BellaOnline Forums Career Nonfiction Writing Wanting to write my life story for myself.

Hi everybody! I keep thinking that this is just a crochet forum. I am wanting to write down my life story for myself. I have been working with this idea since 1999. This was the year I got my first computer and Mama made the remark that I should write down some of the things that I remembered so one day, I decided to take her up on that and I made an outline in my head. I knew that I wanted to include myself, but I wante to start before I was born and give a little of the family history by including the background info on when my grandparents were born and then were married and then, of course I would record the births of the children and tell something of their lives and how they grew up and what they studied after high school and I would say if they went to college or not. At the same time, I realized that this could get very dry, so I decided to set my family's story in a historical background. This included the history of a particular year(just for example say I chose to write something about the year 1929. I would mention the economic conditions and the stock market crash and then I would tell what the family member I was writing about was doing that month of that year). I would do this for each of the years. I did notice that I had the years that World WarII took place and so I decided to follow the course of the war in Europe and also the course of the war in the Pacific Theater. I also decided to include D-Day and the dropping of the bomb that ended Word War II because those things are history. I interwove these topics with the stories of my family's lives. I intended to follow my grandparents and parents from birth to the present day. I was doing quite well with this. I had written and rewritten a good bit of this. I got all the way through World War II and to the 1960s. Then, however, I had a problem. The story then read like the John F. Kennedy Story for quite a bit. This was not what I wanted, so I will have to rewrite that part. There are also other parts that I have to rewrite, in fact, I have to rewrite the whole thing because although I had a copy, one of the cleaning women took my copy not realizing what it was because in her words, "this is good." In rewriting the story, I seem to have lost some of what I had written down because I can't remember just what I had written down. Should I post my outline here? I need some help on how to get started again. Here is the outline that I had made as well as I remember it: 1. State my name and tell my birthday. Then tell that I will tell Mama's and Daddy's stories before telling more about myself. 2. Tell where (in what state) Daddy waas born in and tell the name of the town and the year. Tell Daddy's parents' names and their occupations. 3. Do the same for Mama and her parents. Also tell the names of other children and tell the year each was born. 4. Follow the children through school and college if they went there. Then follow them out into the working world after graduation. 5. Place the story in a historic background so it won't be so dry. Go year by year if possible and mention national events such as elections and memorable events such as the stock market crash in 1929. There is more, but this will give me a good start. Does anybody have any suggestions for me? RustyNMe

You surely have the passion to write, RustyNMe :)! Your concept is very interesting. Writing something about the history in terms of your family's situation is a really good angle. Although, history is a bit boring to read, you can add more emotional details to make your story more tasteful. What you just did is already a very good start. Just write whatever gets into your head. I'm looking forward to read your story :)!

To write your life story:
think of the stories and write them...don't worry about getting them chronological just yet.
Everyday have it your goal to write for one hour - you will find that one story leads to another. One day you might write about your teeth- they are false in the front - you will write how you did a face-plant in wrestling and they all broke off-- next day you might write about the wrestling coach and his service and inspiration - next day about the teams and tournaments. Save all those stories under HS. Start another story and take it from there. Once all those stories are written you will be able to put it all together.

Hi RustyNMe,

Over the summer I saw an excellent movie called Everlasting Moments (Swedish: Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick). It’s a 2008 Swedish drama based on the true story of Maria Larsson, a Swedish working class woman in the early 20th century, who wins a camera in a lottery and goes on to become a photographer.

The story was narrated by Maria Larsson’s daughter. Following this example you could pick one person and tell the story of your family by telling the story of this person and also weave in bits and pieces of social history. This technique was very effective in this film.