If You Think You Should Be Writing, I agree with you. Your voice is important, and you have something to say. First-person writing such as memoirs, essays, and opinion pieces offer personality, insight, entertainment, and authenticity.

Memoirs, essays, and opinion pieces are a part of literature and culture and can nudge opinions and actions toward love and acceptance. The world is a mess. The world needs your best voice.

Only You: Your Memoir

1. Bring your experiences and thoughts to life in a memoir. essay, or opinion piece.

There is no one like you. Your experiences, gifts, challenges, and ways of looking at the world are unique to you. You are the only one who can bring them to life on the page.  As you find your story, your examined life brings clarity to you and your reader amongst the hate-filled noise of our culture.

Extend your Influence and Opinions Beyond Your Days

2. Leave a legacy with your first-person writing.

How far back in your family lineage can you go? What do you know about the life of your great-grandparents or one generation beyond the people you know? How interested would you be in a personal essay, memoir, opinion piece, or even diary of those people you didn’t know. What are you leaving for the people who come after you?

What were the women on the Nebraska prairie thinking and feeling?  We have Willa Cather's fictionalized version and few others in history to tell us. The stories of everyday lives and people are not well represented in history.  Where are the memoirs of Americans who fought against brothers in the Civil War? Did pioneers ever understand a Native American culture that didn’t believe one could own land or water rights?  Did those who shot bison for fun come to regret it? What did women do when they found they were pregnant after their lover left for war?   What do nuns do with their lust?  How do you navigate estrangement from someone you love?

Our questions have resonance for others. Will those who come after you understand your role in your family, culture, and nation?  How do we live with a death sentence? How do we thrive after tragedy?  Can my words and perspective give someone a shortcut out of suffering?

Can you help someone avoid the narrow thinking, judgments, and decisions that hurt others or yourself?  Surely you don't need to give a sermon, yet, because of your story, others can learn and grow. The themes behind many of the questions presented may seem specific, but the themes are universal.  Don’t let your life, lessons, and legacy be lost to time.

Shift Culture Toward Love by Writing Memoir, Essay, and Opinion

3. Amplify the best of your authenticity as you share life stories and growth through compassionate critical thinking.

The world is thick with angry, lying, and mean voices (look at almost any news or opinion comment thread on social media).  Bring your love, compassion, insight, knowledge, analysis, humor, and whatever positive impulse you have to contribute to the world.  The media is frequently loud and hyperbolic to monetize your outrage. Put yourself in a quiet place.  Consider what is important to you.  Reconsider what you thought you were sure of.

Then you can examine the logic of your thinking as you write.  Writing will help you understand your relationship to beliefs and help you to be more thoughtful that the cult of the perpetually outraged.

Examine your personal and very human tendency to seek information that confirms what you already believe. Write about your ability to take in new information and reconsider your opinions and send this skill out into the world in print. Let your mature self examine your past behavior in what writer Phillip Lopate calls a double perspective. Your passionate beliefs can be imbued with critical thinking and elegance.

This means that you can model authentic truth. Truth is more complicated than judgment stewed in anger. Change or shift your opinion on the page and give your reader permission to consider compassion and critical thinking in action.  Your thoughts and words matter.  Write them down in your own memoirs, essays, and opinion work.