Guest Blog: Every Life is a Story, by Shawn Inmon

Hi, everyone. I'm delighted to have a guest blogger today: Shawn Inmon, author of Feels Like the First Time. Here, Shawn talks about the importance of telling your stories -- along with some tips on how to make those stories really shine. Enjoy!
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I met Dawn, the love of my life when she moved into the house next door the year I turned fifteen. She was three years behind me in school, so it took some time to realize that I loved her. For us, friendship came first. We spent hundreds of hours, sitting in the grass between our two houses, laughing, teasing and supporting each other through the trials of being teenagers in small-town America in the 1970s. By the end of my junior year in high school, I knew I loved her, but it took until mid-way through my senior year before I let her in on the secret.

One short year later, we had made a lifetime commitment to each other, but had also been banned from seeing each other by her parents. I said good-bye to Dawn, I thought forever, on Valentine’s Day 1979. Although I never stopped loving her, I didn’t see her again until December 1st, 2006. When I did run into her again, completely by accident, it shook my world to its foundations.

After these events transpired, I began to realize that it was a story, and I wrote my book, Feels Like the First Time. Now, after writing and publishing my own story, I have talked to dozens of people who said they related to our story of first love and lost love. Through these conversations, I have realized that every life is a story. Some are romances, some are action-adventure stories, and at least a few are comedies, but every life has a story arc.

With the changes in publishing over the last decade, telling that story has never been easier. When I first started writing Feels Like the First Time in 2006, I was intent on going to traditional publishing route – looking for an agent and trying to “sell” my story to a publishing house. By the time I finished it, I decided not to send out even a single query letter. The idea of being my own publisher had become too appealing to think of turning my own life story over to a stranger.

It was a steep learning curve for me, but I enjoyed every step in learning about editing, proofreading, cover design and interior book layout. It’s possible to do these things yourself, or you can hire professionals to do it for you. Before you get to that step though, you’ve got to write. And then write some more, and still more. Because I was such an inexperienced writer, I wrote over two dozen drafts of Feels Like the First Time before I was ready to hire an editor to look at it.

I also recommend a thick skin. When I turned in the first draft of my story, it was over 100,000 words. When I hit “publish” five months later, it was 66,000 words. And that was after dozens of revision on my own. Through the editing process, I kept a single mantra in the forefront of my brain: Whatever makes the book better. It’s harder when writing about your own life, but it’s good to get as much ego out of the way as you can.

Until you’ve done it the first time, the idea of sitting down and writing a book can be intimidating. That’s why I don’t recommend that. Instead, try just recreating various memories from your life, and telling them as stories. Write about your first kiss, or your first car, or when you lost someone close to you. Eventually, you may see a pattern emerging in those stories and a book might be in there, begging to be let out. Feels Like the First Time started as a series of emails between my oldest sister and I. It wasn’t until we had been exchanging those emails for two years that either of us realized it was a book.

Everyone has a story to tell, and it’s never been easier to share your story with the rest of the world.

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Shawn Inmon is a husband and father, as well as a writer, Real Estate Broker, and member of KISS II, The World’s Original KISS Tribute band. If you’d like to know what happened between after he ran into Dawn in 2006, the answers are all in Feels Like the First Time, available in both Kindle and paperback on Amazon.