How to Write a Memoir: Everything Old is New Again

​Have you noticed that everything comes back into style again?  Those platform shoes you sworn no one would ever want to wear made a comeback.  So did polo shirts, motorcycle jackets, and cropped jeans.  Not only do clothes make a comeback, but activities do too.  Hula hooping becomes exciting again every few years.  Cruising is being embraced as a way to bring communities together, when it used to be outlawed as a public nuisance.  If you have not noticed, knitting, wool spinning, gardening, making model planes, and keeping chickens are all back in style.  
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​Everything Old is New Again 
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​When people think about what parts of their lives to write about, sometimes they think there is nothing exciting enough to captivate a reader.  Sure, maybe you can write about a few good vacations, offer some advice about saving money, and make a suggestion to find true love, but do people really want to read about your life?  To some people, it seems like the popular memoirs are about people who had miserable lives and experienced pain and loss.  What about the everyday life well lived? 
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​Readers Want to Read about Your Life 
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​Your potential memoir readers are all around you.  Your niece who just finished college is desperate for good advice on how to start her career.  Your son who just had a third baby is uncertain how to keep his marriage strong while managing the complexities of parenting.  The people at your local knitting/motorcycling/kayaking/volunteering club want to more about your interesting past. 
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The people around you are all potential readers for your memoir, and they want to know about you.  You may not realize it, but people are interested in your thoughts, opinions, experiences, and observations.  The unique experiences that make you a fascinating individual are what people want to read.  The essence of the memoir genre is connection between the reader and writer; the reader wants to know more about the writer as a person. 

​How Do You Decide What to Write About? 
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​The answer to this question is really another question—how do you spend your time?  We tend to spend our time engaged in the activities that interest and fulfill us the most.  The moments when we get lost in a project and hours go whizzing by are the ones to write about first. 
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Do you tinker on your car and find that an afternoon has flown by?  Does the thought of developing your own software program send you down a rabbit hole where no one will hear from you for days?  How about gardening?  Do you find that you skipped lunch and dinner while working in the garden?  Or is constructing an intriguing sonnet the activity that pulls you in for hours?  

Whatever your activities of choice are, write about them.  This is one of the best places for a writer to begin the memoir-writing process—write about what you love, what pulls you in, and what captivates your attention.  Any passion that engrosses you will inevitably engage your reader as well.  Write what you know, and write what you love to do. 

The way you choose to spend your time, whether it is traveling, woodworking, or ice skating, is a great starting topic for your memoir.  What you have been doing for years or even decades can become fascinating reading for your audience.  

​Caution for the Cautious 
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​Be careful about looking at your life as old-fashioned, dull, or uneventful.  Keep in mind that what is old is new again, because young people are always looking backwards for good advice before they move forward.  So, the years you spent knitting blankets for babies in need will make for an incredible memoir piece.  Your audience wants to know what made you want to knit in the first place, how you learned the process, what tools you prefer to use, and what suggestions you have for new knitters, as well as why you engaged with knitting and continued doing it for years, and what goals you accomplished by knitting.  
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​How to Begin Writing About Yourself  
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​Start writing about your activities by answering questions about them.  What about this activity was interesting to you before you started?  How did you get started?  Did you have any goals or intentions when you began?  Did you have dreams of turning your activity into a career? 
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Once you started into your activity, what kept you going?  Were there experts in the field who inspired you to excel?  What successes did you have along the way?  What about the activity appeals most to you?  Why do you spend time at this activity?  What does it give you in return for the time you spend on it? 

Have you mentored any novices in this activity?  If so, did you find that teaching it was as rewarding as doing the activity itself?  Have you shared your knowledge in a book, lecture, or workshop with others?  What are your current goals with this activity and what are you learning about it now? 

​Pulling it all Together 
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Writing about ourselves can feel a little awkward at first.  You may sometimes feel like your activities might not be interesting or may even be old fashioned, and because of that, they may turn off a reader.  But keep in mind that everything old is new again, and everything that used to be popular comes back into style.  Young people and readers genuinely are interested in what you are doing, because the central idea of memoir is that it is about making the connection between reader and writer.  Memoir is about understanding a person—the writer.  Readers want to understand what you are all about—whether those readers are your close family and friends or whether they are a million reader audience of people you have never met. 

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