If an autobiography tells the story of your whole life, a memoir zooms in on a specific piece of it. A memoir is a focused narrative built around a central theme or question, often rooted in transformation, struggle, identity, or insight. It’s not about everything that’s ever happened to you—it’s about what happened and why it matters.
Instead of telling an entire life story, a memoir zooms in on a particular “slice”—a specific period, theme, or experience that defined or transformed the author. Memoirs tend to be more literary and reflective, often prioritizing emotional truth and personal insight over comprehensive detail.
In my last blog post, we talked about how the basic steps of the novel writing process can be used to write a full autobiography. The same holds true for memoir—but with one crucial shift. With memoir, the first step isn’t structure. It’s theme. Let’s walk through how to find your theme and shape your memoir around it—one notecard at a time.
If you’ve ever wondered what separates a memoir from an autobiography, you’re not alone—it all comes down to scope and storytelling style. When browsing the nonfiction shelves or choosing your next book club pick, you’ve likely seen the terms memoir and autobiography used almost interchangeably. While they both draw from real lives, these two forms of life writing are distinct in both structure and purpose. Understanding the difference isn’t just helpful for readers—it’s essential for writers, too.
While it’s common to write an autobiography in a formal or even academic tone, a memoir leaves more room for the imagination.
Autobiography: The Whole Life
An autobiography attempts to tell the full story of a person’s life, typically in chronological order. It starts at or near the beginning—childhood, family background—and proceeds through adulthood, covering major events, accomplishments, and lessons learned. Think of it as a wide-angle lens: an overview of a life from beginning to (almost) end.
I swear I latched the gate when I put Bruno out in his pen to go potty, but when I went back outside to let him back in the house, the gate was hanging wide open, and Bruno was gone. I grabbed the leash and headed directly toward the highway because, of course, he always heads straight for the most dangerous place he can think of.
A cop parked by the highway said, “He ran across the highway, then between those two semis, and headed back toward the gas pumps.” Yep, my little dog was running around a giant, busy truck stop. 😳 I ran circles around the place, looking under rigs and asking if anyone had seen a little dog. But Bruno was nowhere to be seen. I was beginning to worry that someone had picked him up and decided to keep him.
I feel like I should be documenting this since I guess it’s kind of historic—even though I personally am not experiencing the level anxiety one might expect at the end of the world.
The thing is, the climate change apocalypse scientists have been warning us about for the past decade or so (or longer) is upon us, but I feel fine. Well, my asthmatic lungs don’t feel fine what with the thick smoke that has been hanging in the air all week from the wildfires in Canada—Canada! So far away from my home in central Illinois in the United States, but the fires are just that bad.
In April, I graduated from the Multicultural Leadership Program offered by the Bloomington-Normal Multicultural Leadership Institute in Illinois, USA. One assignment I completed as part of the program was to write my “Inspirational Story” and share it with the class. This was a hard assignment for me mostly because, as I writer, I had a hard time deciding which story to tell. I finally decided to focus on a theme and then choose elements that would support that theme. (That’s the English teacher in me kicking in!) What follows is the story I finally wrote and shared with my class back in February of 2023:
When I was a kid, my dad loved to take us on long road trips across the country. He had a thing for state capitols, and I have visited the state capitol building of almost every single state I have ever set foot in.
On one such trip, our family of six stopped at a rest area along the interstate and piled out of our old Buick LeSabre to head to the restrooms. A flattened cigarette pack in the parking lot caught my attention, and something told me to pick it up. I had no sooner done so than I heard that other voice in my head – the nagging one that most of us have that sounds like one or both of our parents – “What are you doing? Put that down, that’s disgusting. Why are you playing with trash?”
Someone asked me the other day what books I read growing up, and for some reason I struggled to come up with an acceptable answer. All that came to mind while I was under that spotlight was the boxes of trashy romance novels I used to get from my maternal grandmother. My high school best friend and I used to devour those novels, often reading together and stopping occasionally for one of us to read aloud to the other a particularly cheesy passage while giggling uncontrollably. While those were good times, my romance novel stage barely scratches the surface of the richness of literature I was exposed to in my early reading years.
The Witch of Blackbird Pond is one of my all-time favorite novels.
