At age 80, Sly Stone has written a memoir. The musician reflects on his highs and lows with brutal honesty, recalling his early fame, drug abuse, arrests and failed comeback attempts.
Celebrity memoirs are nothing new. Their often heartbreaking content can offer cautionary tales while educating and inspiring readers. The past year has seen the publication of a wave of celebrity memoirs, including those by Stone, Jada Pinkett Smith, Patrick Stewart, Dolly Parton, and Kerry Washington.
What’s new is that many non-famous retirees write memoirs. Eager to document their lives and enrich their legacy, they reflect on how they lived, who they loved, and what they learned.
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It helps if you’ve laid the foundation. It’s better than waking up one day and declaring, “I’m going to write 270 pages about my life.”
If you’ve kept a journal for years or filled a file with occasional musings, colorful anecdotes, and newspaper clippings, you already have a head start.
“I started some parts of my memoir years ago,” said Denis Ledoux, 77, a writing coach who specializes in memoirs. “Only in the last two or three years have I taken this seriously.” His memoir, titled “French Boy: A 1950s Franco-American Childhood,” was independently published in October.
The key to writing memoirs is to proceed in stages, Ledoux says: Rather than starting from scratch after you retire, lead the way by telling one story at a time throughout your life.
“Think of your memoir as an anthology of stories,” said Ledoux, who lives in Lisbon Falls, Maine. “Stories can be about a pivotal experience, a relationship you had, or any other specific memory.”
To shape your narrative, choose a central theme. This guides your organizational structure and gives each page purpose.
“I wanted my memoir to make a statement about my background,” Ledoux said. “Writing it was therapeutic and helped me understand and accept difficult events.”
Even if you’ve collected years of stories as a starting point for your memoir, the process of integrating stories into a coherent whole takes a lot of effort. Gather your discipline to stick with it and get the job done.
To make progress, set aside time each day to write. Even if you only commit to 30 minutes a day, keep it up.
“Once you get into the habit, it’s very nourishing,” Ledoux said. “Otherwise, people might give up or think, ‘I don’t have time for this.’”
If you’re not used to writing, consider joining a writers’ group. See if your local library, college, or adult education center offers such a program.
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After retiring as a theater professor at Wright State University, Abe Bassett joined a writing group led by a colleague. This led him to collect dozens of stories, which he then categorized into various titles (growing up with dad, a stint in the army, etc.).
“The best stories reveal something about the writer,” said Bassett, 93, author of “Abe, Son of Abraham.” “Stories must be relevant and interesting” – not only for you, but also for readers.
Like Ledoux and Bassett, Dorothy Lazard relied on a patchwork of written stories as the basis for her 2023 memoir, “What You Don’t Know Will Create a Whole New World.”
“I always wrote it about key moments in my life,” Lazard said. “I’ve been writing in a diary since I was a child.”
Eager to celebrate 50 years of living in California, she wrote her memoir to chart her experiences and how they allowed her to grow and gain wisdom.
Like many memoir writers, Lazard realized that reaching a broader audience required a leap of faith.
“I saw that I was writing for someone else, not just myself to fill a private need,” she said. “This can be frustrating. Knowing that it will be watched by strangers can be really difficult. It can cause external pressure and external judgment” which can lead you to self-censor your work.
Lazard, 64, overcame this challenge by listening to journalist Tobias Wolff’s observation that memory has its own story to tell.
“I wanted to tell stories that would stick with me,” he said. “I tell people, ‘This is a story my memory had to tell.’”
If you’re thinking about revealing intimate details about family and friends, Lazard says, you should prepare to ask yourself, “What did they think of what you wrote?”
As a precaution, you can invite them to review your manuscript and provide feedback. But think twice before bending over backwards to accommodate them.
“Don’t compromise your voice by telling a story from someone else’s point of view,” Lazard said. “Commit to the story you want to tell.”