Writing your autobiography

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Writing

"I know how to write"
Although this is the part of the work that may take the longest (research could be long as well) this is the place where I can provide the least amount of help.

Writing is best learnt through doing.
You may decide to write out longhand rather than use a computer, bear in mind that you will almost certainly need to get it onto a computer at some point. If you do write out by hand make sure what you’re doing is legible, especially to you.

If you’re using a word processor that has a spelling and grammar checker, switch them off while you are writing your first draft. You need to get in a flow with writing and being constantly interrupted by something that’s telling you you’ve spelt something wrong or that a sentence hasn’t been constructed correctly will slow you down.

When you’re writing try to follow your plan, but if you suddenly find yourself mid-flow on something unrelated, just keep writing it’ll probably come out very nicely.

Once you’ve finished your first draft, go through it. If you’ve written on the computer then print it out and go through the hardcopy away from the computer. What you do is go through looking for spelling mistakes, sentences that don’t make sense and so on. Also you might find there’s something you think should be in but is missing, or something that is there but doesn’t fit.

Make a note of it.

Now go through and create your second draft. Don’t throw away your first draft, keep it in case you find you need to go back to it for any reason. This is particularly important if your story is on the computer, a bad crash could lose you all your work. Keep the hardcopy and store your files in other places, burn them onto CDs and send them to friends to look after.

Now you can see if there are any spelling mistakes flagged by the spelling checker (make sure it’s switched to the right language (particularly US English vs. UK English). You can correct these.

Once your second draft is complete, go through it with the red pen again. You can also try the technique of reading aloud. This helps to find places where text doesn’t flow very well or you’re using words that don’t fit easily together.

I never recommend the use of a grammar checker because software has no conception of language. You write in your style and a grammar checker only knows some basic rules. It’s okay for business documents but not creative writing.

How many words is enough? Whatever it takes to tell the story. However if you want to have your autobiography properly published then between 80,000 and 100,000 is probably the best range.