How Do You Help Someone Turn a Life Story Into a Memoir? An Interview with Francine Brevetti

Today in the first part of a two-part interview, SevenPonds speaks with Francine Brevetti of Legend Crafter from her home in San Francisco, California. Francine is a biographer, ghostwriter, book coach, journalist and author of two books: Fabulous Fior: Over 100 Years In an Italian Kitchen, The Fior D’Italia of San Francisco, America’s Oldest Italian Restaurant and Cat Naps And Doggie Snorts: The Joy of Sleeping With Critters. After a long and fruitful career in journalism, she left her job as a reporter and branded herself as Legend Crafter, turning her attention to helping people shape their life stories into books. She ghostwrites memoirs and biographies for some clients and acts as a book coach for others who want to write their own books.

Credit: Francine Brevetti

Ellary: What is Legend Crafter, and how did it get started?

Francine: I was a reporter for about 30 years covering business, and about seven years ago, I left the Oakland Tribune. I already had two clients who wanted me to help them write their memoirs just as I was leaving the Tribune. Legend Crafter is my brand name. So I kept on looking for people who wanted me to write their story – it could be a nonfiction story, could be their memoir, could be about their business. And I’ve had several clients over the years. And I wrote a book about 10 years ago that was published and sponsored by the oldest Italian restaurant in the United States, in San Francisco. They wanted me to write their history, so I did that for several years. Last year, I published my own book about people who sleep with their animals, and I’m working on another book about how to write a book about your business.

Ellary: Who were those initial two clients who wanted you to write their memoirs?

Francine: Well, you know, as a ghostwriter, I generally don’t talk about my clients. I can talk about one of them. She’s deceased and her father founded the Oakland Zoo. She wanted to share the story of her childhood at the zoo.

Ellary: What got you interested in helping people write their life stories?

Francine: I was a business writer and a business reporter, and my forte seemed to be in writing profiles of people rather than in talking about their stock prices. That’s just something I seem to do well. I interview people intensely and gently, but thoroughly, and help them open up about things that they had forgotten, or hadn’t wanted to talk about for a long time. I’m just good at that.

Ellary:  It sounds like really fulfilling work

Francine: It is.

Ellary: And it sounds like you probably develop pretty close relationships to your clients.

Francine: Yes, I do get close to them, and I feel honored when they ask me to help them, because I know they’re sharing a very private part of themselves with me.

Ellary: What do you think it is that makes people want to turn their life into a memoir?

Francine: Well, people have lots of reasons for wanting to do that. Like the lady who grew up in the zoo, she wanted to share her experiences with her grandchildren. Other people want to take an accounting of their lives, they want to understand how they got where they are, or they want to have an outlet for sharing their point of view. Maybe you grew up in a family where everybody else’s opinion counted more than yours did. Some people feel that way. Some people just want to enjoy the experiences they had. Some people look at it as a sort of spiritual exercise, an examination of consciousness type of thing. A lot of them want to say something that they think will help someone.

Ellary: What are some of those triggers and blocks that arise when someone is undertaking the memoir writing journey with you and how do you help them with those? 

Credit: Francine Brevetti

Francine: I try to be very alert about what is not being said. I try to lead them down the path. I try to help them articulate something they’re either unwilling or unable to articulate. Of course, all of this is done without any judgement on my part. They have to feel totally safe with me and have a trusting relationship.

Ellary: Do you build a relationship with your client before you start the memoir writing process?

Francine: Not necessarily, no. A year ago, a man called me up from another part of the country, found my name online, and he told me some difficult things about himself and we started working. In fact, he came to San Francisco to spend three days with me. And so that was that. Another woman I just started working with recently got my name through somebody else who knew me ever so briefly about a year ago. So business comes in all different ways.

Ellary: What do you think is the most powerful benefit of writing a memoir?

Francine: I think that people really need to feel heard and they need to feel their story is being treasured with some amount of honor and respect.

Ellary: It’s so important to feel heard.

Francine: I’ve had people tell me things they hadn’t told the rest of their family.

Ellary: And then those people are often going to share the book with their family members?

Francine: Not necessarily. Some of them do, but not all of them. Some of them just have to tell it to somebody, and since they’re paying for it, I don’t necessarily have to write everything they say, just everything they want to be read. I mean, if they want to expunge something, they can, but at some point they just have to say something and they tell me.

Today in the second part of a two-part interview, SevenPonds speaks with Francine Brevetti of Legend Crafter from her home in San Francisco, California. Francine is a biographer, ghostwriter, book coach, journalist and author of two books: Fabulous Fior: Over 100 Years In an Italian Kitchen, The Fior D’Italia of San Francisco, America’s Oldest Italian Restaurant and Cat Naps And Doggie Snorts: The Joy of Sleeping With Critters. After a long and fruitful career in journalism, she left her job as a reporter and branded herself as Legend Crafter, turning her attention to helping people shape their life stories into books. She ghostwrites memoirs and biographies for some clients and acts as a book coach for others who want to write their own books.

Ellary: Can you give a verbal sketch of the process of writing a memoir with you from the time somebody contacts you to the finished product?

