What If Someone Doesn’t Want to Answer
Joan Petrie is an example, not a customer. We’ve written her to show you what actually happens when a question is declined — because that matters here more than anywhere else on this site.
Born 1936, Coventry · married to Bill · commissioned by her daughter
“What is the hardest thing you have lived through?”
She said she would rather not. That was the whole exchange — no reason asked for, and none given. The question doesn’t appear in the finished book, and her daughter isn’t told which questions were declined.
What She Answered Instead, Forty Minutes Later
“Describe your favourite chair, and why it was yours.”
“It was in the back room, facing the garden. I sat in it every afternoon for about two years and I could not tell you what I did in it. Nothing, I should think. Bill left me to it, which was the kindest thing he ever did for me, and he did a great many kind things.”
The Written Story — the Version That Was Printed
There was a chair in the back room that faced the garden. For about two years Joan sat in it every afternoon, and she cannot say what she did there. Nothing, she thinks.
Bill left her to it. She names that, without hesitation, as the kindest thing he ever did for her — and she is careful to add that he did a great many kind things.
The Rule This Demonstrates
Every family has a version of this — something that won’t be spoken about, on purpose. The book has to be able to receive a decline without looking damaged for having one.
She has final say on what appears. A decline is never reported back to whoever paid, and never explained. And the person writing it down doesn’t join dots she chose not to join herself — nothing is inferred into print that wasn’t said.
More Samples
Four other lives, the same set of questions.
- A Working Life — Walter Nowak, thirty-four years on the line.
- A Courtship — Peggy Whitfield, married in 1959.
- A Childhood in Another Country — Beverley Clarke, Jamaica to Birmingham.
- Two Languages, a Grandson Asking — Rafael Villalobos, Guatemala to Houston.
Every book starts the same way: you choose twenty-five questions once, from eight categories and one of your own. What comes back depends on who you’re asking and whether they’ll write.