If someone were to write a biography of your life, what would it look like? What are the major points that they would hit upon? What are the moments that made you into the person you are today?
Has the really important stuff already happened? Or is it yet to come? Is everything I have done up to this point going to one day be summed up with a paragraph that reads:
Nikki B. was born in Oak Park, Illinois. The youngest of six children, she played many sports growing up and attended Carleton College. After college she worked as a massage therapist for many years before finding her real calling at the age of thirty.
I do hope that the really important stuff is yet to come. It would be sad to think I've already reached the pinnacle of my life.
My childhood, my adolescence, my formative years are behind me. I didn't do anything particularly noteworthy in them. But those are called the formative years for a reason, they are what shaped and formed me into the person I am today. That's at least worth delving into a little bit, no?
Which leads me back to my original question which is what events from my childhood are worth mentioning?
I guess it depends what I want the tone of my autobiography to be:
Funny? Do I mention the capers my brother and I used to cut? Do I mention lighting firecrackers off inside my Barbies' heads?
Sad? Do I talk about the times when my mom had cancer?
Nostalgic? Do I talk about our family dinners at the dining room table? How we used to move the little eight inch TV into the dining room so that we could watch The Cosby Show and occasionally McGuyver during dinner? Not all the time, mind you, there was lots of quality family conversation too.
I think that is the problem with autobiographies. They are too biased. You get to show your life the way you want it to be seen. On the one hand, nobody knows better than you what things were really important and shaped who you are. On the other hand, there may have been some VERY important things that you leave out because they make you look bad.
Is it better to have a biography rather than an autobiography? The biographer can have their own bias. They can't possibly have all the information. But they also gather information from multiple sources. If I were to write my autobiography, I wouldn't ask my siblings or friends what they thought of me growing up, that information, however, might really give a reader a much better view of who I am.
I've toyed with the idea of writing an autobiography just for the fun of it and for writing practice. For some reason, the opening paragraph is what stumps me. How do I begin?
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