MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY<\/p>\n
As a ghostwriter, I\u2019ve been fortunate to interview luminaries\u00a0from all walks of life and help them tell their stories. These people live public
lives with great highs and lows, but they also have private lives with human\u00a0foibles and weaknesses. No matter how exciting we imagine someone else\u2019s existence\u00a0to be, they still have to get up in the morning, brush their teeth, drink their\u00a0coffee, deal with their relationships and find the courage to face their\u00a0obstacles.<\/p>\n
When I conduct my celebrity interviews, I view them like
archeological digs. I slowly make my way, question by question, deep into\u00a0someone\u2019s psyche to reveal the story beneath the story, the face beneath the\u00a0makeup, the wrinkles beneath the fillers and the inner struggles beneath the outer\u00a0victories in order to paint each person as unique and authentic.<\/p>\n
I was writing a memoir for rock and roll diva, Grace Slick, and\u00a0I needed to dedicate a chapter to \u201cWoodstock,\u201d the legendary music festival in\u00a0New York in 1969. Her group, \u201cJefferson Airplane,\u201d was one of many headliners,\u00a0there was certainly a great story there, but I had a dilemma. So much had\u00a0already been written about it over four decades, I needed to find a fresh new angle,\u00a0the other side of the story, to avoid repeating the same old stuff that everyone\u00a0had heard for years. \u00a0This is an ongoing task for non-fiction writers who want to make familiar stories interesting.<\/p>\n
The Woodstock event had been filmed, told and retold. Everyone
knew about Jimi Hendricks\u2019s iconic performance of \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d We\u00a0knew about \u201cThe Who,\u201d a group that was famous for smashing their guitars at the\u00a0end of each performance. We had seen Crosby, Still & Nash perform together\u00a0for only the second time at 4 AM. There was available footage of the entire
concert, the rain and mud that people sloshed through to be a part of it and\u00a0the miracle of half a million people gathering together in peace and harmony\u00a0for 72 hours. So what didn’t we know? What was the other side of the story that\u00a0would spark people\u2019s interest?\u00a0<\/p>\n
I sat opposite the great diva and said to her, \u201cWe all saw\u00a0the legends perform, in person or on film, but we were on the outside looking\u00a0in. We don\u2019t know what it was like to be you, to be on the stage looking out.\u201d\u00a0I asked her to close her eyes and imagine herself on stage. How did it feel to perform\u00a0for hundreds of thousands of people? Was it scary? Was it exciting? Was it\u00a0difficult? Was it rewarding?<\/p>\n
Grace closed her eyes and imagined herself sitting on stage
for eight hours, waiting for her turn, with no bathroom breaks. She told me\u00a0about her decision to stay sober so she could bear the responsibility of being\u00a0a powerful feminine example of freedom and love. She told me about feeling the fringes\u00a0of her white tunic blowing in the breeze as she sang her heart out at 8 AM. By\u00a0the time the interview was over, I felt satisfied that I had gotten the other\u00a0side of the story, the things that made her feel the most vulnerable and human.<\/p>\n
Everyone has a story. Please don\u2019t minimize yours. Just\u00a0because you\u2019re not as loud as someone else doesn’t mean your story isn\u2019t as
interesting. It may not sound exciting like Grace\u2019s, but no matter what it is,\u00a0if you\u2019re authentic, if you tell the truth, \u201cwarts and all\u201d as the saying goes,\u00a0what you have to say will be interesting and valuable to other people, no\u00a0matter how unremarkable the theme. On the other hand, if you\u2019re not honest, if\u00a0you try to embellish the truth, what you have to say will be boring no matter\u00a0how lavishly you try to gild the lily. You will become untouchable and no one\u00a0will be able to relate to what you\u2019re saying. Each of our lives and the things
that we do have purpose and make their mark. When we view ourselves as the sum\u00a0total of all that we\u2019ve done, we can find meaning and self-acceptance.<\/p>\n
Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Anne Tyler, who has written\u00a0more than two dozen novels, is a great example of making the mundane infinitely\u00a0interesting. Her books all take place in Baltimore, Maryland, where she lives\u00a0and not much happens plot-wise. They are about inner isolation, the struggle\u00a0for identity and communication between people. The things that we all face. Nothing\u00a0shiny and sparkly. No fireworks or heroic feats. No histrionics or\u00a0catastrophes. Just people being people like you and me.<\/p>\n
Native Americans have always considered story-telling a\u00a0sacred method to pass down traditions, a way to blend the outer and inner
worlds. They see their dreams as metaphors, bringing their stories to life and\u00a0learning from them. In my writing classes, we excavate our hiding places, we write\u00a0what\u2019s in our hearts and we read out loud as we release shame, pain, fear. A sense\u00a0of relief washes over us. Whether we remember the past with pride or shame, whether\u00a0we\u2019re looking at our victories or our failures, whether we like what we’ve done\u00a0or not, there are always two sides to every story. We are not perfect or\u00a0imperfect. We are simply living our lives and trying to stay present and aware.\u00a0If you think your life is boring or repetitious, find a new way to look at it.\u00a0Find the other side of the story. It\u2019s always there.<\/p>\n
The late Poet Laureate, Maya Angelou said, \u201cThere is no
greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY WEEKLY BLOG TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY As a ghostwriter, I\u2019ve been fortunate to interview luminaries\u00a0from all walks of life and help them tell their stories. These people live publiclives with great highs and lows, but they also have private lives with human\u00a0foibles and weaknesses. No matter how exciting we imagine someone else\u2019s existence\u00a0to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2123,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2122\/revisions\/2123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}