5 Ways to Start Your Memoir Today (Even If You've Never Written Before)

The most common thing I hear from people who want to write their memoir is not 'I don't have enough to say.' It is 'I don't know where to start.' The blank page is not a creative problem. It is a threshold problem. And thresholds, once crossed, tend to feel much smaller than they looked from the outside.

Here are five ways to cross that threshold today.

1. Start with a smell. Smell is the sense most directly connected to memory. Think of a smell from your childhood — bread baking, a particular soap, the inside of a car. Write for ten minutes about where that smell takes you. Don't worry about structure. Just follow the memory.

2. Write a letter to your younger self. Choose an age — ten, sixteen, twenty-five — and write to that person. What do you wish they knew? What are you proud of them for? This exercise almost always unlocks something unexpected.

3. Describe a room. Pick a room from your past — a childhood bedroom, a grandparent's kitchen, a first apartment. Describe it in as much physical detail as you can. What was on the walls? What sounds did it hold? Rooms are containers for stories, and describing them is often the fastest way in.

4. Write the story you've told a hundred times. Every family has them — the stories that come out at every gathering, that everyone knows by heart. Write one of yours down. The fact that you've told it so many times means it matters. It belongs in your memoir.

5. Begin in the middle. You do not have to start at the beginning. In fact, most compelling memoirs don't. Start at a moment of change, or tension, or arrival. You can always go back and fill in what came before.

None of these require experience. None of them require talent. They require only that you sit down and begin. And if you'd like a little more support getting started, my free Memoir Writing Starter Guide is waiting for you — [download it here](/lp/memoir-writing-blog) and take your first real step.