Hobbies And Interests
Deciding What to Include
An autobiography in its traditional form covers from birth to death or, if the author is still alive, from her birth until the time of writing. For most people this time frame encompasses a countless number of events. Before writing an autobiography, reflect on your life, jot down key dates, memories and occurrences, to identify the pivotal events that have shaped your life. Reflecting can involve a variety of exercises, including looking at old photographs, reading old journals and letters or talking with friends and relatives.
Life's Formative Events
As writer Joe Kita said in a 2009 Readers Digest article, "How to Write Your Memoir," "99.9 per cent of people lead boring lives" with childhood, school, college, work, marriage and starting a family the standard rites of passage. While these are all important parts of an autobiography, it is the watershed moments that make for interesting reading. Examples include recollections of a school teacher's influence on career choices and the chain of events that led a husband to meet his future wife.
The Purpose Behind Writing an Autobiography
People write autobiographies for different reasons, including self-realization, a desire to get published, genealogical or cathartic purposes. This motivation can help determine which parts of your life you should include in the text. As Janet Walls, author of the bestseller "The Glass Castle" said, for most autobiographers their basic intention is to say, "This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it."
Accuracy vs Memory
An autobiographical narrative is based upon the author's memories; memories are subjective, as opposed to a thoroughly researched historical document. In the November 2009 Student Pulse Academic Journal article, "Sublime Inauthenticity: How Critical is Truth in the Autobiography," author Scott Berghegger wrote: "Autobiography is a function of memory, and memory is not always reliable. Autobiographies are a subjectively reconstructed history of memories selected specifically to satisfy the moral agenda of the person who is writing about their life."