How to Write a Book About Your Life

How to Write a Book About Your Life in 10 Simple Steps

Everyone has an interesting & amazing life story. Many people want to share their personal history to give some thought-provoking and motivational experiences. Whether they travel the world, meet up with movie stars, or have some achievements, each individual has a fantastic life story.

Yet, writing about yourself is one of the powerful aspects, where you can record the important moments of your life. The fact is writing a book is also a daunting task. You need to share your experiences in a captivating story. It means you have to write your life that is full of suspense, real-life experiences, and intriguing moments.

However, writing & publishing a book is surely a different process when it compares to writing a novel or story about someone else.

The thing that you need to bear in mind is your book is important. You are going to write your story. So, it is your life and your legacy. Your book will be read by your generations and tell them about your real-life struggle.

Writing the story on your personal life is a worthwhile and vulnerable form of writing. This is a story about you, rather than constructing a made-up character, you talk about the actual life story.

If you have the staggering true story but aren’t sure from where to start and wondering how to write a book about your life, read this blog.

Here you read the steps for writing an interesting book about your life;

1. Start writing by free-writing or journaling
2. Outline your notes
3. Choose the non-fiction genre for write-ups
4. Research for Accuracy
5. Recognize the perspective & characters
6. Add speculation
7. Shape the setting
8. Think of your dialogue
9. Ready for negative pushback
10. Commit to finishing out

Reasons To Write The Story Or Book About Your Life

The majority of people think they should perform something to get fame, which is why they start to talk about their lives. But, that’s not true.

“The most prominent reason of writing about your life is imperative, it is because you have a mind-blowing story. Everyone has something worth to share that can change the lives of so many people through their trials and tribulations”.

One of the top reasons for writing a book about your life gives a better understanding of who you are.

• You leave the legacy for your family
• Finding similarities with others gives people a sign to live healthy and happy lives
• Storytelling is the basic form of communication and avoids the feeling of loneliness
• Telling your real-life story gives a direction and helps in accomplishing the aim
• It reconnects you with the actual person inside you

Do You Know What Is Autobiography?

Autobiography is one of the most popular genres since centuries. It is simply writing the book about the author’s life or a self-written biography. The author shares their whole life experiences, hurdles, achievements, and frame all these things in one frame to engage readers in their life stories. And, give a motivational and inspiring message to handle future problems.

* Different Types of Autobiographies:

When you want to write a book about your life, you have to know about different types of autobiographies. There are 6 major types of autobiographies. From these types of autobiographies, you can pick the best one that matches your concept.

1. Full autobiography
2. Memoir
3. Personal essay
4. Psychological illness
5. Overcoming adversity
6. Confession

1) Full autobiography

This autobiography type moves around the whole life story from the birth time to their present. It gives real insights into the author’s life and tells them how their life is different from others.

2) Memoir

It focuses on the specific time, relationship, and place. It emphasizes the most important part of life. Whether it is related to childhood or anything that shaped you as a person.

3) Personal essay

It is the oldest form of autobiographical writing. It is the most intimate form of writing when compared with other types. A personal essay does not focus on the story but on the style and tone.

4) Psychological illness

A writing type where author suffering from any kind of mental health and consider book writing as the therapeutic thing. This story helps readers to overcome their problems.

5) Overcoming adversity

Not everyone is living a satisfying life. Many face problems and terrible situations for instance kidnapping, murder, accident, etc. Sharing these stories might inspire others, also help them in articulating their feel and emotion to heal.

6) Confession

This life story is written by those who have committed something wrong and find comfort in talking about their mistakes. The motive behind this is to give lessons, help to sort out readers’ problems, and give them hope in dealing with a real-life story.

Key Points For Writing A Book About Yourself

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imaginations to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt” – Sylvia Path

Writing a book sound intimidating task but it is similar to the starting for any project. To those who want to know how to write a book about your life, they need to shake off all the notions and know exactly what they want to do. In order to achieve the book writing goal, you need to rely on the five major points that are listed below;

• Planning

First of all, you need to ask yourself what you want to write, so list down some questions. Then, mention your answers. Answering the question will lead you to start the book writing process. This will give the framework idea and tell you how to get started.

• What is your objective and vision for book writing?
• Who is your targeted audience?
• Are you going to write a book on your work? Either prefer a coach or editor?
• Plan for publishing?
• How much time do you invest in writing the book?
• Preparation

Once you plan to write a book, then it is the point where you have to deep down to research your context.

• ­You can make the list of the important events of your life
• ­Create the outline for your book such as Introduction, Preface, Chapters, etc
• ­Craft the summary of each section of your outline
• ­Bunch up the best writing tools like research material, laptop, sticky notes.
• ­Set your time
• ­Decide the best time for writing
• Focus

It is the major part to take your book to the sky heights by doing brainstorming or creating a mind map. This sketch helps you to concentrate on your process and avoid distraction. This step allows focusing on the most interesting part of your life. if you are tempting why do need mind mapping, below you read the benefits of mind mapping for book writing about your life;

• Helps to organize and well-planned your thoughts
• Helps to bring out natural chapters
• Helps to create a story structure
• Gives surety that you do not forget anything
• Helps to make the strong topic for your book
• Commitment

Commitment is a tricky word, as some people find it easier to manage their daily tasks properly. It helps them to maintain discipline while writing the book. As a writer, commitment is the major thing that aids you to achieve book writing goals about your life. For this, follow the things mentioned below;

• ­Commit to the place
• ­Commit to the process
• ­Commit to your time
• Passion

When writing a book about your life, passion is the only thing that gives perseverance in order to keep you on going while writing your book. This simply gives you more dedication and enduring passion until the time when you see your story in print. You need to keep in mind that “Passion is the only thing that drives you toward success”.

