One way to help decide what to include and what to exclude is to decide who you are writing a memoir for and why it's important to you to write it. You might well choose one set of topics if you're writing for yourself, as catharthsis or therapy but a different set if you're writing to document your life for future generations. Of course, the answers to these questions will vary from person to person, and possibly for the same person at different times of life.
How are you going to personally choose to structure the topics you have chosen. Will any kind of order be important to you?
The chosen topics might or might not be in chronologic order. However, the topics I do include I've decided will likely be pretty much in chronologic order, at least within each general topic area. The general topics will also likely be in chronologic order where possible.
If different topics happen concurrently, such as career and vacation travel, I'll need to decide at some point which comes first in the overall story, unless I decide to write the entire thing in something like HTML for random access to any chosen topic. This is one benefit of writing for a web site or blog, both definitely publishing possibilities to consider.
Not only do you not have to be someone famous to be worthy of your own book, but with the option of a memoir, you don't even need to write about your entire life like most cover in autobiographies.
I love this now well-known saying from that was inspired by the portability and camera quality of Apple's iPhone:. It makes me wonder if the best moments that have ever happened in your entire life, will someday be the stories you took the time to write down.
If so, tell me about what you would like to write about and what you've accomplish so far comments below. Being a man of action as well as words, my son Mark bought me a slide scanner and taught me how to use it.
I scanned in the slides of the Holy Land without much difficulty. I was delighted to be able to view them on my computer with the same ease as I could view the digital photographs that I had started taking in The remainder of the slides came first. Then I started work on the prints in the photograph albums that I had lovingly curated over the decades. The physical albums had started to deteriorate to the extent that some of them were falling apart.
Scanning the prints was an ideal way to remedy this. I also scanned in all the prints that had not made the cut for the photograph albums but I had kept nevertheless. I also spent several months scanning in approximately 4, negatives. All in all I must have scanned nearly ten thousand photographs in one form or another. Whether you or an avid hobby photographer, a true professional, or just want to get all the quality you can out of your prints and film, either one of these models is going to give you exceptional results.
When they have finished reading, students should consider which features were well done in the book and which were missing or had room for improvement. As we know, there is more to a genre of writing than just ticking off the main features from a checklist. To write well takes time and practice, as well as familiarity with the features of the genre. Each genre of writing makes different demands on our skills as a writer and autobiography are no different.
Below, we will look at a step-by-step process for how students can best approach the task of writing their autobiography, along with some helpful hints and tips to polish things up. Students will need to select which events, anecdotes, and incidents to include and which to leave out.
Before they begin this selection process in earnest, they need to dump out the possibilities onto the page through the process of brainstorming. Students should write down any ideas and sketches of memories that might be suitable onto the page.
They can remove the least interesting episodes when making the final selection later in the writing process. The main thing at this stage is the generation and accumulation of ideas. One good way to do this is to lay them out chronologically on a simple timeline. Themes are the threads that we weave between the cause and effect of events to bring shape and meaning to a life. They touch on the motivation behind the actions the author takes and fuel the development growth of the person.
They represent how the events shape the person who is now sitting writing their story. For students to gain these insights will require the necessary time and space for some reflection. For this reason, autobiography writing works well as a project undertaken over a longer period such as several weeks.
Even though no one knows more about the topic of an autobiography than the author, research is still a necessary part of the writing process for autobiographies. Using the outline they have created, students will need to flesh out some of the details of key events by speaking to others, especially when writing about their earliest experiences.
The most obvious resources will be parents and other family members who were privy to the joys of babyhood and their earliest childhood. However, friends and ex-teachers make excellent sources of information too. They will enable the student to get a different perspective on something they remember, helping to create a more rounded view of past events.
This will help to give depth and poignancy to their writing as they move up and down the ladder of abstraction from the personal to the universal and back again. After you have written out a particular scene or event, go back and read what you wrote aloud.
Check for any awkward phrasing or sentences that are bogged down with too many details. Your story should move the reader smoothly from one scene to the next. Cutting out unnecessary words and overly long sentences can help your writing flow without being interrupted. Your writing should be descriptive.
Available in books and online including on some genealogy websites , these tools present you with a series of questions about your life. You simply answer them, and the templates arrange your answers into story form. A good dictionary, thesaurus, and word processing program are also indispensable tools when writing an autobiography. Editing and improving your work can be a difficult process, even for a professional writer.
Consider having friends and family read a draft — their suggestions could help you finish your autobiography more easily. Before you consider the work finished, you may want to set it aside for a few weeks, then read it with fresh eyes. Does it say everything you want to say? Is it missing important events, or are there stories you still want to recount?
They want to know what really happened in your life! Writing your autobiography can be an enlightening and enjoyable process. By following a structured plan and working to keep your focus and motivation, your life story may soon be a reality that will be treasured by your loved ones for generations to come. By subscribing you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. This part is simple.
Just free yourself up to write for some time periods without interruption. Put your manuscript down for a week or two. Then take the time to finetune and edit your story. This is also your time to check and double check facts. Be sure that your memory is accurate when you recall events. Hiring a good copyeditor may be one of the more expensive parts of your process, but it will be money well spent.
Publish your story. There are many options here, from your local printer to online publishing to a self-publishing house that will create multiple copies of a softcover or hardcover book version of your memoir.
Be sure to research this part thoroughly, as there are companies that will overcharge you or take advantage of you. Keeping Your Autobiography Organized Like any other story, your autobiography outline will have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
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