How To Write Your Life Story

by Karen Ulrich

Filled with exercises, creative suggestions, and helpful advice, a comprehensive handbook takes readers through the steps of writing their own life story--whether it is intended as a personal family record or for general publication--with tips on how to research one's family, develop a timeline, identify themes, organize one's ideas, and incorporate finishing touches.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction, Writing

192 pages, Hardcover

First published November 2, 2006

Reviews

[Kailey (Luminous Libro) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives a step-by-step guide to writing your memoir, including different styles of writing and organizing your memories. You could write a journal style, epistolary, narrative, or even a scrapbook. There is a whole section dedicated to just researching and remembering your past. There are different things you can do to jog your memory and bring the details into your memoir.

I found the section on writing expressively to be especially helpful. This book analyzes how to write yourself as a character in your own story, and how to direct a plot and develop a theme. There are sections about writing descriptions and dialogue. There is even an entire section just about food and the importance of food in your memories.

The sections about getting published and digitizing your work are outdated since this book was published in 2006, but everything else is really useful.

[Sonia Bellhouse]

This book is more for those wishing to create a family history or even a pictorial record. There are examples and the author casts a wide net. In one section she talks about the possibility of using song lyrics in your memoir. Its only many pages later that the issue of copyright is mentioned. You cannot quote song lyrics without the copyright holder’s permission and may have to pay a fee. You are free to quote song titles.

[John Orman · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best of the "write your life story" books, this Reader's Digest book has many examples of text and photos, with great advice on how to interweave them into a compelling story about your life.

A lot of great information on using photographs to enhance the tales, and how to work everything into a digital presentation for DVD or the Web.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creative and Helpful I really enjoyed this book. It is visually appealing as well as being very informative. Even if you aren't writing a memoir, I think some of the writing techniques would be helpful with creative writing in general.

[Sue Klasing · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was very helpful when I wrote the story of my journey with breast cancer.