My paying job, teaching creative nonfiction writing, has been one of my life’s greatest gifts. In 1994, I was hired to teach journal writing at what was then Ryerson University. Standing in front of that first class was terrifying; though I’d earned an MFA, I’d published almost nothing, who was I to teach others about writing? But I got through and even enjoyed myself, though realized I wanted to help others tell their own stories, not in loose journals but crafted in personal essay and memoir.

I’ve been doing so ever since. How fortunate to have been doing work I love for thirty years, each year learning more about both writing and teaching. And most of all, about the human soul.

Through each eight-week term, I explain important concepts: suitcases, runways, bows, wounds and scars. Early on, when students missed a key class about these things, I’d have to send them an explanation, and finally decided to outline them all in a book. True to Life: Fifty steps to help you tell your story, a succinct guide to memoir writing, was published in 2014 and republished in a slightly revised edition in 2022; it has sold more than all my other books combined. Recently I was contacted by a publisher in Beijing; the Chinese language edition will come out in 2026. My dream: a billion Chinese people writing memoir with my book in their hands.

The book is divided into four sections, about getting started, editing, digging deep, and the writing life. Periodically, I’ll share a chapter with you here.

Preserve your family stories

Think of the people in your family who know the famous familiar stories. Likely you are the person in your family who knows or at least is interested in the family stories. Those stories are your wealth. They help explain who you are and where you came from: the particular heritage and values—and secrets—that were given to you with your mother’s milk (or your nanny’s bottle of formula). As a writer, you are the family chronicler. One of your most important jobs is to preserve your family’s stories, good and bad, before they disappear. If you don’t, no one will. This also applies if you are adopted, of course. Perhaps you’ll unearth the stories of several families.

“No one talks in my family,” people often complain, Sometimes, yes, our relatives will strive to keep the family skeletons locked in the closet, but sometimes they don’t talk because we haven’t indicated our interest. Have you asked what your dad or granddad did during the war or what your mother’s life was like during the Sixties? Have you asked your aunts, uncles, and cousins for their take on the family fables? Or even your own children? You might be astonished by what you learn.

Sometimes family secrets come spilling out, explaining incomprehensible oddities. My dad didn’t find out until after his mother’s death that when she met the man who would become her husband, she pretended to be eight years younger than she was. She kept those missing years a secret her entire life. This shed light on many mysteries, including why she kept the family away from her sister, who actually was eight years younger.

There are books that list questions to help you prompt your speakers. (For example: Legacy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Personal History by Linda Spence.) Or perhaps, if your relatives are too shy to talk, you could hand over a sheet of questions and ask them to write the answers in their own time. (Don’t wait though, before asking again. The forces of resistance and secrecy will work hard against you.) Buy a small voice recorder to set on the table while you are chatting, or, if they prefer, suggest they keep it and entrust their memories to it when they’re alone.

Climb up to the attic or down to the basement of your relatives’ homes and delve into those decaying trunks, those boxes of dusty photographs and documents. Track down family diaries and letters; I found the letters my parents wrote to each other during the Second World War when they were both barely out of their teens—priceless. Contact your local, regional, or national archives; they have reams of information on file. Enlist your local librarian. Sometimes your search will involve a visit to the old country to find relatives you’ve never met and to see those legendary places. Book your ticket. Explore the mysteries. What can you lose?

Make the call right now. Phone the person who knows the most about your family and ask a gentle question or two. Get the process of discovery started. And if you are the family repository, begin writing the stories down. There is no time to waste.

“Every time an old person dies,” goes the saying, “a library burns down.” Make sure the library of your family stories doesn’t go up in smoke.

“Remember only this one thing,” said Badger. “The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves.”

Barry Lopez

We cannot resist this rifling around in the past, sifting the untrustworthy evidence, linking stray names and questionable dates and anecdotes together, hanging on to threads, insisting on being joined to dead people and therefore to life.

Alice Munro

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