What you MUST have in your memoirs!
By: Steve Manning

Don’t make this huge mistake when you decide what is in a memoir. It’s the most important answer you’ll ever have to develop if you want to write an outstanding life story.
What is in a memoir is NOT every single thing you can think of that has occurred in your life. The vast majority of your life, if you’re frank with yourself, has been unbelievably boring and repetitious. So when it comes to writing a memoir about your life, that’s not what you want to pack it with.
You want your memoir to be filled with exciting events, life-altering moments, and sincere information you can pass along to anyone who picks up your memoir, at any point in the future.
I was born, I went to school, I got average grades, I got a job when I was young… God, give me strength! What is in a memoir should give the reader encouragement, and insight not only into your life, but into their life as well!
Too many autobiographers truly believe that just because they’ve written their life story, that’s reason enough for someone, anyone, to want to read it. Nothing could be future from the truth.
You want what’s in your memoir to give the reader pause, to make them consider their own life, and to see the parallels between themselves and you.
It should be an instruction manual for living, with each page or two being an abject lesson on what to do or what not to do, presented by examples from your own life.
Each time you write down something, when you finish, you should be asking yourself, “So what? What is this telling the reader about themselves and the situations of life?”
You took a risk to do something. It worked out well, or it worked out poorly. How can the reader learn from your mistakes or your triumphs.
Remember, most people, hey, all people, lead boring lives if you looked at the time line from a day to day perspective. If you’ve read any biography of even great people, you hardly ever see a day-by-day description of what they did. That boring life is punctuated by truly amazing events, or outstanding accomplishments, or wonderful insights, or life-based revelations.
These are the things you should be putting down in your memoir and emphasizing.
Don’t worry about not having enough of them to make a good memoir. You have more than enough if you’ve been on this planet for more than a few decades.
What’s the most innovative strategy you used to get a job? How did you get over that one very special relationship? What was the biggest mistake you made in life (so far)?
That’s what is in a memoir. That’s what is in a very effective memoir… one that has to be read.
What is in a memoir? The events of your life. But only the events that will help the reader succeed or accomplish their own goals. Is it important, is it worth reading? What if your grandmother had written that kind of a memoir. Would it be interesting and useful to you. Everyone accomplishes things in this life. Some are really amazing, but most are simply amazingly useful. That’s the kind of stuff you’ve got to include in your own memoir.

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Steve Manning is a master writer showing thousands of people how they can write their book faster than they ever thought possible. Here’s your free Special Report, www.WriteABookNow.com/main.html

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