Writing Blog Number 2

20240616 Writing An Autobiography Or Memoir

Writing An Autobiography Or Memoir

So… this is a weird one. Or maybe not.

I have been asked to give a 2 hour workshop to a group of senior citizens at the library on how to write their life story for their families or even themselves. As such, I have my notes, and think it could help anyone here who wants to do the same thing, but also if someone thinks I’ve missed something out, then they can chime in.

So, here goes:

Welcome to this 2024 Firstival Workshop. I’m Steven and I’ll be guiding you through how to write your own life story.

So, I’ll start with a heap of talking, give ten things to be aware of, and then I’ll have a question and answer session at the end. If, however, I say something you don’t understand, ask away. This is not a formal lecture – it’s me hoping to help everyone.

1) It is your story
The first thing to remember is that the story you are writing is your own. While other people might be involved and some might be very important, it is about you. Your feelings, your memories, things like that.
         Yes, you might have to ask others for clarification or to remind you who it was who gave Uncle Ross the gerbil sandwich, but the story is about you. Don’t let yourself be derailed by other people’s adventures unless you were involved.
         Because it is your story, if you felt something was not good or funny or confusing, then it’s fine to say that. In fact, I would encourage you to say it. It will make the story even more about “you” if you include your emotions and responses to the things that happened.

2) It does not have to be about your whole life
Yes, it is fine to write an entire life story, but if there is one thing or two things or seven things in your life that really stand out, then it is just as completely fine just to write about those. Don’t feel you have to include everything that ever happened to you. Things that are important, quirky, make for an interesting tale, those are the sorts of things to include.
         However, if you do want to include all the minutiae of your daily life, that is also perfectly valid. This is your story and your presentation of it. While my recommendation is to stick to the major events, that is not a rule or a demand. Write your story the way you want to write it.

2b) Do not write it all at once
So, this follows from the last and leads directly into the next. Do not think you need to write everything all at once. Writing it event by event means you can write at any pace and things can be written as they come to you. This leads on to:

3) When writing it, order does not matter at first
The order of the stories or events from your life does not matter when you write it down to start with. Because you are writing it bit by bit, events as separate tales, order is not important at this time. For example, there might be three big things you remember that happened years apart. Well, write them down first. This might spark other memories, bring other events to mind, lead off to still more recollections. The thing is to write it all down as these things come to mind. Don’t spend days bemoaning the fact you can’t remember what happened in 1974 or 1975 after such a frenetic 1973 and before a glorious 1976. Leave them out to start with. Write those things you can remember. You can come back later.
         And this brings me to a suggestion that I would really push you to do: date everything. Not the date you write it, but the date it occurred. At least year, preferably month and year. Whether you are doing it on a computer or by hand in a notebook, name the parts of your story at first by the date they happened. This will do two things – first, it will make it easier later on to put things in order; and second, it will make it easier for you to go back and see where there are gaps.

4) Adding things later on does not matter
This brings me to the next point – it does not matter when, during the course of your writing, you add past events. So long as you date them, as I said, adding bits and pieces out of order is not an issue.
         This is something a lot of people find hardest to do and get held up on – the thought that they have to write things in order and cannot go back and make changes. Of course you can. You might recall that it wasn’t Uncle Ross and the gerbil sandwich, it was Uncle Fred and the hamster burger. Go back and change it! Making changes is all perfectly normal.

5) How you write it does not matter
This is something else that a lot of people get hung up on – how a memoir is written. They see these autobiographies of famous people (term used advisedly; ghost writers earn the big bucks for a reason) written as almost novels and feel their life stories have to be the same. Why? It’s your life story, no-one else’s. And, more to the point, many of you are not experienced writers.
         How you write it needs to make sense to you. It might be a paragraph or a few lines about each event. It might be that each event is a poem. It might be that each event is a little stand-alone story. It might be that dot points make it easier for you. It does not matter. So long as they are dated, how it is written is entirely up to you, the person doing the writing.
         If a relative complains that you are doing dot points, for example, you have two ways to deal with it. First, remind them it’s your story and you can do with it what you want. Or, second, you can ask them to turn it into the wonderful Peter FitzSimons work they so clearly desire.
         Always remember, though – it is your work, your story.

