My favorite writing prompt this week was WordPress.com‘s Daily Post for Saturday, Your Life, the Book: From a famous writer or celebrity, to a WordPress.com blogger or someone close to you — who would you like to be your biographer?
I’m not sure my life story is interesting enough to warrant space on anyone’s bookshelf, but if there’s an author out there who I’d trust to turn the mundane into a page-turner, it would have to be Laura Hillenbrand. I admit that I’ve only read one of her books, Unbroken, but that one chronicle of a WWII POW’s survival sold me on her amazing abilities as a storyteller. The harrowing tale of Louis Zamperini, former Olympic runner, was presented with humor, grace, and sensitivity, and I was completely entranced from the very first page. Hillenbrand included so many details, from every aspect of Louis Zamperini’s life, gleaned from poring over letters and diaries, as well as countless interviews with family, friends, Olympic teammates and coaches, fellow POWs, and Japanese veterans. Her research and the resulting biography were so thorough that Zamperini has since called Hillenbrand to get details about specific events from his life so he can be accurate as he pens his own memoirs!
I’d like to hand over my story to someone who will take it on as her own, sifting through the minutiae of the past to create a path of words that allows the reader to walk right alongside me throughout my life’s journey. Someone who can sort out the jumble of events, emotions, relationships, and adventures of my past four decades, and make sense of how they’ve all worked to make me the person I am today. I think if Hillenbrand were in charge of this project, I would learn something about myself in the finished story!
Things I See and Know 