How To Start Writing A Book About Your Life

How To Start Writing A Book About Your Life And Why You Should

Writing about your life can be a great thing. There are different reasons why people choose to write an autobiography. Have you thought about writing about your life but aren’t certain whether you should? Maybe you haven’t thought about it. Well, I want to convince you that you should write your story! Then I’ll let you know how to start writing a book about your life.   

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Why You Should Write A Book About Your Life

Your Story Is Meaningful

We all have a story to share and your story is or will be important to someone. There is a woman I know who writes professionally. She writes biographies. And not biographies of famous people, but everyday people. Before meeting this special lady, I would never have dreamed of writing a book about me. But she opened up my eyes to the possibilities. You get to write how you want your story to be told. It also become apparent, hearing how this woman described her job, that people love to hear stories about real people.

On one particular occasion she was hired by a guy who wanted his parents’ stories written into a book. This couple who she was supposed to write about were reluctant to talk about themselves because they didn’t think they had anything interesting to share. After some effort she finally uncovered that they had grown up in Europe during WWII and had an incredible perspective on that era. She remarked how it was one of her favorite projects to write about. 

This biographer told other examples of ordinary people whose stories were important, particularly to the family requesting the biography. “Write about your own story,” this biographer encouraged , “no matter your story.”

Really, Your Story Is Meaningful

The Boys In The Boat, one of my favorite- and highly recommended- reads, is a true story written about a man whose story was uncovered only when his neighbor (the author of the famous book) met him and started listening to him. Listen to the way James Brown, the author of the book, described how he was drawn into the story of the man whom he wrote about.

“The story he told about his experience on the Washington crew was extraordinary … But it was much more than his Olympic experience that drew me in. It was really Joe’s character. The things he had overcome in life, the way he had conducted himself in hard times …”.

We may not have our own biographies on the New York Times Best Sellers list or have it in Barnes & Noble (or you may!), but either way our story will be important to someone whether it ends up being our own posterity or whether it reaches a bigger audience. My own mother has a few journals but, to my utter dismay, won’t allow anyone to read it until after her life. 

A while back my uncle found a journal of one of our ancestors, written while a boy, growing up in Texas before the Texas Independence war. My uncle found the journal in the archives of the state library. He had to get special permission to make a copy of the journal but afterwards it was a treasure to have in our family. 

People Love To Hear About Other People

It might be harder to understand the point of writing about our lives in this day (especially when writing for more than just your posterity) but people still like to read and hear about other people’s lives. It’s in our nature. “Fact is more fascinating than fiction,” touts one podcast channel that tells real life stories. The Story Trek is a television series of a host who goes randomly around the country and randomly asks strangers to “tell” their story. The show is an Emmy award-winner and was a huge success with over 11 seasons. People love to hear about other people. Don’t short-change your story by thinking it as too ordinary.

Your story is about how you want to be remembered. Write it before someone else does.

Don’t Wait To Start Writing About Your Life

Start NOW! Don’t wait until the end of your life to start writing about your life. Life can slip through our fingers easily. You don’t know when your life is over. Maybe you do ripen to a nice old age but maybe by then you can’t remember as well the things you want to write about. Perhaps you can’t remember at all. Maybe you won’t want to write at that phase in life. 

Your life story doesn’t have to follow you to the end of your life. It rarely does. But you can continually add to your story. If you wait, you’ll also miss out on the benefits that writing about your life can give you. 

Benefits From Writing About Your Life

Writing about your life can increase self-acceptance and decrease anxiety. It can increase your positive view of others and your connectedness. It  can and will certainly stimulate your mind, memory, and creativity. Fore more benefits on how to start writing a book about your life check out these 7 meaningful reasons.

Hopefully I have you convinced by now if you weren’t already.

When You Don’t Want To Write

If you can’t stand the thought of writing, try recording your thoughts on Audio or Video. A recording is an excellent mode for a story. If the idea of a book still appeals to you and you don’t want to transcribe it yourself, have the recording(s) transcribed by a professional. Sometimes a writer can even fill in the transitions and tie pieces together for you if you want help.

Another option is to hire the whole thing out. Remember the biographer I mentioned earlier? The writer doesn’t have to be local. You can interview over the phone or online. 

Where To Begin And How To Start Writing A Book About Your Life

How to start writing a book about your life is a question more common than you would believe. You’ve lived a lot of life. Where do you even start? It’s easier than you think. 

An autobiography doesn’t mean you include every detail or that you have to write about your entire life. It doesn’t need to be chronological either. In actuality, “I was born ….” is rarely a good start to a good story. Writing an autobiography can be achieved by writing pieces that you later weave together. A memoir is usually when you only cover a part of your life.

Journal Writing For How To Start Writing A Book About Your Life

Keep a journal. This isn’t the only option for personally writing out your life story but I highly suggest it for how to start writing a book about your life. Write a little every day or schedule time during your week where you can add to your journal. Then you can organize the whole story (and even your thoughts) when you are ready (and after your stories are already written down!). You don’t need to worry about what to write first or how it will run together. Just write. Later you can add more where needed and you don’t have to include everything.

Your journal can be anything from notebook to laptop where you can keep your writing entries together, allowing you to write over a period of time. This approach relieves the formidable pressure of figuring out where to start, and it’s easier to bring together. Begin with writing down all of the memories that come to mind. Then you can start using prompts that get you writing about more of your life. See the list of prompts I’ve included at the bottom of this article. 

If keeping your journal online sounds like a good idea to you, beremembered.com is really cool and its FREE! 

Your stories can be serious, funny, quirky, inspiring, passionate, historical, or a mix of each of those. You can weave fantasy into it if you want to insert daydreams. Your story is about how you want to be remembered.

Remember, It’s Your Story

You get to write your story! Leave out the negative or the boring or the sad or the hard stuff, if you wish. It’s your story! Having said that, don’t underestimate how struggles and trials give depth to a story and to one’s character. All the great stories have them. If you want to tell a sad or depressed story you should still add in a range of emotions that give hope or glimpses of happiness. You just get to choose what to include and from your own perspective. You get to decide how you want your story to be told. 

I am a person that tends to remember the negative and bad things from my past before all of the good and happy pieces. But by writing while focusing on the good and happy in my life I can even improve my own recollections. Remember those therapeutic benefits on writing your life story I mentioned earlier? It’s a cool thing! A writer finds that window and exposes it.

Read the two examples below of how the focus, or the slant, of your writing can change a memory from negative to positive.

Positive Vs Negative Example 1

I hated high school. The few good friends I had didn’t attend the same high school and I had a hard time connecting with other students who did attend the same school to make real friends. I often found a place to eat lunch by myself and the rest of the time I knew others looked at me pitifully. I was on the cross-country team and enjoyed it, but the rest of the time I felt so alone and alienated. Math classes was an absolute struggle for me. The years were painful and I couldn’t graduate fast enough. 

That makes me want to cry just writing that! Here’s another way to write about that same experience.

In high school I ran on one of the top cross-country teams in Texas. I worked hard and started on the Varsity team at the end of my Freshman year. Our team was repeatedly ranked third in state and we often swept the meets we ran in. We were commonly featured in the local newspaper and even made the front page on occasion. My involvement on the team gave me a sense of community in high school that I wasn’t able to find otherwise. I had two solid friends outside of school that I could hang out with on weekends that helped me through the rest of the time. My grades were good enough to get accepted to my first choice college. 

A Mix Of The Trials With The Positive

It’s good to mix positive things from your experiences with the trials to make you and your story tangible and real. Your story will be round and have depth. Here’s another excerpt to illustrate.

My high school years had its ups and downs. While fitting into the social cliques and drama ridden scene was a loss for me, my one true reprieve was running on one of the top cross-country teams in the state. It fueled a passion for running the rest of my life and even gave me an entry into competing in triathlons post college. 

Positive Vs Negative Example 2

A second example of how you can take one story and give it two different tones.

One time my husband was standing in the kitchen with a fresh bag of Cheerios. The plastic was being difficult to open and instead of cutting it he kept tugging at it with his manly muscles! Suddenly the bag let loose with terrific suddenness, splitting in two. 1,000 little round oat cereals erupted 20 feet in every direction. A recently swept kitchen was now covered in Cheerios and Cheerio powder with a frozen, awe struck husband smack dab in the middle of it. I couldn’t be upset. It was too laughable!

Late one night while I was feeding dinner to our toddler, my husband went to open a new box of Cheerios. We were arguing and my husband kept tugging at the opening of the new bag of cereal. Suddenly, the bag tore open. Cheerios and Cheerio dust swept across the kitchen that I had spent my only free time of the day cleaning.

Do you see how the first example creates a scene of humour while the second example here creates a tone of depression? It was humorous and I laughed the moment it happened, but you can create a completely different tone and feel to your story depending on how you look at your experiences and choose to write about them.