“People with passion can change the world for the better” – Steve Jobs

How Do You Write The Book About Yourself?

Do you know what is the hardest thing in life? It is looking inside ourselves. Today, almost everybody is digging into others’ life, instead of having a glimpse of their own selves.

The very first rule about writing yourself is to dive into the honest and actual part of your life. You need to gather a single piece of information and peek inside about yourself.

When it comes to real-life stories, no one wants a book related to rainbows and sunshine, the reason is they are based on fiction stories. Before writing a book about your life or autobiography, you also need to know what is memoir and how to write it. It makes the book writing process quite simple and easy.

However, writing a memoir is quite simple. Below you read a descriptive view of memoir.

– What memoir is?

It is not an autobiography, in simple words, a memoir is not the story of the whole life. It is the slice of life or a short story of your life with a great message. So, before writing your book, once you write it, gives an in-depth understanding of writing a book on your life.

A memoir might cover one facet of a writer’s life, whereas the autobiography is the consecutive part of the writer’s life. However, it gives the idea about how to cover the interesting fact and figures in your whole book.

Few steps to writing a book about your life:

• Decide are you ready to write a book on your life
• Spend some time on self-evaluating
• Focus on the specific event you want to share
• Do mind mapping
• Gather all those ideas to create your book outline

For your ease, below you read the guidelines of sketching the about your life amazingly.

Image Source: My Perfect Words

Difference Between Memoir And Autobiography

Tips To Write A True Story

Writing true stories is not an easy task. It requires struggle, effort, and time to transform your real-life situations in an interesting way. To indulge readers, true stories need to craft in a tricky and attractive style. That is the reason many authors recommend to right a memoir before writing an autobiography.

Here are the few things that you should know while writing the true story; 

• Make it non-fiction more similar to a memoir
• If prefer autobiography, try to write it in a chronological order
• Ensure that your story covers the truthful elements of your entire life
• Are you looking for a fiction book about certain parts of your life?

It is advised you do not write a fiction book on your life. The reason is your actual personality might fall over into an Archetype character. Which means a character without any flaws.

Source: Conor Neill

Sometimes this happens because it is difficult to unbiased ourselves. But when you write the true story make a character with your real flaws. This is the best tip when writing a book about your life.

Major Components to Write a Book About Your Life

People are usually thinking about the what are major components to write a book about your life. So, here you read the 5 important gears of writing a book about yourself.

–  Life description

You can start it by writing a description of your life. Begin writing from your birth that makes sense and is simple to cover. You can also give a little family history. Make sure your story must be chronological. But it is not necessary to give a year-by-year description. It is good if you focused on the central events of your life. For guidance, you can look at the Dylan Thomas book “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog”. Every chapter of this book is simply a brief description of the different moments that happen in different time periods.

–  Meaning of Life

In this component, you should talk about your perspective that what is life according to you. You can write about your life and mention how you perceive life. Also, talk over whether you are happy or enjoying life. Let your readers know how you motivate yourself and occupy your time. This is the actual time to communicate how you feel, your points for a meaningful and pleasant life.

–  Self-Evaluation

Writing about your life needs self-evaluation first. Make sure you do not mention any fake information about yourself. Self-Evaluation develops the connection between the readers and authors. So, it surely helps you to engage your readers. It helps you to make your story more captivating and interesting.

–  Vision of Future

The fourth thing you need to consider is the talk about the upcoming life. It tells you how to see your future, what predictions you made for your future, and what you are planning for the future.

–  Conclusion

Finish your story with a conclusion. You need to summarize everything that you have discussed above. Say a few words and mention the reason why you write a book about your life. It reminds you of whether you accomplish the goal of writing your book.

10 Simple Steps To Write A Book About Your Life

Once you have discovered what you want to share with the whole world, but don’t know the heck to make this happen. Then, this read is designed to give proper learning of how to write a book about your life & get it published.

1)      Start Writing By Free-Writing Or Journaling

Take a few minutes each day for free write-ups. You can even write a journal and focus on the memorial moments. This just helps you to get started your book writing session. Keep in mind that a good writing prompt for journal or free-write is one of the significant ways to write about the 24 hours of your life. The memories written at that time from the important moment of life will be used to construct the non-fiction narrative.

Even if you don’t use this particular memory in your narrative, the habit of writing down the memories will surely aid you as the writer and also help you in keeping all those memories fresh.

2)     Outline Your Notes

When you have written down numerous memories, and whether they are part of an essay or overall narrative, they must be organized perfectly. This is the time when you need to systematize your all memories into a coherent story for the actual write-up.

