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Everyone has a life story, but should everyone try to write about it? As a writer, you've probably been told numerous times that you should write about what you know. And while this is certainly true, there's also something to be said for writing about what you don’t know or understand. Often, writing about things you know can lead to troubles explaining yourself or why you felt the story was important to share. You can take for granted that the reader understands what you mean, but this isn't always the case. Memoirs are a good example of where writers can have troubles. So, if you think your life story is worth sharing, here's what you need to do.

Gather All the Details

Before you can even begin to write about your life, you need to do your research. While it's true, you've lived your life, if the James Frey incident has taught writers anything it's that you need to make sure your story is completely true, to the best of your ability. Talk to others in your life who you might include in your story. Ask them about the events you might want to include in the book and how these events affected them. You want to have as complete a picture of your life and what you might include in this memoir before you even get started. What this will do is help you better understand the direction your story might end up taking. While it seems like you may just want to start at the beginning and move to the end of the story, you need to do more than just relate all of the details of your life. You need to remember that you're not just writing about history, you're trying to entertain a reader.

Remembering the Reader

The life story you have lived and you want to share does have poignant moments that will touch and that will affect your readership as a whole. But you need to pick out the most poignant events and make sure they are the backbone of the story. Too often, writers will simply include everything they can possible remember about their lives, often clouding the really important details with mundane occurrences. Think about it this way, when you watch a movie, you don't always find out about all of the things a character did when they were at work, but do you really need to? Are those mundane details entertaining? Do they help the story? Often, they do not, which is why you need to think about what the reader will want to read. Sketch out a few larger events that you can go into detail about in your memoir and then you can fill in the space around them in the book with less important, but still interesting, details.

Think About the Message

You should always have a reason to write something and a reason for the reader to read what you have written. Before you begin your memoir, think about one reaction you want the reader to have when the story is over. How can you bring the reader to this final reaction? And from there, you can write a truly effective memoir. Should you write a memoir? That's something only you can answer. Can you write a memoir? Absolutely.