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What you don’t need to worry about when you engage a Life Story Writer

As Professional Life Story Writers, we are often asked about the preparation a client can do for interviews. The short answer is nothing. Of course, it is helpful to know what written notes you have, what research you have gathered, photos you can reference and the key turning points of your life, but the reality is these are elements that are explored through the interview process. We start with whatever you have and build the resources as we go. A Professional Life Story Writer will guide the process based on years of experience about what works best, and ensure your time and energy are focused in the right place.

I often chat with people who want their memoirs written and there are common questions that I am asked. There are many reasons why someone hasn’t started their memoir and those reasons remain obstacles without the support of a writing professional.

These are some of the most common challenges people want to discuss.

Remembering every detail of a life or feeling you must know it all before starting to write

Memory is a strange thing. The reality is how things happen, how we remember them and how the various chapters of our lives change the lens through which we view our experiences is in constant change. While there are some ‘hard facts’ that can be relied on through history (and triaged in research), there will always be a sense of fluidity in details and what is remembered. A skilled Life Story Writer can help you make sense of the details, and in some cases help you remember or reconstruct events that support your narrative. We can help overcome gaps in knowledge so the story flows, makes sense and speaks to what really matters.

The same applies to the researching of family histories before starting the process. Research is an endless task and can often distract us from starting. Starting wherever you are is important, as this will help define what is still needed.

It is also important to note that everyone’s perspective will be different. Your version of events will not necessarily match other viewpoints in your family. This is normal and to be expected. What is important is your version.

Waiting for the right time

The right time to have your memoir written is now. Get started, and honour where you are at today. Sensitivities to how others might react to our written story can make us hold back. There are many ways a Professional Life Story Writer can help overcome these feelings of concern, and create strategies for dealing with the potential reactions of others. You don’t have to wait until someone is ‘out of the picture’ to include them in your story. We work with finding your voice and being present in the moment. That’s how we support you in being truly authentic. Writing a memoir is always better when started sooner rather than later.

Gaining permission from others before you write

There are defined and professional practices a Life Story Writer can engage once the story has been completed that help you get permission from people you mention in your story. These processes provide fair input from others, and a proven way to ensure you have covered your bases. Professional Writers can also write your story in such a way that it is less triggering for others, using careful language choices and keeping an eye on the bigger picture. We will also help you decide on where and how you choose to publish your story – it never has to be outside your comfort zone.

Using AI

A well written life story will be created from the ground up based on interviews and materials supplied. This ensures the retention of your unique voice, careful fact checking, a guarantee of your confidentiality and the preservation of the intellectual property you have in your own story. While AI can provide some shortcuts, it is no substitute for real and insightful story telling. Life Stories Australia writers are real life people, who operate under a strict Code of Ethics that can help you avoid the annoying and often costly reality of AI hallucinations, scams and vanity publishers.

Having a dramatic life

It is a misconception that a life full of drama is a prerequisite to writing your life story. Often people who feel called to share their story have come through significant life challenges, but the reality is every person you meet has faced a turning point, or has some wisdom, to be shared with others. A Professional Life Story Writer can help you finetune what the message is behind your life and what legacy you seek to leave behind. We can bring ordinary events to life on the page, make them engaging for readers, and effective in moving your story forward – even the tiny, insignificant moments can have meaning. Building a narrative can provide you with insight and understanding of a life well lived.

Professional Life Story Writers have spent years developing their skills to meet the obvious and hidden challenges of memoir and biography writing. It’s our job, and we enjoy it! While your concerns feel real, we can provide solutions to just about every worry.

We are the champions of your story and the engine that gets your story written and out in the world. You’ll be in safe hands with a Life Stories Australia accredited member.

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The Horse as Muse – Finding Herd State

I’m happy to share with you my latest publishing  credit this time with the international journal Equine Leadership. 

This was a delightful piece to write which speaks very directly to why Horses have contributed so much to my creative practice and the idea of how a herd helps us find flow state. I hope you enjoy reading it as as much as I enjoyed writing it.

“I have written more words in a paddock than I have at a desk.  I spent years searching for ways to connect to my creativity – to dialogue with my muse – but it was the herd that showed me how. Horses reflect how to be fully present and live in a constant state of co-creation with life. After years of striving, I found the quietude of the herd opened a new doorway within my creative practice.”

 

READ HERE https://www.equineleadership.ca/volume11ls.html

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How many words does a life story need to be?

The question of how many words a life story should be is often one of the first queries asked of a professional life story writer.

Here’s a list of elements that contribute to how we determine your ideal life story word count.

  • How much material there is to work with?

Sometimes we need to make a start to see just what the story shape needs to be

  • What budget you have for writing and production?

The amount of money you have to spend on the project can influence how many words you might reasonably expect for your investment.

  • The time period of focus

It’s not always necessary to take a cradle-to-grave approach. If you are wanting to focus on a specific period of life we may be able to achieve a wonderful story in less words than a ‘whole of life’ project.

  • The stamina of subject

Consideration as to what time the subject can commit to the project is important.

  • What research exists or can be incorporated?

For example, old letters, diaries and even internet research can contribute significant story matter to the text.

