Guide to Writing Your Life Story

Hey writer friend! Today I want to talk to you about writing your life story and share with you a very simple exercise that can help you get started doing it today. My name is Kelly Notaris. I am the founder of knliterary.com and I am also a book editor who's worked in the US business at some of the biggest publishing companies over the last 20 years. and I've learned a lot during that time that I share with you here on this YouTube channel. So please, if you like this video, go ahead and click the button below to subscribe and you'll never miss a video from me. All right, I wanna talk to you today about writing your life story. I wanna give you a very simple exercise for doing so, and I've got a bonus for you at the end, so be sure to watch all the way to the end. Why do so many people want to write their life story? The truth is that we as human beings are built to share story, to understand life through story, to make meaning of this kind of crazy existence through sharing our stories with others and hearing other stories. So it makes perfect sense that in today's day and age, when anyone has access to writing a book, so many of us would want to do that. So many of us would want to share the wisdom that we've earned. maybe hard one from childhood, maybe through some actual event that happened in our adulthood, the loss of someone we loved or some sort of triumph that we accomplished. And we want to share that story so other people can learn and grow from it. So I always say if life is asking you to share your story with the world, there is a reason and you need to follow it. So I want to give you a very, very easy exercise. Actually, it might not feel easy, but it is. It's very simple. exercise today that I want you to actually try to put into practice right now and in order to inspire you to do so I actually just did this exercise before recording this video and I'm going to show you all about how I did it so I call this my one 100 moments exercise. Because of course, when you're writing a memoir, you are just relating the moments of your life, the ones that are pertinent to a particular theme or a particular story, a slice of your life that you want to share. And you are actually giving those scenes to your reader in a particular order. But before we can choose the order the scenes need to be in, we actually need to know what moments are those scenes made up of. So I want you to set aside any anxiety you might have about not knowing where your story starts, where it's supposed to end, what exactly you're supposed to include. All of that comes later, all in good time. Many of my clients get really stopped up and don't continue writing because they have those questions that they can't find an answer to. two before they've even started mining their life for the stories, for those moments that will actually come together like pieces of a puzzle to create a big picture that is very clear for you and the reader. You need to first figure out what those pieces are going to be. So this exercise, the hundred moments exercise is the one I want you to try today. Okay, so what is the exercise? You're going to need to set aside 20 to 30 minutes quiet time uninterrupted. That is really important. So I don't know whether this means going to a coffee shop or whether it means just putting your like sign on your door that says do not disturb, but whatever you need to do, get that sacred time set aside from friends, family, work obligations. Then I want you to choose something to write on and with that's not your computer or your iPad or your phone. Okay, I really want you to consider writing this one longhand. There's something magical that happens when pen hits page. It almost makes us feel this confidence that we are a writer. So for this particular exercise, I don't mind. I actually write all of my books, all of my blogs, everything that I write, I do on the computer. But this exercise, I want you to write on paper. So you might want to get a large piece of art paper, a poster board. If you like big things in big. pictures or you could just use a plain piece of notebook paper. Like I said, I just did this exercise and I did it in my journal so I'm just gonna do a shout out to my favorite journals they're called um eco jot journals they're beautiful they've got a lot of pages they have nice thick lines um on the pages this is my favorite type of journal to write in and i write in my journal almost every morning so i just took my basic journal that i've been using and what i did was i numbered the pages numbered those lines one through 100 okay so that's the next step you've got your time now i want you to number the either a page or a poster board numbers one through 100. You don't need a lot of space to write because we're just going to be giving ourselves one little clue, one little line of writing that will remind us of a particular moment in our lives. Okay, so it can just be one line on the page. I went ahead and and wrote all the numbers down here and it actually took me four pages because each of these pages has 25 lines on it and I wanted to do 100 and then I set my timer. 20 minutes, okay? 20 minutes is the minimum. I would say 30 minutes should be the maximum. that you give yourself to do this exercise. The point of it is that it's meant to be a stream of consciousness exercise. You're not supposed to think too hard about what you're putting down on the page. In fact, don't really think about it at all. Right now, you're not going to decide whether you're actually going to include these moments in your book. You're just getting the juices flowing and reminding yourself of all the many interesting eras that you've had in your lifetime, right? So... on my list of 100 i have things all the way back to when i was really really little you know my first my first memory is actually on here which was of saying goodbye to my mom's dog when i was two years old and the dog you know she was i think 16 or 17 years old and they were taking her to the vet to put her down and i remember saying goodbye to her that went on this but all the way up to actually something that happened last week so it doesn't matter where