“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”

~L.M. Montgomery

You’ve heard the old maxim: “Write what you know.” Whatever you’re scripting—fiction, memoir, academic research—your life and experiences will color and inspire your books.

You’ve also heard this popular refrain: “Truth is stranger than fiction” (Mark Twain, 1897). Doesn’t it make sense to keep a record of your oh-so-bizarre and fascinating life? Many authors are meticulous diarists. Some legendary examples include Virginia Woolf, Henry David Thoreau, and Anaïs Nin—who kept a diary from age eleven until her death at seventy-four. Oscar Wilde said he never traveled without his diary because “one should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

To best mine and keep track of the gold of their lives, most authors I know don’t stray far from their notebooks, voice recorders, or cell phones, immortalizing the picture, audio, and video evidence of their one and only experience. Some keep drawers of journals, files bulging with memorabilia, and searchable digital notes on their computers, updated to the minute for access from any device.

Don’t stress if you’re one of the holdouts writing in longhand on yellow legal pads—a practice good enough for Charles Sailor, Neale Donald Walsch, and Hillary Clinton. Or, perhaps, like my sister and our mother, you’ve got a photographic memory and don’t need to store anything outside of your noggin. Lucky you! I’ll say this. Without long-ago mastered capture-and-conquer habits, I could never have re-created some of the dialogue you’re about to read from one of the most entertaining and impactful conversations of my life.

“Next up,” the ESPN announcer blared from the living room. I was in the kitchen making breakfast, but the gravity of the voice caught my ear. “Arnold Palmer has prostate cancer.”

“Nooooo!” Jesse and I yelled in tandem. We stood before the TV in stunned silence as the host shared cryptic details—the beloved athlete’s prognosis unknown, the timeline uncertain. I mouthed a silent prayer, first for Arnold. Then for my book.

Please let him get better soon and keep our interview!

Woody Harrelson still hadn’t reappeared, although his assistant continued to crack me up with her candid details of struggling to wrangle the Woodster. “I will pin him down for you if it’s the last thing I do,” she promised. Oh, how I hoped she wouldn’t quit or get fired before then.

Hoping for a lift, I called my friend Amelia Kinkade, a former horror-film actress turned LA pet psychic who was getting her minister’s license while working on a book about talking to animals. I was seeking three things: 1) compassion from a fellow as-yet-unpublished author, 2) advice on how to look at my fears and losses more spiritually, and 3) ideas for up-leveling my career. Not surprisingly, she had no truck with my carefully catered pity party.

“You’re delusional! Get the eff over yourself!” Amelia thundered.

“What?” I cried. “I’m trying to be such a good person. I don’t understand why publishers won’t sign me!”

“My Lord, girl,” she said with her Texas drawl and throaty laugh. “Being a good person doesn’t have a thing to do with it! Step away from the crack pipe! Hollywood and New York reward people for skill. And talent. You don’t get to be a concert violinist because you’re a nice person or want to save polar bears! If you have that job, it’s because you’re a kick-ass violinist. The Universe is not judging one’s goodness or badness—people get paid because they do their job better than anyone else. God didn’t give Meredith that record deal because she was a good little girl, and she deserved it. That ‘Bitch’ song kicks ass! She effing ROCKS! God doesn’t care if Carrie-Anne is a nice person! Her acting kicks ass!” I pictured Amelia’s bright red curls tossing while she wagged a finger at her dunce friend. “Are you waiting for heaven to reward you for being a good little girl, Linda? If you are, it’s not gonna work.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I think so,” I said, wincing. This was embarrassing.

After I put out the fire in my cheeks, Amelia’s words felt strangely empowering. Editors were saying I needed bigger stars because I needed BIGGER stars. It wasn’t a judgment call from God, personally punishing me for being a shitty friend. If I send out a manuscript that sucks and I don’t get a book deal, it’s not because God is punishing me. I could cry, “But I’ve worked so hard on it. I’ve spent six years!” No one cares how hard or how long I’d worked or how charitable my intentions.

Amelia softened. “Who’s your hero, Linda? The celebrity above all others who ignites your passion and sets your soul on fire?” She explained a part of prayer called “reaching the passion in the treatment” in the church she attended. It’s when you want something so badly that you convince yourself that you already have it, allowing a huge river of gratitude and excitement to bring the thing you want rushing to you like a magnet. In full-on déjà vu, I was back in Meredith’s studio, hearing her say, “Perhaps it’s like putting the cart before the horse emotionally and generating all these thrilling feelings first so that the thing you want can’t help but be drawn to you.”

“Come on!” Amelia prodded. “Who do you admire more than any star in the world? And don’t settle for any of these no-talent wannabes. Frogs and whistles; skip the middle ground and go straight to God Almighty!” Where does she get this stuff?

