What's my story? What's yours?

Let’s play school for a moment. 

Today’s assignment is to answer the question, Who are you? 

You’re welcome to treat it as a deep philosophical consideration or as a superficial ‘cocktail party’ game.

Regardless of how you approach the question, though, I am willing to bet two things: One, it’s not that easy to answer. Two, your answer will shift and change — if not quite with the wind, then with the time, the place and the person asking the question. Oh, and also, there is a word limit: no more than 65 words, please. 

It’s challenging to encapsulate ourselves in a mere few words. Sure, we can offer a slice into our identity with just one word: Teacher. Wife. Father. Sister. Lawyer. Doctor, etc. But that tells the world only a role we hold or a relationship we have relative to another person. What does that one word actually say about us as a person — a wholly formed, fully complex person with history and credentials and experience and longings. Not much, right? Not nothing, but also not that much, really. While the other person may deduce a whole lot from that small tidbit of information, they may get it all wrong. 

During our work lives, we become familiar with one convention of “who am I” story telling: It’s the formal professional resume or CV. Shorter or longer, the document is crafted to impress and to position us as capable and worthy within a particular context. I think it’s one of the most difficult documents to write, in part at least because so much is usually riding on it. 

In our personal lives, it’s rare to be asked for the equivalent of a resume, though, these days, just about any volunteer or community-based gig will want at least a written snapshot of you and what you’re bringing to the table.  

In my writing life, I have begun to get serious about submitting my work for publication, and in every instance a version of the “author bio” is requested for inclusion with the piece. The Globe and Mail keeps it stripped right down to only the writer’s name and home town — not so much a bio, actually, as a locator pin for their national readership. Brevity Blog (“daily discussions of craft and the writing life”), on the other hand, requests an author bio — and it almost stumped me. With my first submission, after I had stopped panicking about this seemingly innocuous but deeply challenging request, I included a bit more than the bare Globe and Mail minimum: “Amanda Le Rougetel lives in the heart of the Canadian prairies in Winnipeg, Manitoba. A retired college instructor, she blogs at Five Years a Writer and teaches writing workshops through Writing as Tool.” 

That seemed fine to me, until I saw it in print on the blog, and then it seemed thin and, I realized, a wasted opportunity to describe myself more fully to a new-to-me audience. I was sorry that I hadn’t been bolder and more expansive. 

But I took that lemon and made lemonade, in the form of a second piece of writing about this very topic. “Author bio? Author crisis!” appeared on Brevity Blog yesterday (Dec. 12). I’m pleased with that piece and I’m really delighted with the responses it has elicited from that blog’s readership. Also, I’m much happier with the author bio I crafted at the end of the post. 

Now, back to you: Who are you? How is your bio coming along? Never mind. Set it aside for now. There’s always tomorrow, when you may well have a different story to tell! That’s how our identity works: It’s always evolving, which is what makes writing a bio sketch so challenging — and also so rewarding when we are successful in capturing ourselves in words on a page. For a moment at least, it’s who we are. 

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Two of the courses I co-teach focus specifically on the ‘who am I?’ story: Writing as Tool for Transformation and What’s Your Story? Any writing course, really, will open you to who you are; our Spark Your Writing course provides a weekly prompt to write to, followed by a session in which to read your work aloud and talk about it with others. The writing that participants have produced in past sessions has been astonishing for its breadth, depth and form. Check out the details of these courses and the rest of our winter term offerings on our website. Writing really is a tool for transformation, allowing us to tell stories about so many things — including ourselves. 

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Cat behind bush photo by Jan Gustavsson on Unsplash 
Two monkeys photo by Mihai Surdu on Unsplash