it is i don't even know at this point what memoir i'm writing what era of my life i'm even thinking of i am just getting getting the juices flowing. I'm starting to create a listing. I'm starting to open up the vault inside of myself to remember all the interesting moments that I've had. So I sat down, set my timer for 20 minutes, and I got all of these, every one of these, a hundred different moments, I got written down in 17 minutes. So I'm a writer. I'm an editor. I have done this exercise before. So maybe it's going to take you 25 minutes. I don't mind, but I don't want you to think too hard. So a maximum of 30 minutes for this exercise. Okay. So then you set the timer, you hit go, and you just start writing. You might write of a sensual memory, a memory of smell, a memory of a sight, a moment of seeing your mother kissing a man and you'd never seen him before. Maybe you remember the smell of your grandmother's muffins. Maybe you remember the feeling of your feet walking on grass. These are moments in your life. They are specific to a sense. There's also, I think it's important to choose specific moments. So So not necessarily just the yard at my childhood home. You can put that on there. But how about that time I stepped on a bee in the yard in my childhood home? Okay. I may never include that in my memoir. You know, maybe I will, but maybe I won't. But it will remind me of a sense memory, a specific time of being in that yard that when I go back to mind this list. just that one note stepping on the B in the yard will open up into the smells, the tastes, the moments that I had in those yard. Maybe one really important moment will come to mind. So these are just, you're going to be using these in a variety of ways at a later date. For right now, just choose to write down anything that you remember. So I'm going to tell you a few of mine. So you remember me, um, you, you, so you understand. Okay. So I have hot. patio bricks. We had a patio at home growing up when I was a little kid and the bricks got really hot in the sun. That led me into remembering a memory of trying to cook an egg on the windshield of my dad's car. Because I think my dad had said, wow, this windshield is so hot, you could cook an egg on it. And the next thing you know, I went out there with a crack and cracked an egg on my dad's windshield. That didn't go over so well. But that was a memory that I have. You know, the sand dunes at the camp where I went to camp in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Visiting the the DePaul University in IU in Indiana, the universities that I went to visit when I was choosing my college. I remember those times. Meeting Nancy, my best friend, and our table. We met at a restaurant for a lunch date. We were set up as blind date for our friends, and that table is now our table at that restaurant. So it could be anything, you know? My koi pond, I have a koi pond at the house that I live in now behind my house. I didn't know that it was there when I bought the house. I'm sure that could turn into a really. funny story at some point of discovering when I bought the house that I had a coin on. So I just wrote down all of these different things. I wrote down Elvis. I fell in love with Elvis when I was 13 years old. Why? He'd already died. I have no idea but I was really into him and there's so much I can mine. I remember the the feeling of really kind of falling in love with him watching a movie that he was in and that feeling translating into the boyfriend that I had at the time. There's all different ways that that memory might expand and grow and open up. It doesn't matter right now. I'm just writing down all of the moments. Okay. So that is the exercise for you. If you want to do a little bonus point on the, on the other side of having written down all those hundred points, let it sit for a little while. Maybe it's a day, go back and circle the ones that have some sort of juice or energy. Usually they're going to be one where that you're kind of afraid to tell the world or one that maybe leads into something that feels shameful to you. Um, or one that you are worried someone might get mad at you. you for saying, or it might be one that just simply makes your heart open. It doesn't matter. It has an aliveness to it. You'll notice when you go back and read through these that some of them are more alive than others. Go ahead and circle the ones that are more alive. Those are the ones you might want to take to a writing session, another timed writing perhaps, and just pull that one out and write about it for 15 minutes without censoring yourself, just to start the juices flowing. This is absolutely ground zero, number one most important exercise you can do on your way to writing your memoir, this 100 moments exercise. I hope that this has been helpful to you to get those juices started to open the vault of your memories which will need to be plumbed and explored on the process of writing your book so i said that there was going to be a bonus at the end of this video here it is if you go down to the description of this video below you will see a link where you can download my gift to you a worksheet where the numbers are already listed for you you just print that off and get started if it feels even too daunting the number 100 can sound kind of daunting as you write out all those numbers you might be like, I can't do this. So I want to make sure there are no obstacles standing in your way. You can print out and download that worksheet today and get started. I hope you do. Now, I would love to hear from you. How did this exercise work for you? Even does just hearing about it make you kind of scared? Have you done an exercise like this before? How did it help you in the process of working on your book? Please let me know in the comments below. I read and answer every comment that's there. All right, I'm so excited to hear from you. I'm excited to know that you're on the journey. toward writing your book and getting your life story onto the page and into the world. If you have any other questions for me, please leave them below. Otherwise, best of luck to you. I hope you'll report back and in the meantime, happy writing.

