Ever hear of a commonplace book? It’s been credited as an early seed for the modern blog. Instead of a journal or diary of your own thoughts, it’s a record of ideas—articles, artwork and anything, really—that strike you as interesting. You also can jot down your own thoughts, but a commonplace book is for common topics, or “commonplaces,” and not meant to chronicle your life’s experiences. Artistotle was the first known commonplace book keeper; Thomas Jefferson was another fan of the genre.

You can create a commonplace book just as they did, or you can put a modern twist on it by starting a commonplace book file on your computer. Instead of bookmarking an article or a website, do a copy-and-paste and throw the whole piece into the computer file. If you clip an article from a real newspaper, if your child presents you with a drawing or if you have movie, concert or sports event tickets you’d like to save, capture any of those by scanning and saving the image to your commonplace book file. You also can add photographs.

When you sit down with your memoir, these ideas and images will jog your memory and inspire your writing. You even can craft an entire memoir around the commonplace book—just add a thread of text to explain it all. If you’d like to write a memoir but want to take your time and don’t know where to start, try keeping a commonplace book first and let your memoir project grow from there.

We regularly receive email from people who want to write their memoirs but can’t get started. We suggest beginning with just one limited episode; once you’ve described that, you may be able to go on to the next. I think it’s easier than starting at the beginning of your life and going chronologically. But no matter what order you follow, you may find it helpful to have an outline. Breaking down your life into small segments will eventually shape your life’s larger themes. That’s where old, reliable Wikipedia comes in.

Look up your favorite celebrity or historical figure on Wikipedia.org, and you’ll see that the biographical information follows an outline that appears along with the text. Read a few of them, and perhaps you’ll get into the swing of it enough to craft an outline for your own life.

For example, I looked up Benjamin Franklin, who lived a long and varied life. One category in his biography is Inventions and scientific inquiries. Another, Public life, is broken down into: Europe years; Hutchinson letters; Coming of Revolution; Declaration of Independence; Postmaster; Ambassador to France: 1776–1785; Constitutional Convention; and President of Pennsylvania. As you can see, there’s no rule about how all of that is worded; it’s kind of a hodgepodge. If you can approach your own time line the same way—just write down a couple of words that trigger your memory about each major aspect, period or episode in your life, you’ll have made a great start to your autobiography.

As you’re writing your memoirs, I know many of you are picturing your stories coming to life as a script for the movies or theater. If you happen to be anywhere London, England, your vision could become reality sooner than you think.

Stillpoint, a British theatrical troupe, has established The Department of Unreliable Memoirs to conduct a “micro project” as part of the White Night presentations at one of its performance venues, the Nightingale Theater in Brighton. Billed as “an intimate encounter for one audience member,” the project requires the players to act out a scene from the life of an audience member who volunteers to describe the action. As the audience-member storyteller, you can play fast and loose with the facts: “Make an appointment with our helpful hostesses to retrieve a half-forgotten moment, from a past you may well have had,” the promotion states.

It sounds as if it’s all in good fun, but maybe you could apply the concept as part of your memoirs writing process. Think about the various scenes from your life’s chapters. Which elements create drama? Can you incorporate humor in the story? Or does it amount to a tragedy? How can the narrative of this vignette further the character development of the players in your life? And if you’d like to see actors play it out right in front of you, a trip the UK may be in store!

Product or process—which is your main reason for writing your memoir? Do you dearly want to produce a book that traces your life story for others to read or, rather, are you primarily using your memoir writing project as a therapeutic means of working through problems?

Writing in a recent New York Times Sunday Magazine, Steve Almond argues that the number of writing workshops, writing conferences and university-level creative writing programs has exploded to fill the void previously occupied by traditional “talk therapy” sessions with a counselor. The iconic image of the patient on the couch confiding in a therapist is a picture from the past, Almond maintains. Today, he says, troubled people take prescribed medication to sort of fix their brain chemistry and, while that may make them feel better, it’s not fulfilling.

Therefore what creative writers want, says Almond, who currently leads a writer’s workshop for people in their 50s and 60s, is “permission to articulate feelings that were somehow off limits within the fragile habitat of their families….[Creative writing] almost always involves a direct engagement with [the] inner life, as well as a demand for greater empathy and disclosure. These goals are fundamentally therapeutic.” To any of you who have landed at WriteMyMemoirs in an effort to claim your right to express yourself, sort through the difficult aspects of your life or quiet “the human heart in conflict with itself,” as Almond quotes William Faulkner, please feel very welcome here.

It’s late January, and your New Year’s Resolution to write that memoir may be melting faster than snow in sunshine. A blogger at zenhabits.net zeroes in on two secrets to staying motivated with any goal: 1) enjoying the task, and 2) answering to outside pressure. Let’s take them one at a time.

To enjoy writing your memoir, first make sure you’re in a comfortable setting. You should be pleased with every aspect—your computer, chair and desk; the temperature in the room; perhaps a view; the level of noise/quiet. Identify the time of day and day(s) of the week you feel creative and you don’t feel guilty for taking time away from other responsibilities. For content, choose the parts of your life you like to remember. If there are painful segments, leave those for later, after you’ve grown accustomed to your writing routine. Bite off little bits so that the project doesn’t overwhelm you. Review your life one anecdote at a time.

The second motivating tool—developing outside pressure—should be easy. Just tell your family and friends that you’re writing a memoir! Give them weekly updates, and have them commit to asking you about it if you forget. As our own memoir writing community, we can be accountable to each other. Leave a comment here about how far you’ve progressed toward your goal, or friend us on Facebook. We’ll start a thread on the Write My Memoirs page for you to leave a comment to motivate yourself as well as everyone!

You might want to consider attending the upcoming Memoir Writing Conference 2012, where you can join people like you who are looking for information and motivation to help them write their life stories. This event takes place Saturday, April 28, in Bethlehem, PA, and costs $225 plus $100 if you choose to attend a Friday night dinner. WriteMyMemoirs has no association with this conference and does not receive anything for publicizing this event, but we like to alert you to any tool or experience that might help you write your memoir.

The full day of inspiration features an impressive roster of presenters, all authors themselves who, as a group, represent a diverse range of expertise that reflects the theme for this year’s conference: getting in touch with your five senses to help you recall and describe events in your life.

The keynote speaker is newspaper columnist, blogger and journalism professor Bill White. I love the reason he was asked to speak, as stated on the website: “Bill became interested in memoirs a few years ago when he wrote a piece about a Ukrainian woman who used her dying days to write about her life growing up in the old country, her hardships during World War II, her emigration to the United States and her life here with her husband and children. Bill was struck by how beautifully she told her story, but even more by how much other families, including his own, would appreciate that kind of memoir from our parents and grandparents to share with future generations.” Click here for details about the conference.