How to turn a dog's breakfast into a banquet

For most of us our lives are a bit of a dog’s breakfast - full of messiness, pleasures, failures, achievements and experiences of all kinds. But it’s possible to turn all this into something memorable - even banquet like!

Remembering, reflecting and thoughtfully recording our stories can be fun and enlightening - rewarding for ourselves and enriching for our readers, whether friends, family, your wider community or beyond.

These are some reasons we’ve been given when helping people with their memoirs:

“I have for some time had the wish to tell something of my life from childhood on, and record it for my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.’ S.S.

“In my case I wanted to write about the people and events that led me from being a potential maths failure in school into a life-long career in maths. Once I sorted that out, I could move on to something else.” R.G.

“So, this is my story – it’s a story of where I’ve been and what I believe education can do to help create a fair, compassionate and tolerant country.” P.H.

This is a good way to start – why are you doing this and who is it for?

Then you can think about what you want to say and how you want to say it. Next, consider your archive [the tangible evidence and illustrations for your story], fact checking, technicalities such as digitising images and documents, and the finished product – anything from a .PDF document to a fully designed and published book. Or a website, or digital story… you have myriad choices.

“I’ve seen pretty hard times but by and large there’s more to think of than have you got the biggest bank account or whatever. I’ve got a wonderful family… because we all went through everything together and I think a lot of what you are is from your home life originally… We’re living in different times now than what we were years ago.” B.M.

And ain’t that the truth! I’ll leave the final word on this to R.R.

“In those days divorce was a very dirty word and you were easy meat for every guy you went out with because you had to be a virgin when you got married. Big joke.”

So yes, our lives are complex and messy, but also unique and memorable!

If you’re interested in having a go at turning your dog’s breakfast into a banquet our Memoir Toolkit will help because its sole aim is to make it easier for more people to tell more stories so there is more understanding across generations and cultures.