Writing a Memoir… Where to begin?

Writing a memoir can be a daunting task.  My first thought was, “My life isn’t interesting enough to write a memoir.”  I couldn’t think of anything good to write.  My family doesn’t really have any stories that have been passed down, or that have followed me thoughout my life.  Of course I have plenty of memories, but none that I could think of that I could really make a memoir out of. 

Before I began the process of writing a memoir I thought that you had to have had a great experience that was important and life changing enough to deserve the recognition that a memoir would give to it.  This turned out to be a major misconception I had.  A memoir doesn’t have to be a great life changing experience.  A memoir can really be about any memory you have, even if you think it’s small and unimportant, that memory could turn into a great memoir.

Even after realizing that I didn’t need to have a fantasticlly important memory to write about, I still found myself stuck on where to start.  In all honesty, this was the most challenging part of the entire memoir writing process for me.  I had no idea which memory to choose, and I felt like I had tons of memories bouncing around in my head and I couldn’t find a good one to use.  What I really needed was to get my thoughts organized.

I have recently been using EverNote as my writer’s notebook.  It is a site where you can keep an organized notebook online.  I really like using it, because it’s simple and available to me on any computer that I’m using.  In class we looked at some examples that a class of students had written that included six word memoirs.  I never thought that such small sentences could make such powerful statements.  I wrote a couple of my own to get my juices flowing.  One that I came up with was “That one single day changed everything.”

Now, I had a day in mind, but in the end I didn’t go with it.  I continue by writing a 25 word story about it and decided that it wasn’t the direction Iwanted to go with my memoir.  So I went back to the drawing board and tried a different approach.  I made a list of important people in my life, and it of couse included my dog.  I began to brainstorm ideas about what I coud write about him.  I was led to the first night I got him and he ended up getting lost.  But then I looked back at the list and thought about my sisters.  Instantly this one memory of us at the beach popped into my head, and I finally had my memoir topic!

I began by getting down the main ideas on paper using just words, then putting those words into sentences, and fnally having the beginning of my story.  It took a while to think of a good topic, but after much brainstorming and memory searching I finally came up with one!