“It’s Seal,” I said, chuckling. “He’s been at the top of my wish list for years.”

“Well, then, let’s manifest Seal! Let’s access the God power within you to create what you really want. And remember, Linda. You can have a thousand things go wrong, but that doesn’t mean it’s not meant to be—that God’s trying to stop you. It means you’ve got to be stubborn and hang on like a tick, mother-f-er!”

Alrighty then . . .

I had to start visualizing. I’d gotten out of the habit, but it was time. I sat back in my chair, closed my eyes, and . . . there was Seal! Seeing him before me was the easy part. Everything that followed—anytime I tried—not so much. Between Seal’s stiff arms, my awkward laughter, and his one-arm back slaps, my visualizations were a forced mess. And yet, as God is my witness, Amelia pulled down lightning bolts.

Rhonda Britten

My entire life changed when a friend dared me to tell my story. The REAL story. Not the pretend-it-didn’t-happen version I showed people. Abandonment, rejection, and embarrassment were the only things I had ever felt when someone knew what happened to me. That’s why I never mentioned it. Not ever. But she kept pressing, telling me I’d hook into people’s hearts with the truth of my story.

“Okay, I will take on your dare,” I said. “I have two events coming up. I will wear the same suit. Give the same keynote. Use the same PowerPoint. The only thing different will be I will tell my story to one audience and not the other.”

Event number one: After my passionate ninety-minute talk to one hundred people, two women and one man came up to tell me how my talk impacted them and ask a question or two. I was pleased. Event number two: I did the same talk except, awkwardly, blurting out my story about the day my father killed my mother in front of me, and then turned the gun on himself.

When I left the stage, I was convinced I’d proven this to be a horrible idea. I didn’t set it up right. No one wants to hear this depressing story. Oh, good job, Rhonda, adding in your three suicide attempts.

As I entered the main hall, I knew that my speaker table, where I’d be selling my wares, would be deserted. I was ready to tell my friend that she was wrong and I was right. Then I saw something I’d never seen in the two years I’d been speaking. A line. A long line that went around the entire auditorium. A line waiting for ME!

I don’t recall how I stumbled through, as woman after woman gushed to me how I had changed her life with my story, or begged me for an autograph, or signed up for my next workshop. I didn’t have words. I had never hugged, held, or been loved on by so many people in my entire life.

That was when I knew my story wasn’t meant for just me anymore. I knew my parents’ deaths on that fateful day were meant to help open the world up to forgiveness, innocence, and fearlessness. I would no longer hide my story. I shared it freely from that point on, knowing it would open hearts and minds and give my audience and students hope.

Your life is your best content. And the worst day of your life will be the greatest gift you give to your readers.

Did you happen to notice, dear reader, what I’ve done in this chapter to try and “hook” you? I used vivid dialogue unique to Amelia, making my fiery, female Yoda come to life. Hopefully, you see her as I do in real life—a likable and memorable character. (And animal savior! Look her up.)

Robert McKee, in his book Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for the Page, Stage, and Screen, explains what it means to say an author has an “ear for dialogue.” He writes, “Each of his characters speaks with a syntax, rhythm, tonality, and most importantly, word choices that no one but that character would use.”

Robert McKee

It’s really a question of hooking and holding [readers’] interest and satisfying and rewarding their interest in the last pages. As long as they’re interested, time flies. They’re utterly unaware of the passage of time. But if they’re not interested, time becomes oppressive and you want to start yelling, “Cut cut cut!” That interest often comes down to empathy. If two intelligent, sensitive people go to the same film or read the same novel, one loves it, one hates it. It’s got nothing to do with the novel or the film.

The person who loved it felt empathy with the characters, and therefore their curiosity was acute, and they couldn’t wait to see how it turned out. The person who hated it could not empathize with those characters and therefore, it was drudgery to read or watch it. But it’s the same book. If you don’t gain their empathy, they’re not interested, and it doesn’t work. If you gain their empathy and create a beautifully told story that holds their curiosity as well, then it’s a success.

We have to learn to distinguish the difference between attention span and interest span. People say, the young people have low attention span. I don’t believe that. For people to suddenly not have an attention span would require a change at the genetic level. What people don’t have today is the kind of politeness, where they used to pretend to pay attention to something when they really weren’t interested. People today, if you don’t interest them, they turn off. The same person that somebody says has a brief attention span will binge twelve or fifteen hours of a long-form television series over a weekend. I mean, what kind of attention span does that require? If you’re turning the pages of a novel, the length of the novel is irrelevant.

