{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Eps 3: Where Do I Start on My Life Story?","description":"\u201cWhere do I start?\u201d (Looking for the newsletter? Sign up here.) That\u2019s the first question I hear from people when they\u2019ve decided to record their life story. And it\u2019s no wonder, considering that the raw material for a life story book consists of a lifetime of memories\u2014all those people and places and experiences we want to share with our family and friends. How do we wrastle it all onto the paper? We don\u2019t. Just because something happened doesn\u2019t mean we should write about it. This may seem like a contradiction to what we talked about in the last episode. That's when we talked about gathering all the random fragments of memory. But not all of those will lead to a story, or be developed into a story in their own right. Instead, think of your memories as a smorgasbord, a buffet of tasty dishes. You don\u2019t expect to eat everything. Instead, you pick and choose. \u201cBut that still doesn\u2019t answer my question. Where do I start?\u201d Right. Sorry. I was distracted by the word \u201cbuffet.\u201d It made me think of my high school father-daughter dance, going through the buffet line with my friends Lori and Tina and their dads. The strange sight of grown men dancing to Joan Jett\u2019s \u201cI Love Rock n\u2019 Roll.\u201d The weird vending machine in the bathroom that shot out a cloud of perfume for 75 cents. We angled ourselves to get maximum coverage, then spent the rest of the evening trying to wash it off. This was St. Louis, 1982. If I were writing my life story, maybe that mini-anecdote would make it onto the page, maybe not. But I shared it with you as an example of how \u201cWhere do I start?\u201d isn\u2019t the question we should be asking. If you\u2019re thinking about writing your life story, I promise, you\u2019ve already started the pleasurable part\u2014recalling your memories. You\u2019ve likely thought of experiences or events you want to include, important people, places, traditions, reflections. Maybe you\u2019ve even jotted down some of them. But even if you haven\u2019t picked up a pen or a laptop yet, the real question isn\u2019t \u201cWhere do I start?\u201d but \u201cWhat do I do next?\u201d Gather and Sort There\u2019s this cool thing in classical rhetoric called inventio, and it\u2019s all about finding what you want to include in a piece of writing (or, that speech you\u2019re giving over at the Forum). We life story writers have it much easier; all our material is right there in our head. Still, we can learn something from Aristotle and his gang. One of the tools they used during the inventio phase was the topoi. Otherwise known as commonplaces, topoi are the questions rhetors asked themselves to expand their thinking about something and prompt new insights. Topoi, which translates roughly to \u201cplaces,\u201d is a metaphor. Picture an empty cargo ship traveling along the coastline, stopping at ports to take on cargo. The ports are the topoi; the cargo is the stuff the rhetor gathers to use in a speech or essay. It\u2019s a helpful concept for life story writing, one that we can employ both metaphorically and literally. In my newsletter\u2014and by the way, if you haven\u2019t signed up for it, but you\u2019d like occasional emails with tips on how to write your life story, or the life story of a loved one, you can do that at thestoryscribe.com. You\u2019ll see a email newsletter signup form. Or look at the show notes for this episode to find a link. For now, I\u2019m sending something every three to four weeks, so you shouldn\u2019t feel overwhelmed. I respect your time and I don\u2019t want to flood your inbox. Today\u2019s writing activity In the last newsletter, I suggested you draw a simple timeline and populate it with the events of your life. Today, I\u2019m going to ask you to create an additional layer, the placeline. This can be part of your timeline or a separate line altogether. Or, if you don\u2019t have a good memory for dates, scrap the timeline and use this instead. You\u2019ll still have a rough chronology for your life but without the burden of trying to remember exact years. Now, mark the line with the major locations of your life (your literal topoi).","author_name":"Your Story Your Legacy","author_url":"https:\/\/thestoryscribe.com\/how-to-write-your-life-story\/","html":"