If you are writing on your life story, linguistically the plotline of your book is eventually available. It just needs to note down and structured in a style that connects you with your targeted audience.

Those who are not the “pants” similar to other writers, and they are organized type of writers will surely outline the memories properly that they want to add to their life story. It surely helps you to get amazing writing juices.

Outline the book writing process helps you to get the perfect idea and order of the book. Not only this, it helps you to set your writing goals and also improve your writing habits to become a faster writer. Bear in mind, these are the two writing goals that help to achieve a good quality book.

3)     Choose The Non-Fiction Genre For Write Ups

Do you know the “creative non-fiction genre has become the most popular genre in the literary and publishing communities”? However, there is a number of non-fiction book genre such as memoirs, essay collection, autobiographies, motivational books, etc.

Usually, when you write a book about your life, it sounds like you can put it in the memoir genre, but that’s not the same in all cases. So, while picking your non-fiction genre make sure in which category your book falls, whether it is a memoir or autobiography.

However, autobiographies are tended to be more factual as compared to creative ones. Memoirs are only the specific period of your time.

Sometimes you do not focus on any special moment and also don’t want to share your entire life story. Then this time a collection of lyrical and personal essays might be perfect for your style. The personal essays are similar to the non-fiction version of short stories.

Make sure you choose the best non-fiction genre for a book about your life.

4)     Research For Accuracy

After free-writing or outlining, only research is the best element that helps you in creating a fuller life story. It also helps you in becoming a credible writer.

Everybody knows memories are fickle & no one remembers the whole situation properly, especially when you start writing a book about your life.

Yet, researching for the book is an intimidating task. To find more about your real-life happenings, it is essential to do more research.

Here you read some interesting tips for research while writing a book about your life:

• List down the facts and memories in which you are not completely sure
• Ask more about those events with your family members or friends
• You can get important quotes from those people if it is necessary for your writing
• At the time of writing, if you find something that you need to research, you can make a note and keep writing to write faster

5)     Know Your Perspective & Characters

The fact is every person is influenced by another person in different ways. And, it put also a great influence on how you write a book about your life story as well.

Exciting tips to shape your characters for your storybook:

• Create a list of individuals or characters, who want to include in the story
• Write down the description of a person you choose such as physical appearance, background, age
• Also write down the relationship, either has a close relationship or a distant one
• You can also check the different character bio templates that help to flesh out the details

The tips help to describe your narrative with the rule of “show don’t tell”. This will help readers to visualize the characters and also determine how your targeted audience is affected by your personality.

The thing that you need to alter is the character’s real names.

6)     Add Speculation

Adding speculation is necessary to fill gaps in a book about your life. It is important to understand what is speculation. If the memory of your event seems like bit foggy, use speculations. When you use what you know must combine it with the research you conduct to cognize to the greatest of your ability.

Stab to discover the creative methods to speculate. Make sure you talk in a style that shows you are telling the actual story. You must know how to create a hypothesis related to something that might mystery to you.

You can use phrases like maybe and perhaps to show the reader that you are speculating.

7)     Shape The Setting

Keep in mind that your readers are always curious to find where your story took place. The most important thing to know is how to setting up your story like a fiction story. In settings, you need to focus on the basic definition of your setting that is place and time of your story. However, several different elements should consider while setting up your story that includes;

• Geographical location (city, country, state)
• Physical environment (climate condition, weather situation)
• Time period (time of day, year, historical event, present-day)
• Physical location (room, station, temple)
• Cultural environment (beliefs of certain groups, influencing factors, traditions)
• Social environment (aspects of human activity)

For you, here you read some relevant questions for the setting of a book about your life:

• What are the landmarks of your storybook setting?
• Do you fill out your character profile?
• What sorts of residence do most people live in?
• Have you focused on the unique point of view?
• Did you Mention the place where your story takes place?
• How long do the characters spend time in your story?

8)    Think Of Your Dialogue

One of the most important steps to writing a book about your life is to think of your dialogues. In non-fiction writing, crafting dialogue is so crucial. You should know the interesting tips to write attractive and engaging dialogues, otherwise, your book ends up like a boring textbook.

Image source: Pinterest

“Dialogues give life to your story itself.”

Yes, writing accurate dialogue is challenging itself. You can also write dialogues with dialogue formatting. You can also use a voice recorder and video recorder to save your conversation word to word to recall previous actions.

9)     Ready For Negative Pushback

Not everyone has sweet stories, some of us facing the dark sides. Many people today face the scandalous true story, and want to share it with another side of the world. They need to prepare themselves for the negative reaction of the world.

If you are writing such kind of story about your life you have to be ready for the negative acts of your readers. The non-fiction writing doesn’t dark in actuality but still receives negative feedback. But, some of them react simply the reason is they are written in your life story as well.

10) Commit To Finish Out

You don’t need to stick to the first draft of your story, publish it to give life experiences to other people and motivate them how to live a better life. You don’t need to commit to a book, you should commit to yourself to do something amazing in your life, so you can proud.

You need to commit to the things that should be here when you are gone.