Your Life Story - what to include

In a much earlier post, I talked about the importance of writing our life's experiences, so that future generations will know who we were; not just a name on a genealogy chart, or a picture in a shoebox, but the very real person that was attached to those.

In future weekly articles, I'll give some ideas on what to include in your life story, how to go about writing about them, and other tips to help you get your memoirs recorded for posterity. First, let me answer an often-asked question: What's the difference between an Autobiography and Memoirs?

An autobiography tends to be focused more on the facts, data, and details of a life; the who, what, where, when, why and how. In most cases, it covers an entire lifetime.

A memoir can also cover a lifetime, or it could focus on one era or segment of a person's life. My great aunt wrote a small booklet of the career she and her husband shared as educators. They were both very well known in the educational field in Texas. Her memoir presented a brief overview - just a few pages each - of each of their lives, up until the time they met and married. The rest of the story covered their lives together and their careers. Memoirs are more about the stories than the data.

Spend some time thinking about the feel you want your book to have. Do you want an overview of your entire life, or just snippets of memories? In either case, there are certain things you will definitely want to include, such as:
   1. Where and when you were born
   2. Names of parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles
   3. Where you grew up
   4. Schools you attended
   5. Jobs held - career, military
   6. How you met your spouse, courting, marriage

Make a list of the most meaningful events of your life, then choose which you think are worth writing about. Don't be too critical. Just writing about a typical day of your childhood or teen years would be interesting to someone years from now. Remember, times and technology are constantly changing.

A cartoon I once saw showed a little girl sitting next to her Grandmother watching TV. The girl says, "Grandma, tell me again about the olden days when you used to have to walk across the room to change the channels." Little things like rotary phones, typewriters, and reel-to-reel tapes are unknown to this generation. They can't imagine a world without cell phones, Google, text messaging, and MP3 players.

In future articles, I'll give more writing tips, as well as an exercise for you to write about. Stay with me, complete each exercise, and before you know it, you'll have a book full of stories of your life! For now, how about completing the data for the first five topics in the above list. Next time, we'll talk about number six, and how to make the story come alive.  Happy writing!

*** My latest book on Life-writing, "Write Your Life Story in 28 Days" provides an exercise every day for four weeks. In less than a month, you can have a completed book of the highlights of your life.   Available from www.authorhouse.com ***