Why Write Your Family Stories / Memoir

For the past several editions of my Gates Open blogs, I have been revisiting and giving renewed consideration to different aspects of writing. For now, this investigation has come to an end.  

I am going to present/lead a workshop here in Haliburton called Take a Bite Into Memoir. Accordingly, I have decided that planning for this takes me to another revisit and consolidation of the following”

• Why write your family stories/memoir

• How and where to  begin

• Steps that lead to sharing 

As some of you already know, 21 Smithfield Drive ~ Family Stories is part family stories and part memoir. 

It was very important to me to publish this. I am not a famous person. I haven’t had an experience that the world needs to know. I am certainly not a famous author. I am just me, and I am passionate about my belief that everyone has a story to tell, and it should be told. So why did I tell my stories? Why was it so important to me?

Perhaps the best way to explain this to you is to share the Preface of my book.

Preface

It was the summer of 2022, and a beautiful day for cruising the Ontario Lakes of the Haliburton Highlands. My new computer had arrived the day before, and I was eager to get underway. At 73  years old, I was going to write my book, the stories that had been percolating since childhood. 

“Where should I start? What will I write about?”

“Oh, gramma,” said Ben, “just write the billion stories you tell us!”

***

It was the spring of 1960, and I was on a Saturday morning car ride with my dad. We had just dropped Mom off at Simpson’s, where she worked as a sales clerk, and were listening to CHUM 1050, filling the car with our singing and many conversations. 

“Gates, my mom, your gramma would have loved you, and you would have loved her. You are a lot like her.”

Who was this gramma I had never known? What was she like? I didn’t ask more questions, and now, I will never know what it was like to grow up at the turn of the century, to live in a small rural Quebec town on the Ottawa River and to be the mother of seven children. I wish I knew.

***

I wrote this book, my family stories, my memoir, for my children, grandchildren and the still-to-come great-grandchildren. When great-grandchildren read this book, they will experience, through my lens, the happenings of the war years and the 1950s and 1960s; stories that by that time will have taken place a hundred or so years ago. 

***

I also wrote this book for you. History is people, and our shared everyday life stories are personal and important. When you read this book, it may resonate or take you back to your history. I hope it will inspire you to share your stories. I hope you will be interested in the journey of a unique life lived, and mostly, I hope you will enjoy the variety and the read. 

***

21 Smithfield Drive was the centre of my universe, and, in one way or another, all the stories began there. The first section, called Before There Was Me, largely resulted from my mom sharing her life stories as we drank cup after cup of tea in her red and white kitchen. I also had help with this section from my wonderful cousins, who shared tales from their parents. Of course, the facts in Before There Was Me hold true, but the dialogue benefited from creative inspiration and imagination. Creative dialogue is also occasionally woven into the stories in the remaining two sections. 

Thank you

M. Gail Stelter (AKA Gates or Gatsey)

***

You may still have some hesitation about writing your stories. You may think no one is interested. You will need to decide who your audience is and how to reach them. As you read my preface, you no doubt realized my first audience is my children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren as yet unborn. I have reached my first audience. Well, I don’t know about the great-grandchildren. I see them in my mind’s eye reading my book and understanding in a new way my life and the times in which I lived. Because I am satisfied with my choice of audience, I have done very little marketing of my book. Yes, it is out there on Amazon and Indigo and independent bookstores, but without promotion I can’t expect it to sell, and while I admit it would be nice to get sales and feedback from the world of readers, I know that it won’t.  I still think I might do some marketing someday…maybe, but if not, oh well. My need, my urgency, was to write my stories and get them done and get them in the hands of my four children and nine grandchildren before I am truly done. Success!

I hope I have convinced you that writing your stories, your memoir, is important. Here are a few authors who want you to know this and to act on it. 

• Sue Monk Kidd, author: “Stories have to be told, or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.”

• Frank Delaney, author: "To understand and reconnect with our stories, the stories of our ancestors, is to build our identities."

• Liam Callanan, author: “We all carry inside us people who came before us.” 

After one of my daughters read my book, she contacted me about my childhood and how she gained a new understanding and empathy. She spoke of it as, indeed, being “ the doorway to greater love”. Is there any better reason for writing your family stories/memoir? I think not.  

• Carole E. Anderson, author: “It is hard for a child to imagine that her parents were ever children themselves, and that their life events also shaped them into the adults they became. This discovery was the doorway to my greater benevolence and love for my parents as human beings.”

That’s all for this edition. Next  time: How and where to start writing your stories

Thank you

Gail