Do I have an especially good ear—enough so that I’m able to recall conversations with popping clarity years later? Sometimes. But more often than that, my talent comes in recognizing heightened moments of a discussion and grabbing a pen or hitting RECORD on the Voice Memo app on my iPhone or Zoom. (Back in the day, it was a palm-sized Sony cassette recorder I carried with me like an emergency backup appendage. On my call with Amelia, I added a RadioShack adapter, as I did for my follow-up calls with interviewees.)

Even today, when the energy’s crackling between a friend and me at dinner or between my man and me in the car, I’m not above asking, “Mind if I tape this?” Sometimes I get an eye roll or an actual, “Not on your life.” But often, the person I’m with smiles, sits a little straighter, and turns up the humor—and the volume. Because they, too, enjoy what’s coming out of their mouth.

Tom Hanks

I always have a notebook and a pen. I’ve tried to go with little Dictaphone recordings. I do that when I’m in the car; I can just pick it up and hit RECORD and I can remember something. It’s never-ending, because if you don’t land on it, if you don’t write it down, it could be lost forever.

In one of the stories of the book [Uncommon Type], I write about an immigrant man who escapes communist Europe by ship and ends up sleeping in Central Park. The character is based on Papou, my father-in-law. Papou won the lottery the day he came to America.

He was a bartender. He paid for his house—the house my wife was born in—with the nickels and dimes and quarters he got in tips being a bartender at the racetracks and various hotels. He did the work himself, by hand. That’s why the plumbing is so screwed up in the house.

One day, our son had been born, and we were together because when a baby comes into a Greek family, everybody moves in and stays there for forty days. Papou was up early. I was up early. Everybody else was sleeping. I said, “Hey, Dad, how did you come to America anyway?” He spoke with a Bulgarian accent, and he told me a story that is very much like the story in the collection in the book.

I thought I was really brave because I once drove across America in a Volkswagen all by myself. “Oh man, I got stuck in a snowstorm in Steamboat Springs—the high country!” Instead, [Papou] told me how he escaped from the old country and helped a friend escape, too, where they were tortured by the communists. For the better part of an hour and a half, I was both riveted and amazed.

Samantha Bennett

Writers are recyclers. One of my all-time favorite things about writing is getting to use weird little bits of information I’ve picked up. Odd facts and helpful tips often work their way into my writing. And I lovelovelove borrowing other people’s turns of phrase.

My friend once had a boss that would say, “Nevertheless, we must endeavor to excel,” which is a line I’ve now put in a play. I love using character traits of people that I love, like creating a character with a passion for needlepoint, like my grandmother had, and me too! Or sharing my mother’s parenting tips like, “Never argue with a child about food.” I love folding in details from my life, like my abiding fondness for English muffins, which led me to write one of my all-time favorite lines of dialogue ever: “Toast. It’s good anytime!”

I once helped write a comedy song called “70% Off” based on one of my rants about the joys and pains of discount shopping. And then there are the tidbits I’ve squirreled away to use in the future. For example, my cousin hates the word lips and I think that’s hilarious. I can’t wait to use that sometime.

In one of my favorite sections of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan, my co-creation with Danielle LaPorte, we write that you never truly start from scratch. Your life is your content. There’s a good chance that part of your book (or speech or product) is hidden in plain sight—in your client session audio files, blog interviews, scandalous email chains, coffee shop convos, that one post that went viral, your teenage journal, your vision boards, or your workshop materials. Traipse through the treasure trove that is your life and capture and conquer!

I thank my lucky stars I was able to tape Amelia’s rant that day and relive it for you here.

Martha Beck

When I was fifteen, my high school English teacher asked her students to keep a “writing journal” for stories and poems, as well as descriptions of life events. I had no ideas for stories or poems. But I did occasionally have life events, and these I began to pencil into a slim black composition book.

I never dreamed this journal would become the most important single object in my life, but that is what happened.

As an anxious and neurotic teen, I probably should have been in therapy. Turns out that a notebook can perform many of the same functions, while charging far less. Recording my thoughts in my black book felt like lancing and dressing a wound; it would ease the pressure in my psyche by holding my problems on pages, so I could briefly let them go.

By the time I started college I had many composition books, all full of my earnest, purple adolescent life. I wrote about everything that happened to me and everything I felt. Eventually, even the highly anticipated poems and stories began creeping out onto the pages. But mostly I just wrote down what happened, and this practice kept me (barely) sane.

As a young adult I noticed there were other people in the world and stopped journaling quite so much. But when I was twenty-five and my unborn child was diagnosed with Down syndrome, I knew just what to do: Go out and buy yet another slim black composition book.

Between my son’s diagnosis and his first birthday, I filled nineteen journals. I worried that someone might find them and read my most vulnerable feelings, until I realized that anyone on Earth would rather be burnt at the stake than read nineteen stream-of-consciousness volumes about someone else’s daily woes. But it occurred to me that if I just took my journals and boiled down the good parts, they might be made into something people would want to read.

