Writing Your Memoir

The act of writing your biography or memoir, whether you want to publish it or not, can be a useful self-reflection exercise.

For many years, various people have been suggesting I write my biography or memoir. I tend to prefer the memoir option because it is not necessarily expected to be a start of finish life story but rather a narrative reflecting on one’s life and personal experience.

So, a long while ago I began to write snippets of recollections and reflections from my life with the assumption that perhaps someday they will be cobbled together into a coherent narrative I will call my memoir. Time will tell if and when I do that. At present, I’m leaning toward writing and publishing it at some point but do not have a definite date in mind. At 71 years of age, perhaps I should hurry up because the clock is ticking.

As I have undertaken these occasional memoir writings, I have realized that the act of thinking about my life and pondering various impacts, changes of direction, and lessons learned are helpful to me in the here and now. That made me consider that maybe such an activity could benefit other people.

Think about your life. Consider pivotal events. Ask yourself if certain things that you have experienced have proven useful or illustrative. I bet your life is an interesting memoir too whether it is eventually published or not.

Much the way people journal as a self-reflective activity, writing chunks of my memoir have proven to be equally valuable. I have never been great at daily or regular journaling. I have tried. Multiple times. It never sticks. I guess I am not someone for whom journaling is a practice to adopt. But these memoir chunks? They have proven useful in much the same way.

My memoir writing has proven to consistently point to a thematic objective — to point out things I have learned about how to be a better person and how to live a better life. Here is how the draft of my memoir’s introduction reads right now.

This is my story. At least this is how I’m choosing to tell you my story. Typical autobiography this is not. But then again, I’m not typical.

I’m actually sort of odd.

Not bad odd. Rather the sort of good odd that hangs out around pleasantly weird and adjacent to somewhat eccentric.

I own me. I own my uniqueness. I revel in it. Yes, I can also get a bit too full of myself.

Thus, when I seriously thought about penning an account of my life I bandied about numerous approaches.

Chronologically? Birth to now? Kinda boring.

Metaphorically? Representational symbolism? A little ethereal.

Lessons learned? Yes! That made sense. I should tell you about me and my life through the lessons learned as a result of the life I have lived.

Along the way as I reveal snippets of my life history I will tell you what I’ve learned in the guise of a memoir.

At least if my life story is dull I hope you’ll find some solace in perhaps snagging a tidbit of hard-earned wisdom should the next many thousands of words end up producing any.

So that’s what you’re about to read. Stuff about me. Stuff about what I’ve done and experienced. Stuff that stuff all taught me.

Here goes. Let’s see how this turns out.

But the point of this post is to encourage you to consider writing your own memoir. Maybe you do it in the form of daily or regular journaling. If that works for you, great. Do it. If your process is more like mine and you write randomly and then reflect on that bit of writing, do that. Or do whatever works for you.

A tip I recommend is to utilize a notes-taking app that syncs across your devices. Any good synchronizing notes app will work. Sometimes when I remember something from my life, I write it down quickly so I can later elaborate on it. I most often do this on my phone. I have found that often the details of my ideas and thoughts evaporate quickly if I do not write them down.

If you do not consider yourself a writer, that is fine. What you are writing is not necessarily intended for the consumption of others, just you. If you write in your own version of shorthand or prefer to speak it into a recording app or however you approach it, it can serve the same purpose.

Consider writing your memoir whether you ever plan to publish it or not. It might prove useful to you. It sure has been for me.

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