The Memoir Course I Wish I'd Had When I Started Writing

I've finished my memoir. Now I'm launching a 36-week course to help you transform yours

Oct 12, 2025

Hello Friend,

Shortly after I returned home to Hartville in 2009, I walked into the library and checked out a stack of memoirs. I knew I wanted to write one—I just didn’t know how. I needed a guide for the kind of memoir that would help others find a pathway out of whatever high-control religious community that had them trapped.

I didn’t know anything about writing memoir. I didn’t even know I was writing a trauma memoir—I just knew I needed help.

Over the next few years, I searched. Every how-to book seemed written for a different kind of memoir. The closest I found was Mary Karr’s book of reflections, The Art of Memoir—wonderful, but not quite what I needed.

Over the last decade, I’ve created memoir courses I’ve taught at the high school and college levels—even a small-group seminar out of our home in North Seattle for Seattle Mennonite Church.

I’ll admit it. I love writing a lot, but I love teaching even more.

In fact, one of the things that motivated me to finish my book was the belief that it would give me the credibility to create the instruction manual I wish I’d had—the one I needed as I struggled to revise, night after night, working on my laptop at the local diner.

Now, as I record the audiobook, I’m launching Rewriting Your Story—a 36-week course that teaches you to revise your memoir into something that doesn’t just tell your story, but transforms your life.

Honestly? I’m more excited about this course than I was about writing my own memoir.

I’ll share every mistake I made, every failed draft, every hard-won lesson—so you can write truth without destroying yourself.

Because you don’t have to figure this out alone.

Your story deserves to be told—and told well.

A preview of the course

I have four basic beliefs that will guide the construction of this class. I believe that

Writing memoir can serve as narrative therapy
We write memoir to understand how our past shapes us
We can use the process to reclaim our voice and rewrite our future
We should learn from our mistakes, rather than trying to present ourselves as perfect

Something you need to know about me

Here’s what makes my teaching different in this class: I’m not teaching from a place of having it all figured out. I’m teaching from the trenches—sharing every mistake I made, every failed draft, every hard-won lesson.”

What the course includes (when it comes out in the spring)

I am planning a beta/debut course with no more than 20 students

I am currently planning 36 weekly, online live sessions (60 minutes each) — my goal is to build a community of writers, because I believe community supercharges learning.
We will always begin with a prompt in which we can tell each other brief stories from our lives, and thus bond with each other
I will offer a mini-lecture during each class on craft, process, and transformation
With the course, you will receive a companion textbook with examples from my failed drafts
You will be given practical activities and homework each week

If you are interested in being part of my first cohort, please leave a comment, responding to any of these questions:

What interests you about this course?
Why does it feel right for you?
What do you hope to get out of it?

I’ve begun posting the audio chapters

I’m also in the process of recording How To Tie A Tie — as a subscriber here, you’ve already gotten two free chapters — the Opening Pages and the Prologue.

Starting next week, all recorded chapters will go behind a paywall.

Upgrade My Subscription

If you have read my memoir, How To Tie a Tie, please consider leaving a rating

When you buy the book — and I’m assuming you will want to, since you are signed up for my Substack — I would so appreciate you taking the time to give a review on your favorite bookseller site.

I am aiming for 25 reviews — once we reach that goal, Ascendant Press will begin advertising on Amazon.

I would so appreciate you helping us get there.

Buy the Memoir

Two more reviews

We are at 14 reviews on Amazon — eleven away from our goal. Here are two of the latest reviews.

Moving and thought-provoking

I’m not much of a reader of books, but this book grabbed my attention. I was very impressed with how well it kept my attention and interest. I was so gripped by the facts of the story line, at times found my heart pounding with fear and anxiety due to what was going on. I could also relate well with much of the religious abuse he spoke of and the need for therapy to work through it. I definitely recommend this book as a great read for either entertainment or education.

Immersive and Compelling

I first read Steven’s writing on HuffPost sometime around 2012. I was born and raised in a similar faith community and was beginning to face foundation shifting questions. It was a frightening and lonely time made even lonelier by the lack of writing from others who had walked into those dark places. Our faith claims to be peaceful and the only true way to know and follow God. It is s faith so tightly interwoven with daily life and social community that to question is it to threaten one’s own sense of sanity and safety. Steven was writing about having reached a point where he needed to leave and here he was years later, still alive and still with faith. His words were a candle in my dark time.
What a joy to be able to read his memoir and track the larger arc of the blend of beauty, music, approval, rejection, domestic violence, grace, and ultimately the warmth of a God who is always with us which he has shared in his memoir.
This book is an engrossing story of complex family relationships, the unexpected gift of forgiveness, and the all surpassing gift of faith which runs like a constant underground river throughout the narrative.
Highly recommend to anyone but especially to those who have left a high-control religion

P.S. Oh, and just in case you missed it, here’s the link again to buy the book.