6) You will most likely need to do more than one draft
Writers who do this writing thing for any length of time know that no work is completed after one run through. This is called drafting. Now, I am not asking you to be Hemingway and write 20 drafts of your work. I’m a published author and I don’t even come close to that! What I am saying is that once you have gathered your information, and have put it into some sort of an order that makes sense to you and the story you want to tell about your life, then you will most likely have to rewrite the whole thing to make it feel like a more coherent whole.
         But… you don’t have to! If you like the way it feels after you’ve got everything down, then that is perfectly valid. I say it again: this is your story. However, going through it and doing a second draft might show you that you need to add detail here, that you’ve repeated this story, that you’ve got a name wrong – it does help you clean it up.

7) The final format is up to you
This does follow on from everything else, but the final format of the book is up to you. You want a short little story on a page? Go for it. You want to add photos, go for it. You want to just print it off at the local library and put it into a plastic folder, go for it. You want to go to Copy King and get it professionally bound and do 100 copies, go for it. The final format and how it is presented is up to you entirely.
         However, I will add three caveats here:
                   a) you are most likely writing for someone else to read, so make sure it is in a format that is readable – using paragraphs, large fonts, things like that:
                   b) be aware of how much things will cost, and set yourself a budget; &
                   c) make sure you are happy with the final product.
This might sound logical, but it is something a few people tend to forget because they are so happy to have completed this.

8) Assume you are writing it for a future generation to read
This follows on, and it does mean there is often some extra work to do. Yes, you have it in a format that people can read and look at. But future generations – and often you are going to be writing this not for your children, but your grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and generations yet to be born – may not understand some of the things.
         An example. My son has been asking his great-grandmother (who is 100 years old) about life when she was younger. He had no idea what it meant to hand-crank the starter in an automobile. If I was to explain what we did as teenagers, I would have to include an explanation of what a Blue Light Disco was. Things we took for granted that are no longer around, at least not in that form, will need a note of explanation. This can, of course, lead to more memories and things like that, so I would suggest including them as you write.
         A way to make sure of this is to ask a younger relative to read your first draft, and take note of everything they don’t understand so you can go back and add explanations to your second draft.

9) Defamation
This is a tricky one. You are writing your story with your memories. However, if you remember Aunt Lizzie being someone who slept around with the entire first XVIII at high school, and she recalls it very differently, you could be in trouble. Including rumour and innuendo, even in a little book that is not meant for wider public consumption, is fraught with danger in our increasingly litigious society.
         Fortunately, in Australia, truth is a defence against defamation. If you can prove it, then you are fine. If you cannot prove it, then you need to have words like “I believe” or “everyone thought” or “rumours said” or the like to make sure you are not claiming it as fact. Again, in Australia, that has been accepted as a work-around.
         However, again, by making the story about you, and not about others, you can avoid this sort of pitfall.

10) Making it public
Here at the library, we have the Family History Room where volunteers like myself help local residents and those descended from locals trace their family trees back. In the collection, we also have a number of books – the majority self-published – about families of the area written by their descendants, and some autobiographies.
         This is something that could, in the future, see your book become a useful resource.
         However, before donating a copy of your work, you need to make sure:
                   a) there are no defamatory statements;
                   b) you have the rights to include the photographs you have included;
                   c) it has been professionally bound and presented (and so has an ISBN); &
                   d) you have not copied any of it from any other source whatsoever.
This is very important for legal and self-preservation reasons.
         I would also include – get it professionally edited before making it a publicly available work. It just reflects better on you as the writer.

And there we have it. I hope this has helped give you an overview of how to write your memoir or autobiography.
(I now throw it open to a Q&A session from the floor)
(Oh, and Firstival is a library event in SA.)