WD Editors

You Don’t Have to Be Famous: How to Write Your Life Story
by Steve Zousmer
ISBN: 1-58297-438-1
$16.99, 256p

Read an Excerpt!

Learn about how to get started writing your life story. Click here to view or download an excerpt from Chapter 9: Strategies for a Good Start.

You have time, considerable talent and creativity,
and without doubt you have stories to tell.

Now you have some help to write down those stories and share them with your family, friends and the public at large. You Don’t Have to Be Famous is a step-by-step guide to writing your life story, even if you’ve never written before. Writing your life story is a valuable and worthy thing to do, even if you never try to get it published. No matter your purpose in writing your life story, it deserves to be done with quality and discipline or it will meet the same fate as so many hobbies and self-improvement programs that fall by the wayside in just a few weeks. Your story deserves better than that.

This book isn’t about writing Literature. It’s focused on helping the non-writer record their life story using a step-by-step program. Anyone can follow it and succeed if they are serious about completing the project. You don’t need famous people or places to make your life interesting, you just need yourself. You have a story to tell, and this book helps you tell it.

About the Author
Steve Zousmer is a freelance corporate speechwriter, whose clients include current and former CEOs from Amdahl, American Express, Forbes, McGraw-Hill, News Corporation, Pepsi, Philip Morris, Shell Oil Company, Starwood Hotels, and Walt Disney—among many others. Aside from writing speeches for CEOs, he also has written op-eds for them, which have appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal.

Table of Contents

Foreword vii

Chapter One: You Don’t Have To Be Famous
Forget About Fame and Fortune
Don’t Think That You’re Uninteresting
You Are Worthy
Advantages of Private Autobiography
“New Autobiography”

Chapter Two: FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions
How Long Does It Have to Be?
How Long Will It Take to Write This Thing?
Where Am I Going to Get My Ideas?
Should I Share My Enthusiasm With Family and Friends?
Will I Embarrass Myself With Bad Punctuation?
The Big Question (Why?)

Chapter Three: Motivation: Four Good Choices
Reason #1: Discovery
Reason #2: Posterity
Reason #3: History
Reason #4: Fulfilling Your Creative Impulse

Chapter Four: You Need an Organizing Principle
The Chronological Model
Variation on Chronology: The Flashback Model
The Episodic Model
The Theme-Linked Model
The History-Linked Model
The Stream-of-Consciousness Model

Chapter Five: Preparation Issues: Research, Outlining, Self-Discipline
Research—Keep It Limited
Infrastructure—Keep It Simple
To Outline or Not to Outline?
You Need a Whip-Cracking Tyrant (You)

Chapter Six: Who Are You and Who Is the Audience?
Who Is Your Audience?
No Audience But Yourself
What Are Your Levels of Candor and Disclosure?
How to Find Your Writing Voice

Chapter Seven: Writing Is Hard
Understand Why Writing Is Hard
Balance Fear With Knowledge
Outsmart Writer’s Block
“Get It Down, Then Get It Right”
Solitary Writing Versus Group Writing

Chapter Eight: Set Your Imagination Free
Be Audacious
Get Into the Magic Zone
The Waiver
Tell the Truth

Chapter Nine: Strategies for a Good Start
What Makes a Good Start Good?
Angles of Attack

Chapter Ten: Telling Stories
Discovering Causation in Stories
What Is the Meaning of “Meaning”?
Selection
Fragments
What Is a Story?

Chapter Eleven: Writing Advice for the Long Haul
Showing Versus Telling
Be Specific
Change Pace
“Explainitis” and the Role of Instinct
What to Do When You Bog Down

Chapter Twelve: Talking About Things We Don’t Talk About
Maybe You See It Differently
The Default Position: Safe and Conservative
The Bold Position: Telling All, Going Deep
Sentiment Versus Sentimentality

Chapter Thirteen: Rewriting
Learn to Read Your Own Writing
The Joy of Deleting
The More You Look, the More You Find
Four Pages Back, Three Pages Forward
Think Bigger
When Does Rewriting End?

Chapter Fourteen: You’re Finished, Now What?
Brace for Unpredictable Reader Reactions
No-Tech and Low-Tech Publishing Options
Print-On-Demand Self-Publishing
Adding Audio and Video

Afterword: My Not-Yet-Written Autobiography

Appendix: Profiling Yourself on Video

Index