Here\u2019s my recommendation of the week: if you have a life, write a life story. <\/p>\n
Okay, I know, I know. Some of you might complain you\u2019re not good writers or good spellers or your life is boring. But come on, do it for me. It doesn\u2019t have to be a long book (why not shoot for that minimum of \u2018official\u2019 book status: 96 pages?), it just has to be a book that no one else could ever write: your own autobiography.<\/p>\n
I long thought about writing an autobiography. Alas, I felt my life was too short, too common, too trite. All that stuff. Moreover, I worried that it was impossible to sum up my life with one overarching theme. Life is more like a recurring TV show than a single novel\u2026and I didn\u2019t know how to compress family, friends, jobs, hobbies, schooling, weddings, funerals, and beard-growing all into a single tome. More than that, there were big chunks of life I didn\u2019t want to think about or share with other people. I worried that people would get offended or upset or bored.<\/p>\n
In November 2006, I began (for the second time) writing my autobiography. I\u2019m still plowing through; I\u2019m almost done. Actually, I\u2019m almost done with the first draft. I forget where I read it (I wish I remembered\u2026) but in one book the author said that every book tells two stories: The story itself and the story of writing the story. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve often expressed to my wife that I feel like I\u2019ve relived everything while writing about it\u2026 When I detailed events from my elementary school days, I pulled out old dusty papers from the \u201880s. When I wrote about my first public speaking experience, I listened to the cassette tape of that day. When I wrote about the bus trip where I met my wife, I rewatched the footage I shot during that vacation (and subsequently edited it). When I wrote about my wedding, I looked through the guest book. And now that I\u2019m writing about my son, I keep referring back to a book I wrote from that time period. I\u2019ve contacted people to verify events from decades ago, and I continually check calendars and mementos from the past to verify chronology. I didn\u2019t think my life story would have an appendix (heck, even I don\u2019t have an appendix), but there you have it. <\/p>\n
After a verbose 530 pages, I am finally writing about the present. Or, more correctly, I am writing about the most recent year that I will write about. For now. I am hoping to wrap this monstrosity up pretty soon so I can work on my next project: editing my book.<\/p>\n
Through all this, I keep thinking that many of the people in my story should write their own story.<\/p>\n
I encourage anyone out there to write their life story, too. Don\u2019t be nervous\u2026you can set your word processor to autocorrect spellig or punctuation, errors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here\u2019s my recommendation of the week: if you have a life, write a life story. Okay, I know, I know. Some of you might complain you\u2019re not good writers or good spellers or your life is boring. But come on, do it for me. It doesn\u2019t have to be a long book (why not shoot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-film-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}