What a Memoir Actually Is — and What It Isn’t
What a memoir actually is — and what it isn’t
When you think of a memoir, what do you imagine?
A hefty book with your entire life story in chronological order and a choice selection of photos either scattered through, or wedged in the middle?
That is certainly one version. But it isn’t the only way, and the idea that it is puts a lot of people off before they’ve even started. So let me do a spot of myth-busting.
Myth 1: It has to cover your whole life
A memoir can be a single decade, a defining relationship, a career, a loss, a reinvention. Some of the most powerful ones are tightly focused on one chapter rather than the whole book. In fact, that kind of focus is often what gives a memoir its emotional weight. You’re not trying to document everything, you’re trying to capture something that mattered.
Myth 2: You have to be famous, or have done something extraordinary
This is probably the myth I encounter most often, and the one I feel most strongly about.
Ordinary lives contain extraordinary detail. The value isn’t in what you achieved, it’s in what you witnessed, felt, and survived. Nobody else has your version of the last sixty years. The streets you grew up on, the people who shaped you, the moments that changed everything and the ones that mattered.
Myth 3: It has to be published
Most memoirs aren’t. Many are written purely for family, for children, grandchildren, people not yet born. For a lot of people, that is the entire point. A published memoir reaches strangers. A private one reaches the people who will carry your story forward. Both matter. Neither is lesser.
Myth 4: You need to be a writer
You don’t. You need to have lived. 😁
The writing part can be helped, by a ghostwriter who works with you to shape your story in your own voice, or by something like The Memoir Maker, which guides you through the process using the kind of questions that unlock memories you thought you’d forgotten. The story is already there. It just needs drawing out.
Myth 5: It has to be perfect
It really doesn’t. The imperfect details are often what make a memoir real. The half-remembered conversation. The year you can’t quite place. The story that’s been told so many times it’s taken on a life of its own.
That’s not a flaw — that’s how memory actually works. And anyone reading it will recognise that, because their memory works the same way.
If any of this has made you think “maybe I could do that” — you’re probably right.
Whether you want to work with someone or do it yourself, the most important thing is simply to start. Stories don’t keep forever.
Interested in capturing yours? Explore memoir writing with Laura or try The Memoir Maker app.
