Today I bring you what I think is a most inspiring post: My longtime student Diane Hurles has shared here before how she managed to find her voice as a memoir writer after having worked as a journalist all her life, and today she shares how she kept the ball rolling. One story, it turns out, can be many stories, and all of them can find a home. Thank you, Diane, for sharing and for staying with it!

The Many Lives of a Story

by Diane Hurles

You never know where a story will take you. Even a story as
dusty as mine, now nearly 50 years old. I never intended to go way back and write about my childhood
when I first enrolled in Annette’s “Introduction to Memoir” class at StoryStudio Chicago five years ago. A former journalist brand new to Chicago, I had signed up for the class because I was looking for a creative outlet, a chance
to dive deeper into my writing. I was anxious for the challenge of trying to write my own story for a change,
rather than the third-person articles I was used to as a reporter.

I intended to write about my recent move for a new job in
the Loop – the trauma of downsizing from a three-bedroom ranch to a
1,000-square-foot city condo, the excitement of such a big mid-life
adventure. But as I unpacked, I came
across a box of old letters that I had written as a child, letters that had
been saved and tucked away decades ago. In one envelope was a small note I had written
to my mother, whom I lost to cancer when I was 12. “Please get well and come home soon – I am
waiting for you,” I had written during one of her long hospital stays. It had a pencil-smudged drawing of a sad face
with tears.

I felt a wave of inspiration to share that little girl’s
story. Thus began my first attempt at
memoir.

As I wrote, my piece became more than just the story of my
mother’s long years of illness – the story I probably would have written in
my newspaper days. It evolved into the story
of how the rest of the family coped. I
reached deep within myself to unveil the ugly truth of how that little girl
felt: Scared, overwhelmed and angry at
the world. It was a hard process for me
– putting such raw honesty into words – but as it turned out, it made all of the
difference.

After three or four rewrites – with plenty of feedback from Annette
and my classmates – that piece became my first published work of creative
nonfiction when it was selected for inclusion in the anthology Wisdom Has a Voice:Daughters Remember Mothers. The book
came out in the summer of 2011. That
success alone left me more than satisfied – but there was more to come.

Jill Pollack, founder and director of StoryStudio Chicago, shared
my excitement when I told her about the anthology. She immediately asked me if I’d write a post about
it for StoryStudio’s blog, Cooler By the Lake. So I wrote a blog post about
my writing process, the thrill of getting my story published, and the support I
received from my class at StoryStudio.

But that still wasn’t all.

More than once Annette encouraged
me to look into submitting to Chicken Soup for the Soul. “Your writing
fits their brand,” she’d say. When I
discovered Chicken Soup was planning a book themed “Inspiration for Writers,” I
thought about my story, or rather, I
thought about my story about writing my story – what it took for a late-bloomer
like me to finally get published as a creative writer. So one weekend last fall I enhanced the blog post I had written
for Cooler By the Lake and submitted
it to Chicken Soup on a whim. I remember thinking that if I didn’t do it right
then, I’d chicken out (pun intended!). It took several months to get a response, but
I finally received an email telling me my story was on the “short list.” A few weeks later, I learned it had made the
“final cut.” And then finally – about a month after that – I received an email
that began with “Congratulations!” and went on to welcome me into the Chicken Soup
family. Chicken Soup for the Soul: Inspiration for Writers will be
published in May, and I’m beyond excited.

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned throughout my journey of trying
to tell the story of one little girl’s loss and resilience, it’s this: Don’t be afraid to dig deep, get messy, and spill
a little of yourself on the page. Oh – and take one of Annette’s memoir
classes!