There’s a paradox at the heart of personal writing. In a way, writing about the self should be easy. You’re your own world’s expert, after all. Then again—how well do we really know ourselves? 

The Ancient Greek aphorism “know thyself” was inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi—suggesting that to attain such knowledge is to become one’s own prophet. Easier said than done. Writers have discovered this again and again: to write about the self is to open a can of worms, wiggling and squirming and slipping out of sight. 

Nonetheless, this degree of introspection can be incredibly rewarding. Whether you’re writing a Demi Moore style memoir, a cerebral romp à la David Foster Wallace, or a collection of Leslie Jamieson-ish confessional essays, you’re committing to the grand human project of “know thyself.” The person you create on the page develops a life of their own—they follow you to the supermarket, they listen in on your phone calls. They are the most honest and observant version of yourself.

Here you’ll find tips on how to get started writing a memoir or personal essay. Some of the most engaging reads are a combination of both—a narrative relating real-life experiences, grounded in deep personal introspection. 

But first you have to get over the nonfiction writer’s greatest fear: falsity. Arguably, writing a fictional character or a profile of someone you know is significantly easier than conveying the truth about yourself. The less you know of your subject, the lower the stakes; who cares if you blur the details a little, so long as you convey the essence of the character? But when you write about yourself, you’re reporting to the harshest critic. 

The trick is to maintain the low stakes confidence which allows you to write freely, whilst also seeking the self-knowledge which allows you to do a good job. It all starts with finding you story.

Back to the beginning

If you’re reading this article, you probably already know that you have a story worth telling. You may have experienced things that others haven’t, or perhaps you have unique insights that you want to share.

Don’t worry if you’re not so sure of your resources. The practiced storyteller and the first-time writer essentially start from the same place: the task is to reflect on the story of your life so far, and see which moments and memories stand out. 

When we’re used to working with words, it can be helpful to think visually and spatially. Draw a timeline from your earliest memory to today, and shade out the sections of particular intensity or personal growth. When memories come to mind, mark them on the timeline. Is the drawing taking up too much space? Maybe that section will need a timeline all of its own. Once you’ve identified these memories and particular periods of growth, you have the starter materials for a story.

Mapping the journey

So, you have your material. The next step is to examine why these memories are important to you, and why they might be of interest to the reader. What do these memories say about who you were then, and how have they affected who you are now? That psychological transition is what makes an interesting story—it’s the yellow brick road which takes the reader on a journey.

We don’t read to find out about random events. We want narrative and trajectory, we want to discover something about ourselves through someone else’s story. By identifying these points of psychological transition, and linking them to particular events in the narrative, you can identify the key themes that will define the book or essay.

It’s worth identifying three of these themes early on, with the understanding that they are likely to change during the writing process. Examples of key journey themes might be: healing after trauma, learning to love, changing cities, or finding your vocation. Knowing your themes helps to clarify the journey you’re going on, and keeps the reader engaged. Of course, the yellow brick road isn’t straightforward—there will be digressions and obstacles on route. But keep your points of psychological transition in mind, and you’ll gain the reader’s trust.

Daily journaling

Now that you have your road-map in hand, it’s time to go on a short detour. This might sound like extra work, but it’s actually the most important part of personal writing. 

Alongside your writing project, it’s worth committing to 10-20 minutes of daily journaling, preferably handwritten. Yep, daily. And yes—handwritten. 

This is the part people usually avoid, because the material you produce can’t immediately be plugged into your personal writing project. But daily journaling addresses an important psychological hurdle: when we’re writing something for publication, protection mechanisms clamp down. Even if we’re relaxed, free-thinking individuals, there’s still a voice at the back of our head whispering “do a good job.” This voice might sound supportive, but it’s your worst enemy when it comes to writing honest, original material. 

The journal is your place to freewrite, to write the most banal, trivial, uninteresting stuff. Give up on using any of this material in the finished essay or memoir. This is about easing up, dusting away the dirt to get to the gold. You’re priming your brain to be curious, reflective and open to observation.

Oh, and here’s a little secret. The more you convince yourself that this material isn’t usable, the more likely you are to produce something that might actually make it into the final write up. Now, you just need to forget I ever told you that.

Why handwritten?

This might sound persnickety, but handwriting really is a lost art. I know it’s tempting to type the daily journals, but handwriting is an excuse to think in a completely different way. For one thing, there’s a greater sense of low-stakes flow when we’re letting your thoughts scribble out from pen to paper. Also, it takes the edge off that desire to use all the material you produce—are you really going to bother typing up those pages of scrawl? It’s a way to trick yourself into that relaxed mindset.

