Memoirs: Deciding What to Include - article

You’ve decided to write a memoir. Now it’s time for some hard work, deciding how to focus your memoir. The best way to start is to give every decade of your life a good look. Write a couple of pages about each ten-year section. Don’t go over a couple of pages for each decade. What stands out to you on these exploratory pages? Is it the year you spent in Peru? Or perhaps it is your relationship with your mother? Or perhaps it is a secret part of your life, your wild teenage years about which few know the truth? Ask yourself what evokes strong emotions in you. Memoir reveals emotions, so you must write about a piece of your history that is rich with emotion. This exploration will start you on a journey to create a meaningful story.

Once you decide what period to focus on and what to include in your story, pull out all your old photographs. Keep an envelope beside you of any that jar a strong emotional reaction in you. Make numerous notes. Open your journals if you kept them and look for strong emotional moments. Don’t stop there. Interview relatives and old friends or try an informal approach and reminisce with them. Keep good notes or consider making recordings of your phone calls. A fee-based service with a call recording feature like OneBox may be helpful in terms of organization and accessibility if you have a number of people to interview.

"Think about your chosen focus. What is the specific time period for this focus?"

Now take time to organize your material and make a timeline of events. Draw a horizontal line on a sheet of paper. Every half inch mark tabs indicating the date. Think about your chosen focus. What is the specific time period for this focus? The first date should be when your story begins, and the last mark is when your story ends. The marks in between are all the major life events during your time period. If your chosen focus is a facet of your life, the timeline may cover a large portion of your life. Only label important events that are directly related to this part of your life. Next, label your timeline with emotional turning points. This timeline will serve as your guide as you begin to write your memoir.

All this research helps you find pivotal times in your life. A memoir is a story, and stories need characters that change. Look for your turning points, moments in time that resulted making you who you are today. Think about the person you were before this moment and who you were after it. Great stories are born out of this change.