So please, if you like this video, go ahead and click the button below to subscribe and you'll never miss a video from me. All right, I wanna talk to you today about writing your life story. I wanna give you a very simple exercise for doing so, and I've got a bonus for you at the end, so be sure to watch all the way to the end. Why do so many people want to write their life story? The truth is that we as human beings are built to share story, to understand life through story, to make meaning of this kind of crazy existence through sharing our stories with others and hearing other stories.

So it makes perfect sense that in today's day and age, when anyone has access to writing a book, so many of us would want to do that. So many of us would want to share the wisdom that we've earned. maybe hard one from childhood, maybe through some actual event that happened in our adulthood, the loss of someone we loved or some sort of triumph that we accomplished.

And we want to share that story so other people can learn and grow from it. So I always say if life is asking you to share your story with the world, there is a reason and you need to follow it. So I want to give you a very, very easy exercise. Actually, it might not feel easy, but it is. It's very simple.

exercise today that I want you to actually try to put into practice right now and in order to inspire you to do so I actually just did this exercise before recording this video and I'm going to show you all about how I did it so I call this my one 100 moments exercise. Because of course, when you're writing a memoir, you are just relating the moments of your life, the ones that are pertinent to a particular theme or a particular story, a slice of your life that you want to share. And you are actually giving those scenes to your reader in a particular order.

But before we can choose the order the scenes need to be in, we actually need to know what moments are those scenes made up of. So I want you to set aside any anxiety you might have about not knowing where your story starts, where it's supposed to end, what exactly you're supposed to include. All of that comes later, all in good time. Many of my clients get really stopped up and don't continue writing because they have those questions that they can't find an answer to. two before they've even started mining their life for the stories, for those moments that will actually come together like pieces of a puzzle to create a big picture that is very clear for you and the reader.

You need to first figure out what those pieces are going to be. So this exercise, the hundred moments exercise is the one I want you to try today. Okay, so what is the exercise?

You're going to need to set aside 20 to 30 minutes quiet time uninterrupted. That is really important. So I don't know whether this means going to a coffee shop or whether it means just putting your like sign on your door that says do not disturb, but whatever you need to do, get that sacred time set aside from friends, family, work obligations. Then I want you to choose something to write on and with that's not your computer or your iPad or your phone.

Okay, I really want you to consider writing this one longhand. There's something magical that happens when pen hits page. It almost makes us feel this confidence that we are a writer.

So for this particular exercise, I don't mind. I actually write all of my books, all of my blogs, everything that I write, I do on the computer. But this exercise, I want you to write on paper.

So you might want to get a large piece of art paper, a poster board. If you like big things in big. pictures or you could just use a plain piece of notebook paper. Like I said, I just did this exercise and I did it in my journal so I'm just gonna do a shout out to my favorite journals they're called um eco jot journals they're beautiful they've got a lot of pages they have nice thick lines um on the pages this is my favorite type of journal to write in and i write in my journal almost every morning so i just took my basic journal that i've been using and what i did was i numbered the pages numbered those lines one through 100 okay so that's the next step you've got your time now i want you to number the either a page or a poster board numbers one through 100. You don't need a lot of space to write because we're just going to be giving ourselves one little clue, one little line of writing that will remind us of a particular moment in our lives. Okay, so it can just be one line on the page.

I went ahead and and wrote all the numbers down here and it actually took me four pages because each of these pages has 25 lines on it and I wanted to do 100 and then I set my timer. 20 minutes, okay? 20 minutes is the minimum. I would say 30 minutes should be the maximum. that you give yourself to do this exercise.

The point of it is that it's meant to be a stream of consciousness exercise. You're not supposed to think too hard about what you're putting down on the page. In fact, don't really think about it at all.

Right now, you're not going to decide whether you're actually going to include these moments in your book. You're just getting the juices flowing and reminding yourself of all the many interesting eras that you've had in your lifetime, right? So... on my list of 100 i have things all the way back to when i was really really little you know my first my first memory is actually on here which was of saying goodbye to my mom's dog when i was two years old and the dog you know she was i think 16 or 17 years old and they were taking her to the vet to put her down and i remember saying goodbye to her that went on this but all the way up to actually something that happened last week so it doesn't matter where it is i don't even know at this point what memoir i'm writing what era of my life i'm even thinking of i am just getting getting the juices flowing.

I'm starting to create a listing. I'm starting to open up the vault inside of myself to remember all the interesting moments that I've had. So I sat down, set my timer for 20 minutes, and I got all of these, every one of these, a hundred different moments, I got written down in 17 minutes. So I'm a writer. I'm an editor.

