Would your life make a great book? For many people the instinctual answer is no, but not so fast! Everyone has a story to tell, you just have to figure out how to frame it. We’ve discussed the importance of passing your memoirs on to your family to preserve your personal history, but that’s not the only reason to put your life story in print.
Sometimes viewing your life through a very specific lens can help you zero in on the important parts. Your memoir could focus on:
- Childhood, as in the best-selling memoir Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt.
- Travel experiences, like Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, which was turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts.
- An important figure in your life, whether a parent, sibling, friend, significant other, child, or employer.
- A crime, either one that was perpetrated against you or one that defined your community in some way.
- Your job, a hobby, or some other defining activity in your life.
Just remember, you don’t have to have an incredible story to write a good memoir; you just need to present your story in a humorous, novel, or compelling way. As Frank McCourt recounts in Teacher Man, a student once said to him,
“Mr. McCourt, you’re lucky. You had that miserable childhood, so you have something to write about. What are we gonna write about? All we do is get born, go to school, go on vacation, go to college, fall in love or something, graduate and go into some kind of profession, get married, have the 2.3 kids you’re always talking about, send the kids to school, get divorced like 50 percent of the population, get fat, get the first heart attack, retire, die.”
“Jonathan,” McCourt replied, “that is the most miserable scenario of American life I’ve heard in a high school classroom. But you’ve supplied the ingredients for the great American novel. You’ve encapsulated the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald.”
Check out some of our other tips for writing your memoirs, and contact Deeds Publishing today to discuss your book proposal!
Photo by Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot via FreeDigitalPhotos.net
