Every life proceeds in irregular and unpredictable phases. We can go along with our lives for a long time without much change, thinking that we have arrived at a resolution of the great “who am I?” question, and then unpredictably and perhaps quickly find ourselves dealing with totally different emotional and psychological challenges. Often, it is only in looking back on our lives that we are aware of these life phases.

With hindsight, most people can recognize a life phase or two every decade.

Sometimes a life phase will last only a year or two and, at other times, a person can be in a stage for ten or fifteen years. It is these periods–their evolution and consequences–that can form an interesting basis for writing a memoir.

Think a moment of your life. What natural groupings and changes do you detect in your life energies? At what points in your life can you say, “I felt differently about things after that”? Or, “I conducted myself in a different fashion”? Wouldn’t these  groupings make a great way to organize your memoir?

In my own life, for instance, I can see a natural grouping of years between the time I was 13 and 20, 20 and 23, 23 and 30, 30 and 33), etc.

These dates mark times in my life when I was doing a number of similar things and experiencing growth in definite direction. Once I cross over from one period into another, the energies change decidedly—what I was doing, thinking, and feeling afterwards was no longer the same as what I was doing, thinking, and feeling beforehand. It wouldn’t work, for instance, for me to write about the years between my 19th and 24th birthdays (a period of only five years) as a unit because those years contain three distinct energy periods for me. But, the times between my 23rd and 30th birthday, although containing experiences spanning many more years (seven) than the earlier period is marked by a unity of emotions and growth that makes it possible for me to think of these years as a cycle, a life phase. You, too, can organize your memoir with life cycle or energy phases.

In writing my memoir, therefore, it lends comprehension and clarity to my account to organize my memoir into units that correspond to the energy cycles of my life.

By doing this, I can see what in my life nurtured and maintained these periods and what brought them to a close and whether it was a timely close or not. In this way, my life becomes more comprehensible both to me and my reader—and in the end, it will help you to write better, more insightful life stories.

In the final version of your book of memoir, these life phases correspond to chapters or sections of your memoir. Energy cycles turn out to be a very organic way not only to understand but to organize your memoirs. To get started, create Memory Lists of the phases of your life.

Good luck writing and organizing your memoir!