As a child growing up in a rural area with no access to a library, the books I read were limited to whatever I could get my hands on. I loved reading Richard Scary, the Sweet Pickle books, and Dr. Seuss at the doctor’s office. I don’t remember if we had any picture books at home before I started kindergarten and gained access to the Scholastic Book Club. If we did, they were few and far between. I think we had three of the Sweet Pickle books, but I’m not sure where they came from. At some point in my early years, my dad invested in a full set of encyclopedias, and that’s what I remember him reading to me in the beginning. Continue reading “What I read: This author’s early literary influences”→
I’m a dedicated Swagbucks addict, which means I participate in online surveys on practically a daily basis. As most surveys do, these usually collect your typical demographic data, such as sex, race, gross annual income, and marital status. These should be relatively easy questions to answer, but I’ve often hesitated when I came upon the marital status question. I know what the technical answer is, but I have strong feelings regarding what I feel is my “real” answer.
The marital status question typically gives the survey respondent the options of married, divorced, something regarding living with someone you’re not married to, and single/never married. Technically, I was legally married at one time, and I was then legally divorced after about ten years of said legal marriage. However, when I look back upon that marriage, I don’t feel as though I was ever actually “married.” Continue reading “Single, Never Married”→
I dug all through my digital photo albums looking for a picture of Grandma Webster, and this is the only one I could find. I need to remedy that!
Have I ever told you about my writing roots? I feel like I haven’t, and that’s odd, because you would think that would be a natural topic of discussion on a writing blog, right? At any rate, storytelling seems to be embedded in my genes, as much as my early graying hair and the extra fat that I tend to carry around in my gut. Those are a few of the things I get from my mom’s side (along with some good things, too, don’t get me wrong.) But, the storytelling gene runs strong on my dad’s side of the family.
My dad’s paternal grandfather – my great grandfather – Ralph Webster, is a bit of a legend in our family. It is said that he could pick up any musical instrument and hear any song one time and play the song on that instrument. The accordion was his chosen instrument, but his voice was a major talent as well; one that he often put to good use spinning yarns for anyone who cared to listen.
Oral storytelling is a popular pastime in that branch of my family tree. My father is no exception. Many a family wedding photo has captured my dad gesticulating largely as he tells one of his stories that never fail to hold his audience in thrall. Not only does he tell fabulous stories of the hilarity that seems to ensue in his daily life, but he is also a connoisseur of family history. His brain is a magical treasure trove of stories that beg to be written down for posterity, but he’s not one to spend time sitting down to write. Continue reading “Exploring my writing roots at 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning”→
I don’t particularly enjoy airing my dirty laundry in public. But as I am often fond of saying, you can’t fix a hole in the floor by throwing a rug over it. Sometimes you have to expose a problem to deal with it. So, that’s why I’m here today, writing to you about my stalker.
You can’t fix a hole in the floor by throwing a rug over it.
A few years ago, I made the mistake of dating someone who lived in the same apartment complex that I lived in. It was a relationship of convenience. I had no money to pay my heat bill, and his house was always warm. The guy was a good cook, and I like to eat. I had no cable, but he did. So, the long weekends spent getting used to not having my kids with me every other weekend while they were at their dad’s went a little bit faster. Besides, the whole thing really pissed my ex off, which was a huge plus. In fact, I probably would have broken it off with this dumbass a lot sooner than I did if my ex-husband had just minded his own business. Continue reading “I have a stalker”→
I’ve been trying to pick up my writing practice again since I brought my son home from the hospital a few weeks ago. The day of Corbin’s accident, my writing activities came to a screeching halt. For the first week or so after the accident, I was in complete shock. I could barely function, and I couldn’t think past the “right now.” I lived in the moment in a way that I don’t remember ever doing before. Family members brought me books to read, coloring books to scribble in, and yarn to crochet with. I couldn’t concentrate on any of it.
After that first week, my brain began to thaw, but I still couldn’t concentrate on anything important. I picked up a crochet hook and some of the yarn that my aunt sent and got my hands busy. Crocheting is good for my anxiety. My favorite pattern involves counting to ten over and over and over again, and I find it strangely soothing. Maybe it’s my OCD.
This is the afghan I started crocheting while we were in the hospital. I finished it a few days ago.
I tried to at least pick up my journal to chronical the days during our five weeks in the hospital, but even that couldn’t hold my attention for more than a minute here and there. Most days, I would spend my mornings waiting for the doctors to do their rounds so I could listen in when they got to Corbin. In the afternoon, I would lay down and take a nap. My days revolved around catching the doctors on rounds, ordering room service, and counting down the hours until naptime and bedtime. (It’s no wonder I gained ten pounds while we were living in the hospital!) Continue reading “At some point, you just have to start writing again”→
Write on the World 