Writing Life Stories #3

Here are some first steps if you want to begin writing your life story.

1. Collect and organize.
Make files for each year or each place you lived, or elementary school, high school, early married, etc. Breaking it down into different places makes it easier to remember.
Collect photos, memorabilia, documents, letters, diaries, datebooks, calendars,
Make a chronology of the main events in your life.

2. Read others’ life stories for inspiration and for ideas on how you want to write yours, things you liked and how you would write it differently.

3. Make a rough draft. Write it piece by piece, one incident at a time and stick it in the file or in the computer file of that time period. Half an hour or one hour at a time.
Then verify dates. Ask family members, write letters. Look on back of pictures to see if you have dates of events.

4. Gather some photos. Scan them into computer. Even one photo per time period makes the life story come alive. Insert the photos into the story.

5. Print one copy and have a relative read it to find errors in dates, information.

6. Make the final copy, print and bind. Or distribute to family members on disk.