Every heartbeat begins a story. When you write about yourself, you’re inviting readers to journey with you. How do you know if they want to go? Will you keep their interest once you start? What will they gain at the end?

If you’re interested in writing a memoir, here are 10 things you need to know.

Lay It All Out

Spend a few evenings with your life, looking over pictures, recollecting memories, and sharing tales with friends. Write down the moments that meant something to you. If you aren’t moved by an event, your readers won’t be either. Of course, there are world events that might have touched your life even if you weren’t directly involved. Write these down but make note of how they affected you. Did you change your opinion about someone or group of people because of what you witnessed?

 

Cut Out the Beginning

No story begins when our life begins. Why? Because there was always something happening before we were born. When you write about yourself, you don’t need to start in the delivery room, unless your delivery room was a taxi cab during a snowstorm during an East coast power outage when aliens were landing. Seriously, your memoir has nothing to do with your birth and earliest years, then it doesn’t need to be part of the manuscript. Save your word count for the powerful events that bring your readers to the edge of their seat, have them relaxing with relief, or laughing out loud.

 

Narrow Your Focus

Find the theme that ties your best stories together. If I wrote about everything that has happened to date in my middle-aged life, the story would be so long that it would bore people to tears. That has nothing to do with the events within my life! We live in an age of headline news and novella best sellers. I’m not saying it’s good or bad. However, you need to be clear about the purpose of your memoir. What is it you really want people to learn from your life and which events best tells that lesson? Maybe you had tea with the Queen of England, but if it doesn’t have anything to do with how you survived an avalanche, then cut “Lizzie” from your manuscript.

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Find Your Voice, POV, and Tense

Every narrator has a voice, influenced by point of view and tense. Memoirs in first person, past tense are common. In other words, you write as yourself and events you describe happened in the past. A change in tense may bring the readers closer to the heart of the story. I wrote Growing a Rainbow as if readers were me, in my mind, enduring what my heart endured as life tenuously unfolded for myself and my family. In first person, present tense, my story had more power.

When you write about yourself, narrative voice is a mirror of your personality and opinions. When someone reads your manuscript, do they hear you? Does your re-telling of an event feel authentic? Does the way your narrative voice resonate with the message you want to convey? If your narrative voice is confrontational, are you prepared for how readers might react to you?

 

Step Outside Yourself

Hammer out your first draft and touch upon all the salient emotions you want to highlight. Write the funny scenes, the tragic events, and the enduring moments with all the passion that made you step up to the keyboard in the first place. In round two (of which there will be many), go over your manuscript as if you were never in those situations. Have you discovered new details or was there something that you needed to have explained? Unless you’re writing for a very narrow audience who understands the jargon you use, or know the places you mention, do a little explanation. That doesn’t mean dumb it down, though! Think critically to find the nuances that make you more than a cardboard character in your own story.

 

When Funny is not Funny

“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.” — Erma Bombeck

Ever sit around with your friends swapping “no sh*t there I was” stories, only to find that you’re not laughing? Humour is subjective. We’re hard-wired to laugh (so I was told by a developmental doctor who said the ability to laugh doesn’t imply the ability to have higher processing skills), but we don’t all find the same things funny. Now that you’re critically reviewing your manuscript, take a good look at the funny parts. What may have been acceptable in society once upon a time as humour may not be now. It’s particularly important to be aware of contemporary sensibilities if you want your book to reach a wide audience.

As part of your editing process, you may want to check out the mechanics of telling funny stories and “punch up” how your write about yourself accordingly.

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Parallel Life in the World at Large

You don’t exist in a vacuum. When you write about yourself, your story shouldn’t either. It just so happened that the winter I was on bed rest doing everything I could possibly to to keep my baby inside my uterus, someone left an infant in a stairwell. I didn’t write my memoir until years after this news story but the story of this baby left its impact upon me. My memoir included this real-life parallel to help connect my son’s story in the wider world of issues related to pregnancy and childbirth. Of course, if I had faked that new event, my readers would have outed me. Sincerity must drive your creation.

 

Be Creative with Your Timeline

Although life feels linear, your storytelling doesn’t have to be. Does it make more sense to bring up the past because it’s affecting the way you feel in a particular situation? Craft the introduction of that part of your backstory as a flashback. Group stories by subject rather than time. Play with how your manuscript flows. Maybe you’ll find a better sync to the narrative when it’s out of chronological order, or if it’s framed as a story within a story. Be mindful that it’s not ripe with flashback and cliches, mind you!

 

Your Life Touches Their Life (The good, the bad, and the ugly)

If you write about yourself, you write about other people. That’s something I needed to be mindful of, particularly because my son’s life put me in the line of sight of other people’s intimate, and often painful, moments. Many of the staff and families I wrote about knew about my writing project (and its fundraising purpose). They vetted the content I wrote. I altered names and details, especially when asked. I protected them as much as I would want to be protected if someone was writing about me.

However, authors have to protect themselves against lawsuits. Do what you think is best for yourself and your family first, and for the story second. A tell-all book is not cheap cathartic alternative to therapy!

There are times an author might not want to do this. Jaycee Dugard’s memoir, A Stolen Life, is a powerful example. Ms. Dugard didn’t want to shelter her abductors (nor should she IMHO) and she said as much at the onset of her book, for which I respect her.

 

Create a Professional Product

Congratulations! You’re on your way to crafting a story that people want to read. Whether you intend this for small or wide-scale distribution, give your hard work the polish and appearance it deserves. Have your manuscript proof-read and edited by someone who isn’t a friend, unless your friend happens to be a super-fine editor. If you publish in a language that isn’t your native tongue, consider how grammatical errors may hinder a reader’s enjoyment of  your story. In which case, dialogue may be the best place for your speaking voice to be “incorrect” in the published language. A good editor takes your manuscript and helps you find the highs and lows of the journey you laid out for your readers. Format your story for ease of reading, rather than having readers be so frustrated with the technology that they don’t continue your story!

 

A Final Thought if You Want to Write About Yourself

Once you introduce your manuscript to the world, you invite public complement and criticism. If you don’t have a good coping mechanism or any supportive individuals behind you, you may find yourself struggling with trolls and other internet yuck, including negative reviews (which may or may not be valid). Build the walls that will protect you and connect with the people who will heal you as you write your manuscript. Then, you may have an easier time with the negative side of writing publicly. Besides, if your memoir is emotionally difficult to write, you’ll need those people to turn to when you re-live the hard moments.

Interested in finding out more? Take a look at how I keep myself motivated to write, which includes a handy print-out!

What else do you consider important for memoirists?