Getting Started  • Time: How much time will you devote to your project: an hour a day? one afternoon a week? every Saturday?   • Approach: How do you want to approach your project? Look through published memoirs at the library or bookstore. You can find books of local interest for sale in museums, gift stores, even restaurants. Leaf through to see how those authors dealt with their stories. Talk to friends and acquaintances who have done memoirs.   • Purpose: Is your story of wide-enough interest for commercial publication? Or, if you wish to write for a smaller audience, do you have the resources to self-publish with one of the excellent short-run publishers now available? Or do you prefer to create a limited number of photocopied booklets just for your immediate family? Perhaps you will make a PDF you can e-mail to family and friends as an e-book.  • Start small: Choose a single topic to explore: your best friend in grade school, your first job, how your family celebrated Christmas. Sometimes a recent event can lead you back into your past to explore related memories. To organize your project, keep a list of topics you’d like to cover, and add to it as you go.   You needn’t write down everything that ever happened to you. Long lists of facts, dates, and names will bore your reader, and yourself as well.   Develop your characters, showing their personalities, appearances, and mannerisms. Add specific details to set the scenes. Use dialogue and sensory details of sight, sounds, smells, tastes, touch. If you let readers know how you felt when you were left out of a game, or when you received a long-hoped for bike, you will inject vital emotion into your story.  Memories dull with time. Sharpen them through conversations with family members, or through photos and family documents. Check out time-lines on the Internet or old newspaper files at the library to review what was happening in the time period you’re writing about. Prepare to be amazed at the memories and the details that flood back once you get started.  Remember, life doesn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful. Your life holds the makings of a wonderful story. All you have to do is tell it.  ©2008 by Joan Husby 

Getting Started

• Time: How much time will you devote to your project: an hour a day? one afternoon a week? every Saturday?

• Approach: How do you want to approach your project? Look through published memoirs at the library or bookstore. You can find books of local interest for sale in museums, gift stores, even restaurants. Leaf through to see how those authors dealt with their stories. Talk to friends and acquaintances who have done memoirs.

• Purpose: Is your story of wide-enough interest for commercial publication? Or, if you wish to write for a smaller audience, do you have the resources to self-publish with one of the excellent short-run publishers now available? Or do you prefer to create a limited number of photocopied booklets just for your immediate family? Perhaps you will make a PDF you can e-mail to family and friends as an e-book.

• Start small: Choose a single topic to explore: your best friend in grade school, your first job, how your family celebrated Christmas. Sometimes a recent event can lead you back into your past to explore related memories. To organize your project, keep a list of topics you’d like to cover, and add to it as you go.

You needn’t write down everything that ever happened to you. Long lists of facts, dates, and names will bore your reader, and yourself as well.

Develop your characters, showing their personalities, appearances, and mannerisms. Add specific details to set the scenes. Use dialogue and sensory details of sight, sounds, smells, tastes, touch. If you let readers know how you felt when you were left out of a game, or when you received a long-hoped for bike, you will inject vital emotion into your story.

Memories dull with time. Sharpen them through conversations with family members, or through photos and family documents. Check out time-lines on the Internet or old newspaper files at the library to review what was happening in the time period you’re writing about. Prepare to be amazed at the memories and the details that flood back once you get started.

Remember, life doesn’t have to be perfect to be wonderful. Your life holds the makings of a wonderful story. All you have to do is tell it.

©2008 by Joan Husby

Writing Your Own Memoir

by Joan Rawlins Husby

Why Should You Tell Your Story?

Each of us has at least one story to tell. That was the first lesson I learned in journalism. Most of us have a lifetime of stories. But we can be our own worst enemies when it comes to putting them on paper.

• Perhaps you think, I’m not important enough. But your story does matter. What you do, say, think, and feel changes the course of history in your own small corner of the world. Your life has meaning and consequences. You make a difference to someone, somewhere. You can continue to affect people’s lives through the telling of your stories.

• Maybe you wonder, Who’d be interested? Your descendants will be. One of the greatest gifts you can leave future generations is the knowledge of who you are. They can learn from your hopes, your dreams, your fears, and your griefs as you pass on the lessons you’ve learned. You can give them a sense of their own places in history. You can help your descendants and others who will read your stories to feel connected with those who’ve gone before, with those whose lives they touch now, and with those who follow them.

• You might argue, I’m not a writer. But part of the charm of personal histories lies in the “voice” of the teller. If you worry about grammatical mistakes, misspelled words, etc., you can join a class where you will get help in the mechanics of writing from the teacher and other writers. You might hire someone to type and edit what you write. Audio or video recordings of you telling your stories can be an especially precious gift to your descendants. Some people make photo scrapbooks that include descriptions and stories.

• Or, like many of us, you may feel, I’m too busy. But don’t we always find time for what is truly important to us? What can be more important than leaving legacies for those we love? Some people set aside small but regular blocks of time to work on their stories. Some keep continuing notebooks where they write notes and stories for later revision. Others jot memories down scraps of paper and drop them into a folder. The methods are as individual as the people who use them. Don’t wait any longer. Find a way that fits into your schedule and start.

It is important to honor our beginnings, to remember that we matter and that we have a place in this world that no one else has.

from a "Celebration of Life" for our friend Betty Sunde, Jan. 24, 2009