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If you are in the middle state of your life — late fortyish to mid-sixtyish — then we suggest that it is not too early to consider writing about your life.
For one thing, the sharpness of your recollection of events, and of your feelings about those events, is more vivid now than it will be later in life. The well of your memory will never again be as full as it is now. Anyone who has ever read a diary or journal, from an earlier time in his or her own life, has experienced more than one, “Oh, I’d forgotten all about that” moment.
If you are now in middle life, then you might prefer to write your Memoir with a “My Life So Far” approach, rather than a “This Was My Life” approach. You may decide, in some later year, to add more material, bringing your Memoir up-to-date.
Most of us, by the time we have reached the middle part of our lives, have plenty of living behind us. By then we have settled into our career or calling, have experienced joy and sadness, have met challenges successfully and have felt the pain of failure. Our values, our character, and our human identity, have been fully established. In other words, there is already plenty to write about.
Also, by the time you have come to your middle years, you have reached a point in your life where the person helping you write your Memoir can seek to find the golden thread that runs through your life, the thread that shaped your plans, decisions and commitments and defines who you are, as a unique individual.
And there is precedent for not waiting until late in life to write a memoir. Stephen Spender, the English poet, wrote his memoir, World Within World at age 49. Robert Graves, author of I, Claudius, among other works, wrote his memoir, Goodbye to All That when he was 34. Jane Fonda published her memoir, My Life So Far, at age 67.
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