A review by reader_cheryl
Your Story Matters: Finding, Writing, and Living the Truth of Your Life by Leslie Leyland Fields

4.0

*A pdf copy of this book was provided for an honest review.

Your Story Matters: Finding, Writing, and Living the Truth of Your Life is a great resource for anyone wanting to write about their life; the book flows well and is clear the way it imparts information, but it isn’t dry. It is in turns informative, instructional, humorous, and engaging. The book is broken down into chapters. The chapters are easy to read and understand and offer a lot of encouragement, because let's face it, writing your own story is hard and scary work. It is also necessary work for many, especially in a world that insists not everyone matters.

What makes this book different from others is, in my opinion, several things: it can be done as part of a group or as a solo attempt and guidance is given for both ways; the author Leslie Leyland Fields shares her own struggles as a writer, the lessons she's learned have been hard won; at the end of each chapter are exercises designed to get anyone of any writing level working on writing their own story.

I've read the book, but haven't done any of the exercises yet because I'm in the middle of another writing project and need to get it done before unmaking anything new. But I'm excited to try some of the exercises out when I've finished with my current project. But until I get to that point, there are some excellent quotes I've highlighted as I've read; quotes that give me something to think about, even as a fiction writer.

Leslie writes "compelling storytelling isn’t about intellect or education. It’s about courage. It’s about persistence. It’s about daring to dig through vague words to get at the real, concrete world." Even though I am primarily a fiction writer, this book's advice carries over into the fiction world as well. This quote stops and makes me think of how to approach my fiction and prods me into taking another look at some non-fiction I've written but is somehow incomplete.

Leslie also writes early on in the book "Writing is a form of attention, a form of prayer, a form of listening to God." I don't think I've ever really thought about any of this before. I vaguely acknowledged some of this idea, but this book had me slowing down and thinking about the idea of writing as a form of listening to God.

I've plenty of books on the writing craft, but this one is different because it gets to the core of who we are--storytellers. And as storytellers, it is incumbent upon us to take the time to learn how to tell our stories and tell them well because no one can tell them for us. It doesn't matter if you're telling your story to yourself in order to make sense out of a chaotic life or telling your story for multitudes to hear, this book will help you to tell your story and tell it well.