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What's Actually Stopping You From Writing Your Story?

by Carlos Garbiras
Feb 28, 2026
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Every writer who comes to me has stories ready to be told.

Those stories belong to people who meet three very simple criteria.

They have a life they've actually lived.

They want the people they love to know about it.

And they understand, somewhere in the back of their mind, that nobody is coming to write it for them.

That's it.

But here's where most of them get stuck.

They think the problem is that they're not a real writer.

That they don't have an MFA.

That they need to write a literary memoir that is filled with traumatic stories.

That their life wasn't interesting enough, dramatic enough, cinematic enough to justify a memoir.

That they need more time, more confidence, more of something they can't quite name before they can begin.

So they wait.

And waiting — I say this as someone who waited for two decades to finish a single story — is just a very comfortable way of never finishing.


Here's the thing nobody tells you: 95% of the resistance you feel about writing your story has nothing to do with your story.

It has to do with not having a structure that shows you exactly what to write next.

Without structure, you're inventing the form and generating the content at the same time. That's not writing. That's suffering.

With structure, the blank page becomes a prompt. And a prompt you can answer.


The Story Frame Sprint is built around three things, and only three things.

First, you'll learn the Story Frame — a five-part structure that eliminates the blank page problem.

Second, you'll write the story. By Day 3, you'll have a complete, polished twelve-hundred-word story that didn't exist four days before.

Third, you'll map the memoir. All thirty chapters outlined and waiting for you.


This is for you if you have been meaning to write your stories for years and have run out of patience with yourself for not finishing them.

Four days. One hour each. $297.

The Story Frame Sprint starts March 9th at 9 am PST.

Twelve spots.

Reply to this email with "I'm ready," and I'll send you enrollment details.

Happy telling!

-Carlos 


P.S. There's an optional Day 5 — Memoir Café — where you read your completed story aloud to the cohort. It's included free. Get in or get comfortable waiting another year.

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