I’m often the keeper of the stories in my friend and hobby groups. I’ve long kept lists of stories, in the form of single sentences, to remind me of significant events. Recently I had some free time and decided to put them together. At first I thought I would just flesh out the brief memory jogging sentences into paragraphs. Then I realized I was actually writing a memoir.
So I’ve just finished 60,000 words on my most recent career, complete with captioned photos and a timeline. Now I’m thinking I’ll do one each for my first two careers, possibly adding something at the end to tie them all together.
Who’s going to read it? Almost nobody. I mentioned my undertaking to one friend who actually asked for it, though I told them I don’t expect them to actually read it and I won’t ever ask or bring it up again. But I am finding it a satisfying project. It feels good to get all my stories down in a definitive volume and a readable format. Perhaps I’ll pass the final product along to a few trusted people for safe keeping, but again being clear that I don’t expect anyone to read it.
Anyone else done something like this? Got any advice?
I have kept about 3,000 pages of journaling (started when I was in college) but never written a memoir. I did write a Wikipedia-like write-up of each of my family members and send it to them a decade ago (about their own lives,) which they liked.
The only advice I can give is to make sure you mention the small details. Remembering things like the small sights, smells, sounds of many years ago is what makes a memoir really feel real and personal. Like, if you can write in your memoir how you remember a cashier at a restaurant and how she was wearing a brown jacket, or what an air traffic controller was saying to you on one particular morning’s flight, etc.
While I knew my grandparents as a young adult, I didn’t know them, except as old people (particularly on my father’s side, who was 60 when I was born). It turns out they had interesting lives and/or lived in interesting times.
Beyond my decades of genealogical work (about which hardly anyone alive has but a passing interest), I wanted to leave behind something about me, the real me.
I started on my memoirs about five years ago, but in the past couple months I’ve made a concerted effort to get it in a full first draft by year end. I enjoy writing, so that helps.
I started with OneNote but, partially due to my distrust of Microsoft, have switched to Scrivener and am very pleased with it.
I wanted to be a writer or a spy when I was a child. Third choice was an archeologist.
Writing has become an integral part of my personal life and work and the spy thing … well that may be a retirement career. Don’t have the math skills for the archeology.
I have tons of writing material (journals, diaries, poems, etc.) that dates back to when I was 9 or 10 years old and it just sends me into a slump even thinking about organizing it all.
I’ve written some hilarious short stories recounting a number of my more interesting life events. They have been well received and I enjoy sharing them.
There’s just too many for me to envision putting it all together in a memoir so I have chosen a few and so far that has been doable.
People love to be entertained and I find that adding lots of humor brings it to life. I try to keep a certain audience in mind as I write even if it is just a different version of me.
Some of my written “stories” have become almost legendary and it seems they must be passed on via oral tradition by the folks I work with lol. Or so I am told.
I’ve written an account of my undergraduate years. I did it at my first grad school out of a sense of nostalgia (so soon) and because I missed that environment, and I wanted to set it down before I forgot it. I did it for myself, although I sent some excerpts to people. These then escaped and made their way onto the internet, to my embarassment in some cases.
I’ve published two memoirs, but they’re about particular events and periods, and one is thematic rather than chronological. I’ve kept a journal since I was 15.
I’m currently writing a memoir about my experience with and recovery from severe OCD. One editor says my description of the illness “transcends the page…It’s both riveting and heart-breaking.”
I’m trying to get my third book into print, having already excerpted Age 13 thru Age 21 and Age 25-34 as novel-length books.
I really wanted that first book published, and sent out over 1500 query letters to lit agents without managing to get one, then another couple hundred to small independent presses (the sort that will accept unsolicited queries directly from authors) before finally landing a contract with a hybrid publisher.
Tens of people have read my book!
I wasn’t up to pushing that boulder uphill for the second book and the hybrid publisher was amenable to taking it on. But I’m attempting the lit-agent thing again for the third book (a two-week span when I was 23).
For what it’s worth, the writing of the book is by far the easy part. Unless, I guess, you have a natural knack for publicity and promo and making things go viral and stuff.
Consider a blog. I’ve got one! (Though I’ll refrain from the shameless plug—unless someone wants the link…)
I do post other things (some of which people still engaged in my former profession occasionally read—albeit in very small numbers), but on of the larger projects has been a “Retrospective” series that started as a picture gallery with some words but has in fact turned into something like a memoir with some pictures, covering my time in the Navy, and in particular my deployments. Im about 40% of the way through, but I’ve been hung up on my post covering the deployment to Iraq for a while now. Partly because the subject matter is difficult fir me, and partly because, as part of my progression away from simple photo gallery with some words, I am trying to be a bit more… literary?
Anyway, don’t do it expecting anyone else will care, do it because it interests you. But throw it up on a blog and if anyone actually does read, well, congratulations I guess?
No, but one day I will. To “prep” for it, I write up the details of everything we did on vacation after we get home: the places we went, restaurants, museums, etc.
I have actually started something that might be called a memoir. It has a title, “No prodigy”. I have recently published an article in some IEEE publication about the large electronic analog computer I ran while an undergraduate.
I have thought about writing a memoir because I thought to myself I have so many amusing stories and anecdotes since childhood I could share.
But every time I spoke to family and colleagues about it enough of them were like “No you can’t write about THAT and I would disown/sue you if you do” to make the idea unfeasible.
I have considered doing so, but some of the most interesting things that have happened are things that might upset or offend potential friend/family readers. How do you deal with that?
