. Stewart, author of Impeached: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy, manages a huge cast of minor characters. Family histories can be full of aunts, uncles, and cousins of the first, second, and third kind. Company histories can be populated by an overwhelming number of players also, so I found this article of special interest. “You have to keep people in balance,” Stewart said. “They should get only as much air time as their significance warrants.” It may be tricky to accomplish this in a family history where every person is a relative or sometimes in a company history where the impulse is to be as inclusive as possible. How does Stewart do it? Here’s an excerpt from the newsletter article:

Stewart researches the person’s life with an eye for those things that will illuminate their behavior in the tale he is telling, “You know how they behaved,” he said, “so go back and look for parts in their lives that give some explanation as to why they acted as they did.” The research is the key. Authors gather more information about their subjects than needs to be revealed. “You look for personality traits that will be central to the story you are telling,” Stewart said. “You try to find expressions of that in their lives.”

Good advice for family historians and memoirists–”look for the personality traits that will be central to the story you are telling” and “find expressions of that in their lives.”

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