  • Any deadlines that need to be met

If there is a special occasion or a deadline that needs to be met there may be some simple and understandable limits to how much time can be spent gathering information and writing the story.

  • Who the story is for?

A professional writer will always work to the highest possible standards in their writing but there can be a difference if a story is being written for a ‘family and friend’ audience, compared to being written with a view to future publication.

  • What medium are you choosing for your story?

There are so any options. Would you like a traditional printed text based book, or do you have a series of photos that can be used as a story basis with long captions? There are many ways to tell a story especially when we add in the growing range of digital options such as a story website, audio, video and on.

I have found a good place to start with my clients is to quote on 20,000 words, 40,000 words and 60,000 words.  The upper amount is the length of a regular sized novel, however, even the shorter number of words involved in a 20,000 word project offers plenty of scope to tell the highlights of a person’s life with the right storytelling techniques.

Some people are natural storytellers, and the flow is easy to achieve. Others need more time settling in and opening up.  Sometimes we find stories grow with the telling and the task can be bigger than anticipated. Flexibility is key. This is the human part of life story writing.

Whatever is needed or wanted – it’s your call.

 

About Lindy Schneider

Lindy is an accredited Life Story Writer with peak body Life Stories Australia, where she also holds a board position. She is an experienced biographer and memoirist who relishes bringing people’s stories to the page.

She is the author of From This Place – Stories of Inspiring Women Artists of the Upper Yarra Valley (with Angela Rivas), biography Visionary Man, Visionary Medicine, the story of Professor Avni Sali and Integrative Medicine, and co-author of The Chemical Maze – Bookshelf Companion. Her short story ‘Juice’ was shortlisted in the Cancer Council Arts Awards, and she won the Best Script award for ‘Pablo’s Muse’ in Theatre Shorts 3. She is a regular features writer for the Yarra Magazine.

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Thinking about Life Story Writing

Some important questions (to get started and for quoting)

Every life story writing project is different just as every person’s story is different.

Here are some things to think about that can help us finetune what you need and what type of costs are involved.

Where is the person currently living? Will they prefer face to face interviews, or will Zoom or a phone call work for them?

Does the person have anything already written down?  I can interview and write a full draft for you, but some people may already have notes and need some help in collating and shaping their manuscript. Some projects may be already well formed and just need a careful edit.

How much research needs to be done? What source materials are available such as diaries, articles, recordings etc?

How many other members of the family would need to be interviewed (if necessary)?

What is the outcome you would like?  A private story for family and friends, or something that is publishable (self or mainstream)?

What kind of word count would you envisage? I typically quote on 20,000 words, 40,000 words and 60,000 words (with 60,000 being the length of an average book).

Is there a deadline?

I typically provide a completed manuscript as a Word document, but I can also assist with creating a printed book or photo book (self publishing), or the submission process with publishers.

I make life story writing a beautiful process for the subject. Telling one’s story is more than just an exercise in capturing words, it’s a way of creating a legacy of thoughts, meaning and emotion for a family that endures as a precious reminder of life, love and connections.

Ready for the next step. Email me lindy@lindyschneider.com.au

Download this as PDF here

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Finding a sweet spot to live

A little bit of good news. I’ve just successfully completed a Diploma (Level 5) of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL)!

Building on my love for words, helping others and a passion for life long learning, this appealed as a beautiful extension of the part of me that is forever both a traveller and a self confessed word nerd.

In addition to proving to myself that I could do it, I hold this achievement as another step towards a return to my beloved Italy, where one day I will delight in teaching English, and living the life again while improving my own Italian speaking skills.

I don’t know how exactly this will unfold but…letting my dreams define my reality seems like a sweet place to start.

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A Sicilian Winter with the Locals

Read all about my six week sojourn in Sicily and the inspiration of language, season and of course food.

Read Article here

As featured in the Autumn 2025 issue of the Yarra Magazine

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Google reviews

I am reaching out to you as someone I truly enjoyed working with in the past. I hope you are well and thriving. I want to ask you for a few moments of your time.

If you feel you can, I would be delighted if you could upload a short review of my professional services to the Google review section of my Google business listing. I have not focused on this much in the past, preferring to invest real time in my writing and my clients, but it would be so valuable to now have some of this feedback in the public domain.
I would of course be delighted to write a review for you in return – please send me your link.

This is the quickest and easiest way to find the form for a review. Simply click on the link and know that I am grateful for your time and support. LINK> https://g.page/r/CRJuVbAJVGylEBM/review

Thank you for your words. They mean a lot to me.
Lindy

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In search of sfumatura

The average English speaker knows between 20,000 and 35,000 words and even at four years of age we have mastered about 5,000 words. Clearly it’s a lifetime of discovery. Avid readers, writers and students of grammar will naturally fall to the upper end of this range of words, and I’d like to think I’m somewhere in among them. So it’s been an awakening of sorts to start studying a new language and be back with the four year olds! 

This is my fourth full year of weekly Italian lessons. After a big start back in 1999 when I took a trip to foreign language school in Florence, Italy, for 3 months, I languished in learning from the minute I moved to the Yarra Valley – life, distance, distraction took over. It was due to the movement of so many classes to the online environment during COVID, and the overwhelming need I had to make the most of lockdowns, that I was able to return to study. And its been such a joy. 

