Autobiography
An autobiography covers your entire life. Tip: Be careful about starting out with your actual birth, unless there was something special about it, like yours being the first recorded birth in such and such a year or town.
You want your autobiography to engage readers, even if they’re family members, so I advise against lists of facts. “I was born on” feels like the beginning of a list of facts.
Try instead to write something about your birth, like “No one knew if my father would be able to get leave from the military in time for my mother’s due date.”
That immediately sets up suspense. We’ll keep reading because we want to know if he did get home in time. Then you can go on with something like: “Military leaves were scarce, since Pearl Harbor had been bombed a short time before and the US was at war.” Now you’ve added context. We’re interested.
Memoirs
A memoir describes a portion of a life, which could be a chronological period, like your teen years, or a subject, like all the houses you’ve lived in. I recently completed a project with a client who wrote about the years she and her husband spent their winters in Florida.
Life Stories
What I call a life story (or story from your life) is an anecdote about something in your life. I like it best when someone delves into a family myth, or discovers a secret. (I’ve never yet taught a class in which a boomer or senior didn’t find out something about their family that had been deliberately suppressed. For more ideas, see Supercharge Your Life Story with These Ideas.)
Genealogy and Family History
The definition of genealogy that I like best is: “The study or investigation of ancestry and family histories.”
In addition to, or in place of, developing a family tree that confines itself to births, marriages, and deaths, many people write family history, which takes a broader look at ancestry than a family tree can accommodate.
Some genealogies include family stories and artifacts and documentation such as letters to help build a portrait of a family and its members. A number of sites like Family Search and USGenWebProject offer a rich trove of genealogical search opportunities.
Profiles
Often a student of mine will realize in his or her mature years that a certain person exercised a strong positive influence on him or her. That acknowledgement inspires the student to write a profile of the parent, teach, mentor, neighbor, or friend, which turns out to be a meaningful tribute to the memory of that significant person. One student wrote so beautiful a tribute to her father that all of us who heard it wished we had known the man.
Going Forward
In my next post, I’ll provide tips for getting started on your personal and family history writing projects. What else would you like to know about writing stories from your own or your family’s life?
Good info! I know I wondered for a long time what the difference was between and autobiography and a memoir, until I read definitions similar to yours.
Hi Lynette,
Lots of useful info for people starting out on the memoir/life-writing journey. It’s quite an undertaking, as you know! I’m still slogging away, but making progress. Thank you so much for featuring my family history writing Guest Post.
One of the most important qualities anyone writing memoir or family history needs is persistence. Just going through the records one needs can be daunting. And then, all that information must be organized. Challenging, but not impossible, especially if you have help from a friend, coach, or writing instructor. As you know, sometimes it helps just to have outside eyes take a look at the work and offer suggestions and guidance.