Francine: First of all we have to get really clear on what they expect their manuscript to be. I’m not going to publish it for them. If they want to find a publisher, that’s a completely different negotiation with me. I‘m just there to write the story, and so we have to get really clear on what they expect. Then I interview them frequently and thoroughly, and I record the interviews. Then I transcribe the interviews and when I have at least a few interviews transcribed, I can start to structure a manuscript, I can start to structure their story. It may take several months. I worked with one man for five years, because he needed to repeat himself. I don’t work with anybody for five years anymore, just that one, but it can take up to a year sometimes.

Ellary: How many  memoirs are you generally working on at once?

Francine: Generally a couple at the same time.

Ellary: Do you work with people to write biographies of people that have passed as well as memoirs, or is it just strictly memoir writing?

Francine: I have written people’s stories about their families, yeah. I had a client once, whose mother had passed away and left a stack of love letters that she accumulated during World War II.  My client wanted me to write a book based on her mother’s correspondence with her sweetheart. Trouble is, my client had never read the letters and her mother had told her a whole bunch of untruths about what was contained in the letters. When I explained to my client that that’s not what was in the letters, that the real story was completely different, she kind of didn’t want to go forward.

Ellary: So she had a fantasy about what the letters said and she didn’t want to let go of the fantasy. 

Francine: Yes.

Ellary: Have you worked with terminally ill people who are trying to write their story before they pass?

Francine: I’ve never had that opportunity. I would. It just hasn’t happened yet.

Ellary: Can you give an example of a roadblock you encounter when writing a memoir?

Francine: One thing I would caution people about if they’re thinking of writing their memoir is that sometimes I ask them who else should I speak to that might have some insight into their story. So some people tell me, “Oh yeah, you want to talk to Aunt Jane or my sister,” or something like that. And when I do that, sometimes it turns out that people don’t see things the same way. For instance, I had a client who was telling me his parents’ story and he asked me speak to his sister, and she thought of this particular incident a completely different way. So that’s to be expected, and I don’t resist that. What I do is report both sides of the story.

Francine Brevetti’s 5 Memoir Writing Tips

1) Decide whom you want to read your memoir – Just yourself?  Your family? Do you want to publish it?

2) Decide if you want to write chronologically or emphasize only certain themes and periods from your life.

3) Brainstorm without censoring or criticizing yourself.

4)  Don’t know where to start?  Start anywhere.

5) Review any journals, diaries and scrapbooks you have, but don’t get bogged down in them. Read them only enough to remember people and events you may have forgotten.

 Ellary: In the descriptions of the workshops you used to teach, you referenced memory prompts.  What are some examples of memory prompts?

Francine: I have several pages of memory prompts. For instance, you might want to write about your environment growing up as a small child.So you ask yourself what your family constellation was like. What were your relationships with your siblings like? What was your education? What was the most exciting thing that happened to you as a child? What was the most traumatic thing that happened to you as a child? Where did you go to school? Who’d you hang with? What was your religious education like? What were meal times like with the family? Did you have to deal with a death or illness as a child, either your own or someone in the family? Who did you love most in the family, and why?

Some people have had very traumatic upbringings, you know, and those are the people I usually get – the people that have really horrible upbringings. People come to me because they’ve got scabs hanging off of them, and they want to heal, and this is part of their healing.

Ellary: Is there a particular stage in life in which people seem to be most inclined to want to have a memoir written?

Francine: Yes, usually they’re baby boomers. My youngest client is a woman in her late fifties. Most of the people are in their sixties, seventies and eighties, because that’s when people are thinking about their mortality. They have grandchildren. They may be retired and have more time. They have the money to do it. It’s not cheap to have your memoir written, so that’s the time when they are in a situation to allow them to do that.

Ellary: Do you have any advice for moving through creative blocks?

Francine: Usually a creative block is a feeling of self loathing, a feeling that you can’t do this. A feeling like, nobody will care about my story, it’s not good, whatever I write is no good, and if my mother were here, she’d say, “Are you writing that crap?” So it’s a whole bunch of judgment. My advice is always, listen to the judgment and just say, “Thank you very much for sharing,” and go on and write. The judgmental voice should come out when you edit, not while you’re writing.

Ellary: Do people seem to respond well to that advice?

Francine: Yes, and I tell them not to edit until they’ve finished the first download, however many weeks it takes. Don’t go back and edit the first chapter until you’ve finished the book, because I find frequently that that’s a diversion from going forward.

Ellary: Are you of the mindset that everyone’s life is interesting if you look hard enough?

Francine: Absolutely, yeah.  People don’t think that about themselves frequently, but that’s because they haven’t explored it or they don’t value their story.

Francine Brevetti at the Taj Mahal

Ellary: What has been your most profound experience to date in helping someone write their life story?

Francine: Well my most profound experience is always the client I’m currently writing for.  So every story I come across is always amazing to me, the things that people deal with and get through. The people who don’t get through them don’t come to me.

Ellary: What are you currently working on?

Francine: I’m writing a book on how to write the book about your business. I’m going to be blogging that as well as publishing it as an e-book. Many business owners feel that it’s important to have their name on a book as the author, but don’t know how to do it. So this is like a primer for them.

Ellary: Thank you for speaking with us!

Francine: Thank you!