How To Write An Autobiography
- The Ten Rules For Success -
(10 Rules will be found below)

Writing an autobiography is pretty easy really.  I guess. That is, it should be.

The real trick is to have a format to follow so that you don't have to do too much other than put some meat on the pre-existing autobiographical bones. Mostly I would lobby for the idea of answering the questions people might ask you about your life - or at least the portion you plan to write your autobiography about - if they had just met you and found you or your life to be interesting. (I write this in such a cumbersome way so you will realize that if you spent your life alone on a desert island, most folks probably wouldn't be all that interested in your patently uneventful life story. Then again, I certainly would! I mean, how in the world did you end up on a desert island? Did you encounter any cannibals? Did you miss junk food or sitcoms the most? Are you going to be interviewed on Larry King Live?)

So how to proceed in writing an autobiography? Try this: Make a list of all the funny things that have happened in your life and then make another list of all the really sad things that have happened in your life and then write about them all so that other people can have a good laugh while reading about either list.

Well, that's what I did with WHOLE LIFE: Looking Back While Looking Ahead. This doesn't prove I know anything about how to write an autobiography, of course. In fact, it only proves I have a good sense of humor about my own life, including the rough patches.

And even though no one has ever asked, perhaps that is the real difference between writing a biography and writing an autobiography. When writing about someone else, you have to be careful about recording history and not offending your subject's admirers, but when writing autobiography you should only have concern for not boring your reader to death with insipid and self-pitying thoughts. I really hate those books!

That's just me, of course, because I try so hard to never take myself too seriously in this world. However, don't forget that I also am always the first one in the group to pipe up and say that everyone should absolutely write their autobiography. Right away! Today even. And I would feel this way about your autobiographical plans even if I knew that immediately upon completion you would destroy the entire written effort.  Even then I would still be the one to say "Go for it."  Writing your life story is great therapy, whatever else.

And that is basically what I did with my book WHOLE LIFE in that no one had ever written a funny book about the insurance profession that was brutally honest about just how tough a ride it can be some days, most days really. Or at least I had never read one (in which case I might not have gone into the business, although it has been a congenital defect in the Ford family for three generations now). And that also was my goal with MY LIFE STORY, to create an enjoyable format to get folks going on down the accomplishment path. That is after all the hardest part of any writing effort - just getting started!

Anyway, if someone asks me how to write an autobiography, my answer is always to encourage them in writing an autobiography that follows ten very simple (and in some cases redundant!) rules

Here are the Ten Rules For Autobiography Writing Success!

1. Be Honest.  (This is but the first of three reminders on this point)

2. Be Funny - but only if you really are funny, otherwise be serious. But whatever you are, don't try to be anything else. If you are dull and dry as toast, go with that. Write the quintessential autobiography for other tedious people to read. Hey, if it's who you are, then tell the world to simply learn to live with it. This way, ten thousand years from now no one will have to wonder what you were really like because your life story written in your own true voice will have told them already.

3. Write what pleases YOU.  That may sound rather egotistical, but it really isn't. The number one rule of writing autobiography (makes you wonder why it's listed as number three here then, doesn't it?) is to put together a book that you think is interesting. Why? Because if you don't like your own version of your own life story, odds are the rest of us won't care that much for it either. Sorry. Am I being too caustic here?

4. Try not to be too caustic.  Even the villains in your life deserve some respect. And you could change your mind about them some day. Or they could change their personality. No really, that happens sometimes. And anyway, the ones who actually don't deserve respect and never will, usually have little villain attorney friends very much like themselves who are just waiting to sue somebody for defamation.

5. Be Honest.  (Very Important - second warning!) I mean, who would want to even consider reading an autobiography that wasn't the truth? Exactly, so why write one?

6. Writing autobiography means never having to say you're sorry . . . or embarrassed. Make what you write the whole truth, but never think writing an autobiography also means that the world has a right to your innermost being and most private and personal thoughts unless that is really your purpose in writing the thing. Hey, you want to write something way too personal and somewhat uncomfortable to read? For goodness sakes, that's what Facebook and Twitter are for, silly writer of your own personal reflections!

7. Start with an outline.   I should have also put this rule as number one. Without a clear path to your goal of documenting your life story, you will surely end up writing too much about one portion of your life and not the larger picture;  said larger picture being both more interesting and larger also. An outline to follow is good. Twenty pages on your first snow sled is bad. Got it? Okay! (Plus, you'll want to save that "Rosebud" story until the very last paragraph.)

8. You're okay.  Remember above all that these ten rules are mostly just directed at David Douglas Ford. YOU probably have more discipline and talent in your little finger than I have in my whole life! Ha!  Get it? My WHOLE LIFE! The book? You should understand at this point that I am definitely an "acquired taste," so do try to work with me here, all right? Nonetheless, my point about your ability to write being more than adequate for your autobiographical effort is probably pretty accurate. I think most people write far better than they think they do. You and I may both be exceptions to this rule, but how will we know if we don't try?

9. Be Honest.  Look, this is mostly so that when you go to edit your manuscript, you won't have any trouble remembering the actual subject matter as you might if you just made parts of your life story up. Your life is plenty interesting, my friend, and there is no need for fictional adaptation or embellishment. Trust me. I know you better than you know yourself. You have lived an interesting life so far and you possess excellent writing skills. Those are the two starting points and everything else falls in line thereafter.

10. Never lose sight of the commercial side of writing. There's big money in this wordsmith thing, or so everyone keeps saying, so write knowing that people are going to read what you have written and maybe give you cash money for it someday. That will give you that "writing edge" that you will need to sustain you when everything goes wrong. And most any writing project worth its salt most assuredly will at some point.  Go wrong, I'm saying.

Which naturally reminds me to say that if you just want to write an autobiography the fun and easy way, click on this link for MY LIFE STORY.   You can always use that book as a springboard to your actual published effort, which I should very much look forward to buying and reading myself, so that maybe some day we'll both end up rich from this writing stuff. Seems unlikely to me as I contemplate my own end of that equation, but let's stay in touch and hope for miracles together, shall we?

All the best,

David Douglas Ford