How To Start Writing A Book About Your Life: Questions To Think About

These aren’t steps, but things to think about. You can always go back and make edits to your story or add in pieces. The biggest task is getting your story and memories out on paper. Once you’ve accomplished the bulk of your story the other pieces will come. Nonetheless, the following questions can be good to think about before you begin writing.

Think about who you would like your audience to be. Are you writing for someone in mind specifically, perhaps a child? Maybe you are writing for future grandkids that you don’t even know yet. Your audience could be family and friends in general. Or, maybe you want to write in a way that your story could reach a broader, general audience. Thinking about your audience will help you figure out whether you should change the names of people that should be kept confidential, or your tone and how personal your memories end up being. 

What do you want to include in your life story? Do you want to focus on one aspect of your life? Do you want to include big events that happened during your life or mix in “old days” with your present life?

Dazzle Your Life With How To Start Writing A Book About Your Life

Writing about your past can be a really fun, great project that will dazzle your life in the present. Sure, you can write how you want your story to be remembered. But for the present time you can focus your memories and write them the way you want to remember them! Writing about your life has scientifically shown to be therapeutic and decrease anxiety. You can increase your self-acceptance and better your view of your life and your connectedness. All while stimulating your mind and creativity.

Dazzling your life here and now by writing about your past is a great way to bring you radiance and joy! 

Writing Prompts For How To Start Writing A Book About Your Life

Prompts when you need help with how to start writing a book about your life. Modify any of these questions as needed. Try writing examples and stories that these questions trigger.

Prompts Set 1

• What goals did you want to achieve when you were just out of high school?
• What was your first job like?
• Have you ever lost a job?
• What would you want your friends and family to learn about making and achieving goals from your example?
• Do you remember how your elementary school smelled or where your desk was in 3rd grade? Other early school memories?
• Do you know the story of how your grandparents met and fell in love?
• What have been the most important and valued friendships in your life?
• Who was your first best friend and are you still in contact with each other?
• What is something you taught yourself to do without help from anyone else?
• Who was your first crush?
• What qualities did your high school and college friends have and what qualities in friends do you most admire?
• Write about your favorite hobbies and pastimes in your childhood?
• What hobbies, interests, and talents do you have in common with your parents, grandparents, and siblings?
• Who taught you how to work and what would you want your children and grandchildren to learn from your example?
• What was your childhood home like?
• What kinds of things did you collect and display in your childhood bedroom?
• Write about games that you remember playing with siblings or neighborhood friends?
• Describe the different homes or apartments you have lived in throughout your life?
• What do you love most about where you live now?

Prompts Set 2

• How has your parent(s) influenced your life? 
• How has being a parent enriched your life?
• What lessons have you learned from your grandparent’s life experiences?
• What are some of the stories you loved hearing from your parents’ or grandparents’ youth?
• Write about the best things from your relationship with your parents?
• What did you enjoy doing with your father/mother when you were a child?
• What where the biggest momentous events in your life and how have they changed you as a person?
• Write about decisions you made that have had a long-lasting positive effect on your life?
• How does your family celebrate significant milestones?
• What events and milestones are you still anticipating and looking forward to?
• What were your most common childhood vacations like- road trips, visits to relatives, camping, the beach?
• Do you have one special vacation spot that you return to over and over, and what do you love about it?
• What are all the different modes of transportation you’ve used?
• What are the most memorable meals or exotic foods you’ve tried?

Prompts Set 3

• Who was your favorite teacher and why?
• What are your memories of school lunch?
• Did you ever get in big trouble in school?
• What subjects did you excel at in school and which were the hardest for you?
• What extracurricular activities did you get involved in? 
• If you had to pinpoint three main values that your parents lived by and tried to instill in you, what would they be?
• What personal values do you hold?
• Write about values that you feel are most important to pass down to posterity?
• What were the faith and religious traditions of your ancestors?
• What motto or creed do you live by (give examples)?
• In what ways do you sacrifice your time to volunteer in your community?
• How has your life been enriched or affected by your commitment to causes?
• Who in your life has inspired you and how?
• How has your commitment to make the world a better place evolved throughout your life?
• What were some of your favorite holiday traditions in childhood?
• Which were your top three favorite holidays when you were a child and why?
• Which of your childhood holiday traditions have you continued into adulthood?
• What are the most memorable and treasured gifts you have received in your life?