The Best Way to Share Personal Stories without Overthinking it

Sharing personal stories makes most everyone self-conscious. On the one hand, it makes you wonder, why should anyone care, while at the same time it can leave you feeling vulnerable and exposed. Yet, one of the most generous things an author can share is a piece of themselves. I’m sure you can think of multiple examples of this principle when reading interviews or memoirs from people you admire.

Therefore, no matter what you’re working on, sharing stories that connect with your audience is an essential trick of the trade. It gets easier with practice, and it doesn’t have to be a big deal. One of my favorite forms of writing is the vignette or flash fiction. You choose a number of words, from 10-1000 and create the full experience of a story.

If you’re creating a vignette, you need three elements: a memorable character, emotions and a change. When you’re clear about those three elements you can actually cut or extend any story to 100 words, 500 words, 1000 or 5000 words. You just make choices about what to cut and what to keep.

Here’s a caption I picked from my Instagram feed. At the time I wanted to see what experiences people had with angels and spirit guides, so I brought up the topic in social media to see if it resonated.

Do you believe in angels? Or muses? Or spirit guides?  Recently I read that sometimes they appear in human form.  For instance, the night I was supposed to move to Bogotá and get married, I missed my flight. The plane boarded at 12:11 AM. I handily forgot that meant the plane took off first thing in the morning, rather than last thing at night. I was exactly 24 hours late and the service desk was closed. Brilliant, I know. 

Anyhow, there I was in the middle of JFK with a ticket to a flight that boarded the day before. Not only that, but I had been so emotional calling my sister from the cab, that I dropped my phone and didn't realize it.

What I lack in organization, I usually make up for in resourcefulness, but in that particular moment I was dumbfounded and shaking. Then a man walked up to me and asked why I looked so perplexed.

I started to explain but got tangled in my own words.

He said, "It doesn't matter. Listen, I'm part of a spiritual training program at my synagogue and you obviously need help, so here's my phone. Make all the calls you need, and I'll be back in twenty-minutes to reclaim it." I told him I needed to call Colombia. He said that was fine.  

In all the years I lived in New York City, nobody had ever handed me their phone, given me permission to make international calls, and walked away.

I called my phone and astonishingly the taxi driver picked up. I negotiated a fare for him to swing back by the airport. He said my fiancé had already called a dozen times and was driving him crazy. Then I called my panic-stricken fiancé. After talking to the taxi driver, he had jumped to the conclusion that I must be dead or in the hospital, and I was like, “In that case I have got wonderful news, I only tried to catch my flight on the wrong day.” 

Self-acceptance. Self-forgiveness.

After about twenty minutes, the stranger came back and reclaimed his phone. Were these the actions of a flesh and blood human being? You tell me…

This was a true story and unfortunately, I have the credit card bills to prove it. I shared the anecdote as if telling a friend. As a result, I connected with more people with similar experiences, invited new friends to my list, bonded at a deeper level with people who already knew me, and had a laugh.

All of this in under four-hundred words. I could have cut it down to 100 words and kept those essential qualities or I could have extended it to 1000 words. However, if I felt I needed to overthink everything I shared, I’d never make it out of the gate. The point of playing around with social media was to put myself out there.

Finding your voice isn’t about thinking up what to say, it’s about engaging with people who matter to you. It’s all an ever-expanding conversation and the more you give of yourself, the more you’ll meet others who are eager to join you.