Saturday June 17, 2023; 10:20 AM EDT
- A person writing a memoir could organize it in many ways. Or could develop it by thinking about many kinds of life patterns. Such as: #
- Chronology is the most obvious but patterns in a life are not always raised to the surface that way.#
- Stages of one's life, a version of chronology, would assert that this section of a life has a certain character, and the next section has a different character. Or the next section uses the previous as its foundation somehow.#
- Choices. What are the most interesting choices the person has made, and how did each one come about and play out? Or: what were the big times the person came to a fork in the road?#
- Skills. How did the person develop the most important skills that have added up to a life's toolkit? Could also be done with a list of tools.#
- Lessons. Or: Problems faced. Each one a story on its own, perhaps building on each other.#
- Influences. Who taught the person the important things, and when, and how?#
- Cultural influences. What was going on in the wider society that helped shape the person and now helps explain the choices and paths of the life?#
- Letters to a young poet. If a younger person asked for guidance about this and that aspect of career or life wisdom, in a series of letters, what would the return letters say?#
- Snapshots. Little chapters about actual or imagined snapshots from the person's life. Or about other Objects and Artifacts.#
- Provocations. Quotations from other people and what kinds of responses they provoke and anecdotes they bring to mind. Or: quotations from one's own earlier writing and what those quotations now bring to mind.#
- Stories I like to tell. What are the stories that one has often told, that go over well, that interest audiences pretty reliably?#
- Stories for later. What are the stories a person has to work up to, get the nerve to tell, or maybe wait to tell until enough years have passed and the key players have relaxed or even passed away.#
- Questions too often asked. For a public figure, certain questions are asked by other people over and over. What are these and what does recurring fact maybe indicate about cultural obsessions of the era?#
- Questions never asked. For a public figure, what dumb questions are asked by other people too often and why are they misguided questions? What would be better questions, and what answers do those questions deserve?#
- This before that. What are the things in such and such a time that made possible the developments in the following time?#
- Insider knowledge. What are the pleasures of having the inside knowledge of one's field or one's culture? What does this particular kind of insider know well that other folks might not know?#
- Dead ends, false leads, and bad ideas. The stories of things one had to outgrow, see through, or shake off in order to advance.#
- Constraints and freedoms. What sorts of limitations did the person experience, from where? Where and how did the person find freedom?#
- Allies and collaborators. What are the key episodes of fruitful partnership in the person's life? What made them work? What tended to make them fragile or even break down?#