Background information on
Three Weeks with my Brother

by Nicholas Sparks

I’ve been dabbling with the idea of writing a memoir for years, but frankly, I’ve been holding off for the simple reason that I couldn’t shake the thought that doing so would be presumptuous. After all, I’m still relatively young (in my thirties as I write this), and I’m not vain enough to believe that I’ve earned the right to record my life for posterity. With a little luck, life expectancy statistics would show that I haven’t even reached the half-way point in life yet, and there’s a chance that the really exciting stuff hasn’t even happened to me yet. Then, of course, there’s the whole vanity aspect. No matter how much people have wanted to read my story – and I’ve been asked to write a memoir for years – I couldn’t shake the thought that by agreeing, I’d essentially be admitting that my story is more interesting than most peoples’. Frankly, I doubt that’s the case, and those who know me would probably agree. Aside from sitting at a keyboard and making up stories, my daily life is rather ordinary. And who on earth would want to read about that?

For both of these reasons, I rejected the idea of a memoir. Biographies should be written with the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime. Yet in a world that’s produced truly wise people – Christ & St. Paul, Plato, & Socrates, etc., -- I can’t help but feel like the audience trying to follow along with what they’re saying. I’m not wise and I haven’t lived a lifetime; hence, a memoir is out. One day, maybe I’ll be ready. But I’m certainly not ready yet.

Yet, fate is a funny thing. It turns out that my brother and I took a trip around the world, and the more we traveled and talked, the more we began to think that we could write a story about brotherhood, all set around the trip we were taking. While it would obviously be a personal story, it wasn’t necessarily about me or him, but rather a story about our relationship. And that, contrary to striking me as a presumptuous undertaking, seemed like something I wanted to do.

Brotherhood is a nice topic. A good topic. A meaningful topic. Especially when you’re as close as my brother and I am.