Novelist Stephen King once said, “I write to find out what I think.”
Your memoirs are a LEGACY.
Putting them on paper gives friends and family (as well as yourself) the opportunity to FULLY appreciate these valuable, interesting and “uniquely yours,” experiences.
Writing your memoirs is different from writing your autobiography.
- An autobiography is the complete story of your life.
- A memoir is one or more stories from your life. You can write as many memoirs as you have memories.
Outline the events of the story sequentially. Then start your story with a little action. You don’t have to necessarily start the story from the beginning. Weave your story, create suspense. Get your reader hooked, looking for more. Then fill in the pieces – the background – as you go.
Here’s what I do…
Close my eyes. Take myself back in time to the memory I’ve chosen to write about. Now, using my five senses, I recreate that scene. What do I see? What do I feel, hear, smell, taste?
I transfer those thoughts on to paper. I want my readers to feel like they are there with me, experiencing what I experienced.
Writing memoirs is the easiest kind of writing to do –
because you know the story, inside and out.
2 responses to “Writing your Memoirs Leaves a Legacy”
Great tips Carrie! I totally agree with Stephen King, writing things down help to sort things out.
Yes, often when I write a plot for a fiction story, ideas come up from way in back of my mind or from deep inside that I didn’t know was there. Sometimes I see the same theme coming up in more than one story, and I realize I have a ‘thing’ about that, since it came up more than once.