Two simple writing exercises to start writing your life story

Simple writing exercises to start writing your life story

As you may know, if you’ve read my books and been around my blog for a while (hi!), I’m the author of the memoir How We Met: A Memoir of Love and Other Misadventures. On the surface, How We Met is a love story about how I met my husband, but it’s also about something deeper. It’s about growing up, love and loss and about being at a certain age and feeling like everyone else has got their life figured out but you, (and by you, really I mean me).

I also write fiction (you can read more about my short story collection Things We Do Not Tell The People We Love) and even though I’m writing more fiction now I do think the act of writing about myself has taught me so much about writing fiction also - it’s taught me a lot about putting feelings into words and really examining emotional journeys and inner journeys so that I can do the same for my characters.

What I love so much about the art of life writing is that it requires you by its very nature to be reflective and to spend time alone, thinking, observing, noting things down. And all of that teaches you to be a good observer, and all of that is so important and necessary for being a writer. 

Many of my life writing students come to me when they are already writing but just as many of them have never written a word. And I always tell them that’s okay. So, no matter where you’re at on your life writing journey, know that what’s important is that you’re responding to some kind of creative energy and spark within you, that means you want to write, and that’s a really lovely, positive thing to embrace. I know that feeling myself.

It’s also a really lovely thing to have the space to reflect and to write about ourselves and learn something about ourselves or understand something about our lives. But that can also feel hard, and if at times it has felt hard for you, please know that that’s entirely normal. And so, to help you on your way, I’ve devised two very simple and easy writing exercises, or writing prompts, to help you get started with your journey on life writing, or as I like to call it simply writing about yourself (because it’s a whole lot less overwhelming than saying you’re writing ‘about life’!)

What is life writing?

To me, life writing means writing about our past, and our memories, but also about our present, and often using our present to look back on our past and be able to understand it a little more.

For me, life writing is a way to figure something out or understand something about ourselves or people around us or a situation that we’ve found ourselves in. It offers us a perspective and a lens through which we can examine ourselves and start to make sense of things. 

How to write about your own life?

What life writing is not, for me, is writing about every detail about everything we’ve ever done in our life in chronological order. Because that’s just not interesting. It’s impossible for everything to be interesting. 

So instead of approaching life writing as writing about your entire life thus far, think about the moments that have shaped you, changed you or the things that you just can’t forget, joyful memories that you’re fond of, or things that have happened but you don’t understand why.  Those are the moments that are worth writing about. 

Exercise One: My Story Is About…

Think about which part of your life, which aspect, you might want to write about. So in your notebook, write down the sentence: ‘My story is about…’ and just complete it as simply and briefly as you can. The key here is to keep it precise, brief and very simple. Do you remember how I introduced my memoir in the opening paragraph of this blog post? I said ‘it’s about how I met my husband.’ Be as succinct as that.

So, what’s your story about? You don’t need to spend very long on this writing prompt, just a few minutes, and I’d encourage you to work quickly so as not to overthink it. Keep it as to the point as you can; the purpose of this is to help you focus on what your angle is. Because every story needs an angle. Really, I’m helping you find a way in to your writing, and it’s so much easier to find a way in when you have a focus.

Exercise Two: But this is what my story is really about…

Now I want to ask you another question: What’s your story really about?

Let me explain - when I told you about my memoir, I said ‘on the surface,’ it’s the story of how I met my husband. But it’s really about something deeper - it’s about love, loss, loneliness; it’s about me, finding a way to figure out what I wanted for myself and being able to be brave enough to claim it.

So I’ve taken the context of my story and I’ve given it a bigger picture. So what’s your story really about?

What’s the bigger picture?

I’d encourage you to take yourself off to a cafe and spend some time really thinking about the answer to this writing prompt. It’s a process of stripping back layers - there’s not just one answer, there’s many- and the more answers you can give, the more layers to your story there will be. And the more layers there are, the more depth, weight and meaning your story will have. The more you push yourself to answer that question, the closer you get to the heart of your story and the real subject, the bigger picture.

Why do you need a bigger picture?

There needs to be a bigger picture to ground your story, and give it meaning, but to also open it up and allow it to reach someone else who might not have experienced exactly what you’ve experienced, but they might understand something of that bigger picture, that’s what will resonate with them. So ask yourself repeatedly, what’s your story really about? Because that’s how you find the heart of your story.

These life writing exercises are by their very nature incredibly simple (I’m not a fan of writing prompts that are so detailed they put words you might not ever choose to write in your mouth) but they are also incredibly insightful, and it’s my hope that they’ll really unlock something inside of you and make it easy for you to begin writing about yourself and your life.

Do let me know how you get on - you can stay in touch by signing up to my letters - and if you enjoyed this blog post, you might like to find out more about my unique life writing course, Postcards Home.

Postcards Home: a unique life writing course, with me, award-winning author, Huma Qureshi

A simple, joyful six-week online life writing course designed to inspire you to fall in love with writing. Start writing the story of you, of the memories that make you.

‘Postcards Home was the best decision of my life. Your course was lovely, light and a wonderful way to ease into writing.’ (Student testimonial)