The first book I pulled from those journals, Expecting Adam, became a national and New York Times bestseller and launched my career. I still write in journals. Trust me, my entries are boring as dirt. But I’ve found that sometimes, somewhere in the dirt of a detailed journal, just waiting to be panned out, are nuggets of pure gold.

Catherine Oxenberg

I wasn’t writing to write a book. I was writing to protect myself because I was getting threats [for going after the cult that was holding her daughter hostage]. For some reason, I was extremely careful to keep notes in my journal to the tune of five hundred pages by the time I handed them over to my co-writer.

There were two parts to the book. Part one, which was much harder to write because it had to do with establishing my childhood and the early years with India. The memories were harder to reach, a lot dustier. It takes a lot of energy to go and dive into those memories, to reawaken them, and flesh them out, and make them three-dimensional.

The second part was extremely easy because I kept copious notes. From the moment I was told India was in danger, I wanted to make sure that I had a very accurate and detailed record of what was going on. To transcribe that with my writer, because it was so detailed, was a breeze. And then the third part of the process was writing in real time. As the story was unfolding, we were transcribing it up until the last moment when we went to press. The paperback’s coming out. Coincidentally, literally ten days after Keith’s guilty verdict. So, it just keeps going. It’s this crazy synchrony.

Sarah Manguso

When writing 300 Arguments, I wrote about how, when I was twelve, I realized that photographs were ruining my memory. I’d study the photos from an event and gradually forget everything that had happened between the shutter openings. I couldn’t tolerate so much lost memory, and I didn’t want to spectate my life through the viewfinder, so I stopped taking photographs. All the snapshots of my life for the next twenty years were shot by someone else.

By contrast, I kept a daily diary for twenty-five years. Skipping a day was unthinkable. I wrote in hospitals, on buses, everywhere. There was absolutely no way to cross over to the next day without having fully analyzed or documented what had happened the previous day.

My book Ongoingness is about the end of a diary. I try to narrate what exactly is happening to my experience of memory and time that so utterly, and so quickly, and so shockingly to me erased that basic anxiety that I needed to document, and document, and document.

Dani Shapiro

In Hourglass, I was writing about marriage, my marriage. From inside of it, the white-hot center of it. But in a way, it wasn’t a story that I was telling. It was an exploration of time and memory and marriage and what it is to meet our younger selves through time. The structure of the book is mosaic-like, so there’s a space between each passage. It wasn’t like there was momentum carrying me along. I had to pause. I had to be mindful. I had to stop and think about what the white space was even doing between these two ideas and where the next passage was taking me.

One day I woke up, and I thought, “You know what! I need index cards, and I need them now!” As I’m driving all the way to Staples—I live in the country in New England and it’s about half an hour from my house—I’m thinking, “Have I lost my mind? Why do I need to take ninety minutes in the middle of my day to buy index cards?” They turned into the centerpiece of my process. Every time I thought about something that I thought would belong in Hourglass, I scribbled it on an index card. I kept this big fat stack of cards with me as I was working, and when I was stuck, or I didn’t know where I was going next, I would shuffle through them, almost as if it was the I Ching.

Guru Singh

Towards the beginning of my book Buried Treasures, I relive one of my three near-death experiences, where a woman from another dimension talked to me. This was some of the most powerful content of my life, which is why I opened the book with it. She said, “Don’t live your life logically. Live it mythologically.”

Those words meant to me that I am a mythological character in the play of history. And just like any mythological character, I have magical powers. My life’s work is to then realize my magical powers, just like the quest in any mythological tale is always about the hero’s journey. Looking and searching and going through great challenges to find those magical powers that we all possess, because life is magical. Anyone who has given birth knows that.

But I’m not saying don’t be logical. There are times when I’m driving a car, if I’m not logical, if I’m being mythological, then every other car had better get off the road. But when I’m living my life and thinking about what I want to be and do with my time here, I had better add some tremendous mythology to my logic to access my best life, my greatest content.

I hope this chapter inspires you to record and mine what makes your world uniquely yours and to bring it to the page. You may not have an Amelia in your life—please, take mine!—but there’s no need to flog yourself for thinking, however unconsciously, that you’re special and deserving and that life is a meritocracy and the harder you work and the more prayers you put up, the bigger your results should be. That’s a trap that’s been around since the dawn of time—so you and I wouldn’t be the first to exhibit this brand of magical thinking. I mean, a writer has got to perform as many Hail Marys and Hindu Mantras and Eye of Newt rituals and affirmations as she needs to before she realizes that the best path forward is to get really fucking good at what she’s doing. It takes as long as it takes.

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Hook ’Em Narratives

Your Life Is Your Best Content