A Legacy Project

An invitation to memoir

An invitation

When we think of memoir, we think “story of a life,” like long-form autobiography. Alegacyproject.org is not that. This is short-form memoir. Moments in time. Snapshots.

Why not spend a month writing, capturing important and unimportant memories from your life? November is NaNoWriMo, national novel writing month. Why isn’t there a NaMemWriMo, national memoir writing month?

Here is an invitation. Take a month, look back on moments in your life, and write them down. Write once or twice a day for 20-30 minutes. Think of what you write as snapshots.

What do you ask someone when you look at a snapshot?

  • Where was this?
  • Who are these people?
  • What’s happening?
  • Why is it important?
  • What happened before and/or after this snapshot was taken?

Don’t worry about telling your whole life story. Think small. Think snapshots. To find a few examples of legacy snapshots, see Some topics.

SOME THOUGHTS ON YOUR WRITING

Compare your writing to painting the interior of your home. You start with the foyer. First day you paint the foyer. Second day you move to the dining room. Don’t go back in the foyer. Get out of there. Choose a new room, a new topic every day, and write what you remember. Then move on. Every day another room, another memory.

Don’t worry about grammar and sentence structure and all that stuff. Concentrate on the fun part–the writing and remembering, the capture of people, places, times, and what happened. Memory is a muscle. You’ll see. You’re getting in shape, flexing that muscle.

Try to stick to 20-30 minutes. Of course you can exceed that, you may want to exceed that, but try to come to closure on a topic so you can move on. If you write 30-45 minutes (or more) you may get tired. It’s important to quit before you’re empty, while you still have gas in the tank, so you’re fueled and ready for next session.

YOUR GOAL

Where does this writing lead? In thirty days you can have the draft of a legacy publication, something you can refine, print, and distribute. Or if you’re more ambitious than that, you something you can refine, publish, and sell. Have a look at the book I made from my 30 days of writing.

First do the writing. Got questions about what comes next? Reach me here.