Only you really know your story, and unless you are famous, you will not be able to publish your autobiography. Consider writing a memoir. A memoir can be one legacy you leave for your family. In a memoir you choose important themes. At least one recurring theme is needed and should run throughout the entire book. Pay particularly close attention to the beginning, because you need to setup the book in such a way that you can go on for a few hundred pages. Oftentimes, writer's block comes from taking the book in the wrong direction.
Tell what the problem is within the first two paragraphs. For instance, "He was an old man and went 84 days without catching a fish" (Ernest Hemingway). Use your natural voice. Don't be afraid to use an occasional big word. Point of view has already been established for you; it is to be your point of view.
Introduce other major characters, besides yourself, in scenes; let them speak and act for themselves. You can comment later. Introduce all major events in scenes and, importantly, the climax must be in a scene. After the climax tell us what happens to the characters. Don't leave us hanging. Then close it. The closing should only take two or three paragraphs.
Now for organization, you have choices. After I wrote a fairly lyrical, image oriented beginning, I then chose to organize my memoir by school years, because I could remember my school days and what happened at home during those times. For instance, I can remember being a terror in the second grade. That same year, I can remember getting a new bike, and the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War. For each school year, I wrote out a very basic scene/event outline.
In terms of voices, I alternate between my childhood voice and my adult voice. One of the things about writing a memoir is that you have to show that you now have some insight. That's where the adult voice took over. I also used a first-person childhood voice when I had something really important to say about my childhood and wanted the reader to be there with me.
When you introduce characters in scenes, you can include beats that tell us, for example, that the character smoked: "He then flipped his cigarette onto the ground; he paused to take a puff... " Use some fiction writing techniques. Show us some scenery; for instance, "City lights turned to mats of white cotton and amber wheat rolled out toward the sky made pale blue by the still heat."
Don't even bother to name minor characters. It's gets too confusing for the readers to have to remember so many characters. You can also combine characters. For instance, I often just say a cousin of mine. I also name few characters, because I do not want to lie, but I also want to respect the privacy of the living to the greatest extent possible.
Be emotionally honest. Do not make yourself look like an angel and everyone around you look bad. Do not lie, but do not reveal the identities of people if you do not want to, and remember, you do not have to include every event. It is not an autobiography.
The beginning of "This is How it Ends" took me a very long time to write, and it took me a while to figure out how to get from a lyrical beginning and into the story. The middle flew past, and the ending was natural. I did setup a writing schedule. First, I tried a page a day. That didn't work. What I found did work, however, was writing on the weekends--at least 10, ten point, 1 1/2 space pages. The choice to use small type was psychological. Under that schedule, after I got past the beginning, I was able to write the middle and ending in 3 months.





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