Gina L. Carroll

For anyone who has thought about putting their life story to paper, but is daunted by the Herculean task with no idea of where to begin (like me), this book is just the thing to get you started. Gina Carroll, a blogger and published author, explains how to go about such an undertaking, and in this handy little guide, takes the reader through the process step by step.

The most valuable theme here, and really a superb idea, is to approach the job of writing your story in small pieces, one small story at a time. That shrinks the writing task down to a very manageable level, and also makes it seem doable. Whereas writing a "memoir" puts one at a loss, the idea of writing down one story at a time makes the idea of committing your memories to paper actually fun.

She starts off by convincing the reader that one's stories actually matter. This is not a silly gesture; in facing the job of writing one's life, it is tempting to think about small events and memories as unimportant and uninteresting. However, the general theme of this book is "everyone's life is interesting, and every event that happens to you can tell a story." This is an eye-opener.

The rest of the book is broken down into chapters according to sections of one's life: writing about your childhood, writing about your mother (although why there isn't a chapter about writing about father, I'm not sure, as that is as important a figure in a person's life), writing about love, and writing about work. I'm not sure I would organize a person's life into these particular categories, but doing so really hits home the message that the writer is best served to tell stories in chunks rather than in sweeping lessons.

Also here are good old writing chestnuts, like "show, don't tell," "think about who your audience is," etc. which in my opinion a good writer cannot hear enough times.

Each chapter contains hard examples of the kind of storytelling she's teaching, and at the end she provides a bullet-points summary of the main points.

I was really very inspired by this, and the accessible way she presents writing about one's life has excited me to start doing it.

Thank you to the author and publishers for a review copy.… (plus d'informations)