“What to write about in a memoir?” is a basic question. The right answer—which I believe is writing with passion—will keep you writing and the wrong may lead you to believe that writing a memoir is too hard and not for you.

My answer to what to write about in a memoir is always to write about something important to you—not what you think is important to others.

Why are you writing? What is it that you hope to get from this effort of creating a memoir? You are about to devote a lot of time and energy to this task. Be sure it is for reasons that will keep you writing with passion.

Writing with passion needs your attention!

For some people, the answer to what to write about in a memoir has to do with creating some order in their memories—ultimately leading to some understanding, some meaning. For others, the writing is an attempt to memorialize a time gone by, to celebrate a culture—whether ethnic, regional, religious. And still others want to educate—that is, show an example of a model for resolving an issue or moving through a life difficulty. (The “surviving cancer” stories are in this category.) And then there are the people who simply want to entertain, to tell a good story.

Whatever your motivation, if writing with passion is important to you, write about something that resonates with you from the get go. When something impels you to write, you will keep writing—through the days when you don’t feel like writing, through the technical problems such as “I don’t have the right point of view for this story” or “the part of me I have selected to be the narrator is getting the tone all wrong.”

A writer who is writing something important to him/her will work through these challenges. But…

So many people write unimportant things—unimportant to them and ultimately unimportant to the reader.

I write this not to urge you to be on the look out for IMPORTANT topics. No, I simply want you to ask yourself if a certain story or vignette is really significant to you. Was it formative (e.g., a relationship with a teacher)? Did it change you in some way and make you into a different person (e.g., a divorce or a bankruptcy)? Did it cause you to make a major decision (e.g., your house burned to the ground)? Did it create special circumstances for you (e.g., being born with a handicap).

All of these are examples of what to write about in a memoir. These topics will keep you writing over the long haul.

Here is an example of a decision of what to write about in a memoir that will probably not serve the writer’s best interests and sustain writing with passion. In my workshops, new writers have written about such events as when they were in an elevator with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. (This is a real example from one of my workshops.) They will describe what she wore and the sound of her voice when she said “hello” and how she graciously let them step out of the elevator first.

These writers will tell me when I asked them why they chose this story to submit, “I thought the Jackie Kennedy story would be something other people would be interested in.”

Writing with passion results from something important to the writer.

Mildly interesting but certainly not formative in the life of the writer, not something that opens up the life of the writer to the audience.  This is an example of writing outside of one’s self, writing for an audience. How interesting can a memoir be if it is filled with external stories such as this? (At least, I would say: “not very!”) After a while of writing these “interesting” stories, the writer both gets bored with these and runs out of them. It is not important to the writer and so s/he begins to plod along–and is in danger of eventually quitting, giving up on writing with passion.

What is important to you in your life that you want to share with the world—or just your family? Only then wil writign with passion be possible for the long-term

ACTION STEP

 As you write, stop yourself periodically to ask, “What do I really mean to write?” A variant is: “What do I really want to say now, to tell about myself?”

This little exercise will stop you in your tracks as you assess whether you are writing about something important or merely filling in space, striving for a feeling of writing a lot rather than writing deeply. This is how you can continue writing with passion.