Your Story Matters

An email from my editor showed up in my inbox last week.

Subject line: "Title Talk."

The marketing team had concerns about the title of my coming out later in life memoir. They were worried that a book called Graveyard of Safe Choices could potentially sound "like a real bummer." And my book is anything but. It's a hopeful story about finding the courage to leave the graveyard of safe choices, not wallow in it.

I loved my title! I had gone through many other working titles and thought I had finally landed on a winner. After all, it was the title that landed me a book deal.

But the more I sat with the feedback on my title, I realized that the marketing team was right.

Book buyers are heavily influenced by titles and cover art. So it was really important to get my title right and not settle for something that was potentially "a bummer." And the cover designer was waiting on the right-fit title so she could...

Maybe you’ve heard it’s impossible to get a book deal for a memoir if you aren’t a celebrity or you don’t have millions of followers on TikTok.

You’re not a celebrity (yet) and you don’t have millions of TikTok followers (yet), so maybe you're thinking “why bother” writing a memoir at all?

After all, it’s a big commitment.

It will take time—and require a lot of emotional energy.

And, if you’ve never written a book before, there’s a steep learning curve ahead of you.

So why bother writing a memoir?

That’s a great question and one every writer should ask themselves before they say YES to writing a book.

When I ask my LGBTQ+ memoir clients why they want to share their story, many of them say—”This is something I HAVE to do. I HAVE to get this story out.”

Why bother? Because:

• YOU need to tell this story for YOU.
• There are readers whose very lives depend on hearing your story.
• ...