I have done this exercise before. So maybe it's going to take you 25 minutes. I don't mind, but I don't want you to think too hard.

So a maximum of 30 minutes for this exercise. Okay. So then you set the timer, you hit go, and you just start writing. You might write of a sensual memory, a memory of smell, a memory of a sight, a moment of seeing your mother kissing a man and you'd never seen him before. Maybe you remember the smell of your grandmother's muffins.

Maybe you remember the feeling of your feet walking on grass. These are moments in your life. They are specific to a sense.

There's also, I think it's important to choose specific moments. So So not necessarily just the yard at my childhood home. You can put that on there. But how about that time I stepped on a bee in the yard in my childhood home? Okay.

I may never include that in my memoir. You know, maybe I will, but maybe I won't. But it will remind me of a sense memory, a specific time of being in that yard that when I go back to mind this list.

just that one note stepping on the B in the yard will open up into the smells, the tastes, the moments that I had in those yard. Maybe one really important moment will come to mind. So these are just, you're going to be using these in a variety of ways at a later date.

For right now, just choose to write down anything that you remember. So I'm going to tell you a few of mine. So you remember me, um, you, you, so you understand. Okay.

So I have hot. patio bricks. We had a patio at home growing up when I was a little kid and the bricks got really hot in the sun.

That led me into remembering a memory of trying to cook an egg on the windshield of my dad's car. Because I think my dad had said, wow, this windshield is so hot, you could cook an egg on it. And the next thing you know, I went out there with a crack and cracked an egg on my dad's windshield.

That didn't go over so well. But that was a memory that I have. You know, the sand dunes at the camp where I went to camp in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade.

Visiting the the DePaul University in IU in Indiana, the universities that I went to visit when I was choosing my college. I remember those times. Meeting Nancy, my best friend, and our table. We met at a restaurant for a lunch date. We were set up as blind date for our friends, and that table is now our table at that restaurant.

So it could be anything, you know? My koi pond, I have a koi pond at the house that I live in now behind my house. I didn't know that it was there when I bought the house. I'm sure that could turn into a really. funny story at some point of discovering when I bought the house that I had a coin on.

So I just wrote down all of these different things. I wrote down Elvis. I fell in love with Elvis when I was 13 years old.

Why? He'd already died. I have no idea but I was really into him and there's so much I can mine.

I remember the the feeling of really kind of falling in love with him watching a movie that he was in and that feeling translating into the boyfriend that I had at the time. There's all different ways that that memory might expand and grow and open up. It doesn't matter right now. I'm just writing down all of the moments. Okay.

So that is the exercise for you. If you want to do a little bonus point on the, on the other side of having written down all those hundred points, let it sit for a little while. Maybe it's a day, go back and circle the ones that have some sort of juice or energy.

Usually they're going to be one where that you're kind of afraid to tell the world or one that maybe leads into something that feels shameful to you. Um, or one that you are worried someone might get mad at you. you for saying, or it might be one that just simply makes your heart open. It doesn't matter.

It has an aliveness to it. You'll notice when you go back and read through these that some of them are more alive than others. Go ahead and circle the ones that are more alive. Those are the ones you might want to take to a writing session, another timed writing perhaps, and just pull that one out and write about it for 15 minutes without censoring yourself, just to start the juices flowing. This is absolutely ground zero, number one most important exercise you can do on your way to writing your memoir, this 100 moments exercise.

I hope that this has been helpful to you to get those juices started to open the vault of your memories which will need to be plumbed and explored on the process of writing your book so i said that there was going to be a bonus at the end of this video here it is if you go down to the description of this video below you will see a link where you can download my gift to you a worksheet where the numbers are already listed for you you just print that off and get started if it feels even too daunting the number 100 can sound kind of daunting as you write out all those numbers you might be like, I can't do this. So I want to make sure there are no obstacles standing in your way. You can print out and download that worksheet today and get started.

I hope you do. Now, I would love to hear from you. How did this exercise work for you? Even does just hearing about it make you kind of scared? Have you done an exercise like this before?

How did it help you in the process of working on your book? Please let me know in the comments below. I read and answer every comment that's there. All right, I'm so excited to hear from you.

I'm excited to know that you're on the journey. toward writing your book and getting your life story onto the page and into the world. If you have any other questions for me, please leave them below. Otherwise, best of luck to you. I hope you'll report back and in the meantime, happy writing.

Transcript for:Guide to Writing Your Life Story

Transcript for:
Guide to Writing Your Life Story