LitHub: HOW TO TELL YOUR FAMILY THAT YOU’RE WRITING A MEMOIR

"MY MISSHAPEN SKATEBOARDING BOOK HAD BECOME A BOOK ABOUT, WELL, US"

May 14, 2018  By Neal Thompson

[This story first appeared on LitHub]

I didn’t intend for it to be a memoir. I swear. It just kept tilting in that direction.

The only scenes that felt real and true were those with my wife and two sons. Still, it took a few years of writing my way in and out of corners and dead ends before I stopped referring to my book as a “history of skateboarding with bits of personal narrative,” before I under...