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I will never forget that dark November day in 2009 when I arrived at my parents’ home in Hartville, Ohio in the midst of the Great Recession, completely defeated. I had started my memoir a year before in Los Angeles, I was angry about the way my life was going, my relationships were a disaster, and I had no clue how to write my story.
Several days later after settling into my parents’ basement apartment, I drove to the Hartville Library, which had given me such fond childhood memories. It was a different building, new and part of the public school.
I checked out a stack of memoirs, and I began to read. I was out of work at that point, so I had time. For the next several weeks before I began doing construction work again, I would go to the Dairy Queen each afternoon, grab a twist cone, and read.
Slowly but surely, I began to see some commonalities in the best memoirs.
In these memoirs, the writer arrives at a dark point in their life, often in their mid-life. In desperation, they turn inward, begin to write about their life, and ask the hard questions they’ve avoided until then.
In the following weeks, month, even years — across their writing journey — they find mentors who teach them how to write about their experience. They peck out a shitty first draft, almost give up in frustration, and then begin revising. They learn the hard lessons of writing, they learn to show rather than tell. Key memories pop up. They dig into these memories, trying to discover what they mean, trying to trace the dots, to make meaning out of the experiences that tore their life apart. Slowly, they begin to find answers.
Eventually, they dig down to the basement memories of their lives, to the foundation values that have not been guiding them until now, but they now believe should guide them. They figure out what is most important to them, they begin to change their life to align with those values. Across the course of this re-alignment, they begin to experience something new.
They begin to find meaning in what they do. They begin to find satisfaction in their choices. They begin to find a new perspective on life.
The result is transformation.
Why does it work this way?
Here’s the reason. Each of us has a story in our minds of how our lives have proceeded. We cling to a narrative about the journey we have taken. Often it is false, and the cognitive dissonance has made it impossible to live with ourselves. Often, we’ve copied it from someone else — for example, from our birth culture. But one way or another, we are telling ourselves a story about how the path we’ve taken has gotten us from there … to here.
Good memoir writing forces us to question that narrative.
Across the memoir-writing experience, we begin to ask questions of other people. We begin to look at the way they have viewed our lives. We see ourselves the way others see us, we see the way we’ve hurt other people, we become honest about our mistakes. We learn to tell the truth.
Sometimes relationships are restored.
Slowly but surely, we reconstruct the narrative of our life. And by so doing, by becoming honest about what we’ve done in our lives, by accepting our errors and making amends, we change the way we view our past, and thus, we figure out where we need to go.
That’s my view of a good memoir. By speaking with an authentic voice, by telling the truth, we inspire both ourselves and others.
Over the past half-year, as I’ve rewritten my memoir — How To Tie a Tie — I discovered something amazing — a test by which I judge the chapters I write. I test them by reading them aloud to the people (beta readers) I trust.
Here’s the test:
When my writing is mediocre, my listeners talk about my story. When my writing is successful, my listeners reflect on their story.
My hope is that as you read my the latest piece from my Substack — Unicorn in the Church Pew — you’ll find yourself reflecting on your own story.
That’s my goal as a memoirist.
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If you choose a Paid Subscription, you will be able to access all of the
Full drafts of each chapter I write;
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If you become a member of the Founders Circle, you will be able to
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A little about who I am
I am a teacher and memoirist whose stories center around themes of community, repression and redemption. My first memoir, How To To Tie A Tie, scheduled to release in December 2024, is a coming-of-age story that follows my departure from a sheltered conservative Mennonite community in small-town Ohio and my subsequent journey through the outside worlds of London, Hollywood, Los Angeles, Seattle, to the Washington, DC area.
Using education as a ladder of escape from fundamentalism, I was the first in my sprawling family ever to attend college, majoring in English and history at Malone University in Canton, Ohio. I clinched my escape from home by winning a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to study in London. By the end of that year, the Berlin Wall had fallen — and I had abandoned the conservative Mennonite world, alienating my community but gaining my B.A. and my hard-won freedom. My memoir pieces in HuffPost focus on these formative years.
After leaving, I studied at Oxford University while working on my M.A. in English from Middlebury College. In 2021, I returned to school to earn my Leadership Endorsement at Longwood University. I have applied those skills by partnering with my wife Laura Navarre — an Amazon bestselling paranormal romance author — as the CEO of Ascendant Press, our boutique independent publishing firm.
I have taught high school and middle school in Ohio, California, and Washington State. I am now advising the yearbook and teaching first-generation college students at Justice High School and Northern Virginia Community College.
Recent awards include being honored as Teacher of the Month at Justice High School, and being awarded Special Recognition Adviser by Columbia Scholastic Press Association in 2021. My lit mag, newspaper, and yearbook staffs from North Canton, Vashon Island, Stafford and Justice have earned top rankings, and my yearbook staffs have snared two Pacemaker nominations from the National Scholastic Press Association. I earned an All American award as editor-in-chief of my college newspaper.
My wife Laura and currently live with Puddin’ and Lannister, our two Siberian Neva Masquerade cats, in Alexandria, Virginia.
You can follow me on Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube and Instagram and X. He can be reached at StevenDenlinger@gmail.com
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