I’m not sure how to quantify how many words I know but for the B1 level I am currently mastering, a little research indicates 5,000 seems about right. (Plus blessedly Italian is a familiar sounding language – the Latin base that is the foundation of Italian and English gives us much in common that I am forever grateful for.)

But there is one thing that truly frustrates me when I try to write and speak in this new language. The difference between knowing 5,000 words and 35,000 words can be summed up in one word! Sfumatura, which is the Italian word for nuance. 

Sfumatura is how we bring meaning to our words, how we find the depth of description, the carriage of emotion, the speakable and the unspeakable. Nuance is the difference between pedestrian and powerful. Nuance is the marker of a great writer and communicator. Nuance is what makes a life story resonate, inspire and move.

So I will persist in the search for sfumatura and this next chapter will be about me living in Comiso, in Sicily, for six weeks over the Italian winter; writing, studying and more importantly immersing myself in the subtleties of daily life and language.

And meanwhile, there have been so many ways that learning a language has been meaningful for me.

Learning a language has helped me to:

  1. Develop better listening skills.
  2. Understand the deep roots and nuances of my birth language.
  3. Gain a deeper appreciation for the lives of those who can’t communicate easily.
  4. Give myself to slow and incremental growth instead of fast and furious – slow learning is key.
  5. Authentically lean into a culture that represents all the values I appreciate for a good life.
  6. Meet so many gorgeous and generous people I would not usually encounter in life.
  7. Keep my mind curious, active and supple.
  8. Laugh at my own mistakes – there have been plenty.
  9. Hold true to my desire that in this lifetime I will be fluent.
  10. Drive my family crazy when I speak to myself in Italian at home, or anywhere.

In this lifetime I will master a second language. It makes me a better writer in English. And perhaps one day, an accomplished writer in Italian as well. 

So onwards I go, because there are moments when I think first in Italian, or something just magically drops in that makes it all so exquisitely pleasurable. I will find the nuance. Or perhaps it will find me. 

(I’ll be in Comiso 3.12.24-14.1.25)

Chi cerca, trova. Whoever seeks, finds.

 

#lifestoriesaustralia #inspiringlifestory #lifestoryinterviews #hearmystory #sharemystory #livetotell

#biography #therightwordchangeseverything #lindyschneiderwriter #memoir

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Breadcrumbs

Often clients will ask what the plan is for a life story I am writing. Every writer will have their own process for the gathering, sorting, arranging and writing of life material but I believe it is the material that suggests to us how we might best handle it.

So I am not the type of writer that sets up a chapter by chapter plan.

When I take on a story, I understand there is first the need for open listening and documenting without trying to prescribe any sort of format or outcome. 

I approach each story as an act of creative endeavour, an exploration that can only reveal itself as the project progresses. There is no way of knowing every intricacy or turn in a story when we first start. The process is a creative act shared between subject and writer that often follows an uncertain path, but nevertheless one with its own inherent wisdom and foundation.

I liken this to the gathering of breadcrumbs. Every story crumb drops at our feet to be considered and formed into a coherent thread. 

One breadcrumb leads you to the next…

And the next… 

And so the process unfolds.

Every story will reveal itself and for me the end result is richer and more nuanced. 

 

#lifestoriesaustralia #inspiringlifestory #lifestoryinterviews #hearmystory #sharemystory #livetotell #biography #therightwordchangeseverything #lindyschneiderwriter #memoir

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Life Story Writing

I have always preferred real stories to those of the imagination, but I don’t think I understood how important the imagination was in telling life stories until I dove deep into my first biography project.

I’ve always valued writing as a tool for healing and it is through this lens that I approach my life writing today. Every story, as we tell and retell, requires our imaginative forces to recreate the essence, the detail and feelings of the moment. And in constructing those moments in our lives using words, we are able to peer deeply into the subtleties of our experience.

In life writing we gather together the threads of a life and weave them into a tapestry that can be embraced by others. The opportunity to tell our story in our words is a legacy for others, and one of the greatest acts of faith in ourselves I can imagine.

My pathway into life writing has evolved out of many aspects of my life – writing articles about people as a professional writer and journalist, working with clients as a counsellor and art therapist and from my own practices in journal writing.

When I discovered life writing, I discovered a way to work that brought so many of these elements together. Empathetic listening, authentic questioning, skilful writing and imaginative scene setting all go toward a compelling read, and to write knowing that a story has the power to affect others is one of the most rewarding aspects of the work. But even more than that is the trusted place a life writer occupies in a subject’s world, even if only for a short time. It is work of great privilege and I am forever left with a deep sense of honour that I am invited into a life, a family and a story.

While many life stories are only captured on the page as a project of the twilight years, I encourage people to document their lives at any age or stage. A significant life event, illness or change, decade or transition from one life to another are all worthy of writing about. This means our life stories start right where we are and can companion us throughout our lives.  We all have something fascinating to share and our stories are never finished.

Lindy Schneider

 

 

 

Full Member – Life Stories Australia

www.lindyschneider.com.au

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