Ray Carman has served as an interviewer on three LifeBook projects to date. Here, he shares a thoughtful reflection on what it means to witness people telling their stories in real time. His perspective speaks to the depth of trust involved in the interview process, the collaborative nature of bringing a memoir to life and the quiet impact this work has on everyone involved.
My name is Ray, and I am an interviewer for LifeBook Memoirs.
It is always such a pleasure and an honour to help each author capture his or her inspiring life story in a memoir for their family and friends. All those people are now able to read the authors’ stories and understand their accomplishments and disappointments.
As an interviewer for LifeBook Memoirs, my job is to help authors articulate how they triumphed over obstacles and hardships and to document the strategies they used to solve problems and overcome difficulties. In the process, I talk to some fascinating authors, and I am privileged to see and feel their emotions as they tell their stories. As I laugh and cry with them, I establish my own special bond with them, as all interviewers do.
Being an interviewer for LifeBook Memoirs is the most interesting job, in my experience, though putting a memoir together involves serious work from the other members of each project team. The company is full of wonderful experts who make inspirational things happen for our authors and their memoirs. The hardest-working of them, in my humble opinion, are the project managers and the ghostwriters. They work the magic that makes each author’s dreams come true, and the outstanding quality of each memoir rests heavily on their shoulders. They also have plenty of invaluable guidance and suggestions to offer the interviewer.
LifeBook Memoirs really does have the best of the best memorialising the wonderful stories of each author.
