how much is your life worth?

One of my classes this semester is called "Senior Seminar". No one really knows what the purpose of it is. It pretty much covers all the same material we went through in the "English Majors Seminar" we took as Freshmen, but the school requires it nonetheless. Thus far it's been a mishmash of reading short stories, writing brief fiction, discussion groups on what type of jobs we can get with our degree (which have been so illustrious as "grocery check out person" and "department store clothes folder") and at least an hour of every class is dedicated to....listening. To our professor. And stories of his life. And he's got a lot of them.

Really good ones, thank heavens.

 He got his MFA at the University of Montana back when Richard Hugo was teaching there (swoon). He was a smoke jumper (a firefighter who jumps out of a plane into the middle of a forest fire). Back in the late 80's, he wrote and delivered commentaries for NPR in Washington DC. But he is most famous for his choice in a wife. Her:

Not Christa McAullife--the teacher/astronaut who perished in the Challenger Space Shuttle in 1986, but the woman with her. The back-up teacher/astronaut, Barbara Morgan. Which meant he was there, amongst the other astronauts' families, the day the space shuttle exploded. Just a few weeks ago--on the 25th anniversary of the disaster, he recounted his first-hand events to us; and of the mixed joy he and his wife felt when, in 2007, she finally got to fly the mission she'd trained so hard for. Quite the "where were you when it happened?" recollection. Pretty somber stuff.


But he had another recollection that caught my attention. It happened one day, after he had completed an NPR piece on smoke jumper training, culminating in him doing a live radio-telecast of a jump. He received a call. It was an NBC news correspondent who was offering $50,000 for the rights to the stories of my professor's life. All of them.

If he took the deal, he would never again be able to write about his own life. Someone else would own the right to put to pen all his experiences, in whatever way they chose. But still...

$50,000 (!!!) ....

That's a lot of  income for a man trying to support a wife and family on the salary of a writer. Even semi-prestigious writers like he was, don't make a lot of money.

My professor said he didn't have to think about it too long. He answered....

No.

His life didn't have a price. He wanted his stories to remain his own.

Which leads me to this....

Recently, I've been nudged in the direction by several people I admire to compile a memoir type novel of my life, and specifically my experience of betrayal, divorce, and healing. I have toyed with the idea myself. It's good, sad, reflective, funny stuff. The only problem is, well....it's all here. Just about everything I would have to say in a non-fiction type novel is already on this blog to read. For free. 587 posts over the last 4 years. Yup. That's a lot of me.

I can't help but include bits and pieces of my real life experiences in the fiction I write, but I like that they're mixed with made up stuff and conglomerations of other people I've known or have wanted to know. And even if I never make a single cent off any of them, I'm glad my stories are all mine to share. That's priceless :)

How about you? Is there a set amount of money you'd accept for the stories of your life?