Also—it’s a good idea to keep different notebooks for different observations. In Doris Lessing’s novel The Golden Notebook, the protagonist has four different colored notebooks in which she records her life, and one (the golden notebook) in which she tries to pull all the different parts together. The war reporter and activist Jonathan Ledgard has two notebooks—red for his reporting notes, blue for thoughts and observations related to his essays and fiction. 

Perfecting the personal essay

We’ll return to memoir writing in a second, but the discussion about daily journaling seems a perfect excuse to talk about the personal essay. 

A personal essay is different from a memoir in that it’s typically shorter and will likely involve a higher degree of introspection. The 16th-century French writer Michel de Montaigne supposedly “invented” the personal essay form, famously announcing “I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.” People read Montaigne not necessarily to hear about his experiences (which involve various trips to the bathroom, and mornings spent playing with his cat), but to follow the crazy shape of his mind on the page. Few people could write a convincing case for the essential morality of cannibalism, as Montaigne does in his essay, “Of Cannibals.” Or, in the case of David Foster Wallace’s essay “Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley,” jump from the subject of math, to tennis, to Zen philosophy.

This is where the daily journaling comes in. It helps you to move quickly between different thoughts, and to discover the peculiar patterns of your stream of consciousness. No one thinks in a linear way, and every human mind is a cabinet of curiosities.  

Let’s talk about structure

Right, let’s get back to memoir. There’s a lot of debate about whether to establish a structure before you start writing, or just to dive straight in. The writer Zadie Smith has a great analogy to describe the different ways people address the question of structure. She defines two types of writer, the Macro Planner and the Micro Manager.

“A Macro Planner,” she explains, “makes notes, organizes material, configures a plot and creates a structure—all before she writes the title page. This structural security gives her a great deal of freedom of movement.” 

Smith, however, describes herself as a Micromanager: “I start at the first sentence of a novel and I finish at the last. Macro Planners have their houses largely built from day one, and so their obsession is internal—they’re forever moving the furniture. They’ll put a chair in the bedroom, the lounge, the kitchen and then back in the bedroom again. Micro Managers build a house floor by floor, discreetly and in its entirety. Each floor needs to be sturdy and fully decorated with all the furniture in place before the next is built on top of it. There’s wallpaper in the hall even if the stairs lead nowhere at all.”

Which one are you? It’s worth identifying this before you start, so that you know whether to build a preliminary structure or dive straight in. Arguably, this distinction is even more relevant in personal writing than fiction writing. How you build your text isn’t just about writing a good story—it’s about who you are and how you think. 

Get concrete

Providing an impression of yourself on the page can mean things get a bit heady or cerebral. You’ll be thinking about emotions, memory, reflections—and there’s a risk that you’ll write with your head in the clouds, drifting away from concrete experience. If the reader isn’t tethered to the ground now and then, you might well find that they’ve wandered off to read another book. 

As readers, we need to be fed on more than air. We need bread, meat, solid objects, concrete details. As a writer, memories are your shopping-stop for objects and hooks to catch the reader’s attention. When you’re describing a memory, see if you can pinpoint the most specific physical details—the shape of a hat, or the taste of jam, or the way your mother walked. 

If you have a tendency to be cerebral, pin yourself to the concrete from the very first sentence. Here are some first lines from personal essays by three heady essayists:

“No one perhaps has ever felt passionately towards a lead pencil.”

—Virginia Woolf, “Street Haunting”

“I have now seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue.”

—David Foster Wallace, “Shipping Out: on the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise”

“Dirty crepe-de-Chine wrapper, hotel bar, Wilmington RR, 9:45 a.m. August Monday morning.”

—Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook”

 

Finally…

Writing about the self isn’t just about getting something down on paper. It’s also a process of personal growth, and a daily practice of letting go. Finding those moments that write themselves is one of the most satisfying experiences in the world—and with daily practice, you can strengthen than muscle.

However, if you miss a day, don’t give up. As Renee Gladman puts it in her book Calamities, most of the writing is done away from the desk. As you go about your day, your brain is solving problems in the background, and gathering new data. Come back to your desk as soon as you can, and you might find that a particularly tricky passage is easier to solve than you realized. But of course, you’d never know that unless you’d made that commitment to return to your writing practice as soon as possible. 

Good luck, and keep strong, consistent, and confident. You have a story to tell, and an audience waiting to be taken on a journey.

 

Personal Writing Reading List Top 5:

Joan Didion, The White Album and the essay “On Keeping a Notebook”

Wayne Koestenbaum, My 1980s

Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle

David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being

 

Read more:

Patricia Foster and Jeff Porter, Understanding the Essay

Phillip Lopate, To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction