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How to Write a Book About Your Life

There are two ways to get it done. Writing it yourself costs nothing up front and takes up to about 400 hours, plus $1,942 to $9,989 at the end for editing, a cover, formatting, and publishing setup (70,000 words, as of October 2026). Having it written costs 68¢ a word, from $13,600 for 20,000 words, with all four editing levels included, and asks for recorded interviews instead of writing time.

Below: a timeline template you can fill in this afternoon, what to do about people in the book who are still alive, and how to tell which path is yours. Would you rather talk than type? See our memoir ghostwriting.

  • Free template, no email
  • 15 memory prompts
  • Both paths priced
Get the free templateCompare the two paths

By the AuthorWings editorial team, who edit and ghostwrite life stories and memoirs. Updated October 2026.

Who the book is for, and why that decides everything else

Many people who want to write their life story wonder whether an ordinary life is enough to fill a book. It is. The more useful question is who you are writing it for, because that answer sets the length, the budget, the shape, and whether the book needs to be on Amazon at all.

01

To be remembered

Usually by grandchildren. The book is an object on a shelf, read aloud someday after you are gone. Commercial reach is irrelevant, length is a burden rather than an achievement, and twenty thousand words does the job completely.

02

To make sense of something

Illness, addiction, a marriage that ended, a war. The writing is the processing, and the book is what is left over. People writing for this reason often stall near the hardest chapter, and that stall is part of the work.

03

To be believed

An account that was disputed, minimized, or told wrong by someone else, written down and made permanent. The stakes are highest here, and the section on people who are still alive matters most to this reader.

04

To be seen as having mattered

A career, a business, or a life that was significant to the people inside it and went unremarked outside them. It gets called vanity, unfairly. It is a common reason, and it produces good books.

Answer this first

Many people are two of these at once, and the main one decides the book. Writing to be remembered needs no market, writing to be believed needs a lawyer more than a marketing plan, and writing to make sense of something may not need publishing at all.

Your whole life, one part of it, or a book for the family

There are four shapes. Picking the wrong one is the costliest mistake here, because you often find out in month three.

70,000 to 90,000 words

The whole life

Told in order, from the beginning. It is what many people picture and the hardest to finish, because sixty years of material means every decade competes for space. It works best when the record itself is the point. See a sample autobiography outline.

Michelle Obama, Becoming

60,000 to 75,000 words

One period

A few years, or one thing that happened, told properly and far easier to hold in your head. Many life stories that strangers read take this shape, so start here if you want the book to sell. It is also the classic way to write a memoir: one thread, followed closely.

Tara Westover, Educated

10 to 12 linked chapters

A collection of pieces

Standalone chapters linked by a theme rather than a timeline. Forgiving to write, because you can finish one and start another, and good for people who have stalled twice on the version told in order.

Mindy Kaling’s essay collections

20,000 to 30,000 words

A book for the family

Printed for people who already love you, with no category, no market, and no cover competing on Amazon. It is what many people actually want, before they talk themselves into the 90,000-word version.

A quarter of the work, for the readers who matter most

Decide this before you write

The shape sets the word count, the word count sets the timeline, and the timeline decides whether you finish.

Timeline first, then scenes

A common way a life story dies: you begin at your birth, write forward year by year, and give up somewhere in your twenties, because writing in order means writing the quiet years at full effort first. Work in two passes instead.

  1. Build the timeline

    One line per event, no prose, ordered only by year: births, moves, jobs, losses, the day something changed. Aim for a hundred lines and keep adding for weeks, because one memory drags three others up with it.

  2. Mark the ones with heat

    The ones you would tell a stranger at dinner, which are often different from the most important events. You will usually find fifteen or twenty, and those are your chapters.

  3. Write those scenes in any order

    Start with whichever you can see most clearly. A scene is a specific day in a specific place: “My father came in at nine and ate his dinner standing up” does more than “My father worked long hours.”

  4. Get the order right last

    Once the scenes exist, arrange them. The arrangement is often not chronological, and the strongest opening is rarely the earliest event.

Two practical habits. Talk a scene before you write it: record yourself telling it to someone, transcribe it, and edit, and the voice on the page will sound like you. And write the first draft without checking dates, because chasing a date in month one turns an afternoon of writing into an afternoon in a photo album.

A life story template you can fill in this afternoon

Six columns, one row per event, and no prose anywhere in it. Leave the heat column empty on the first pass, then come back and mark it once the list is long enough to compare against itself.

YearAgeWhat happenedWhereWho was thereHeat
19710Born, second of fourLeeds
19787Dad lost the shop, we moved in with NanBradfordMum, Nan, my brother✱
198312Won the county prize nobody expectedBradfordMr. Ellis
198716Left school at sixteen against everyone’s adviceBradfordMum, arguing✱
198918Moved to London for the job, first time living alone, hated it for a yearLondon✱
199423MarriedLeedsEveryone

The same template as a Word file you can type into. No email and no form. Copy the grid above, print this page, or download it.

Download the template

Specific rows become chapters

“1989, moved” gives you nothing to write from. “Moved to London for the job, first time living alone, hated it for a year” already holds a chapter: a place, a reason, a feeling, and a length of time. Write the version you would say out loud.

The heat column is the whole point

Six rows is not a book and a hundred is. Once the list is long, mark the entries you would tell a stranger at dinner, the ones that still have something in them. Those fifteen or twenty rows are your chapters, and the rest either links them together or gets cut.

Fifteen prompts, for when the grid stops filling itself

Many people reach forty rows and stall. The obvious events are down and the years look thin. Answer these onto the grid as rows, out of order, and skip any that produce nothing. If you are writing about one part of your life instead, see these memoir ideas.

  1. The first time you left home, whether for a night or for good.
  2. A job you were bad at, and what it taught you about yourself.
  3. Something you believed for years and later found out was wrong.
  4. The first person who died who you actually knew.
  5. A door that closed, and what came through the one that opened instead.
  6. The room you remember most clearly from childhood, and what happened in it.
  7. Something your parents did that you swore you would never do.
  8. A friendship that ended without a fight.
  9. The most frightened you have been, and whether anyone else knew.
  10. The moment you realized your parents were people rather than parents.
  11. Money: the tightest year, and what you went without.
  12. A stranger who changed something and never knew.
  13. The thing you are proudest of that nobody would put on a list.
  14. What you were doing when the news came, for whichever news that is for you.
  15. Something you have never told anyone, and whether it belongs in the book.

About the last prompt. It often produces the strongest row on the grid, and it is the one most likely to stop the project, because deciding whether something belongs in the book is a different job from remembering it. Write the row now, and decide after reading the section on people who are still alive.

You will get things wrong, and your family will remember it differently

Memory reconstructs rather than replays. A scene you see clearly may have happened a year later, in a different house, with someone who was somewhere else that summer. It happens to everyone, and it is a working problem to handle, not a flaw.

01

Check what is checkable

Photographs with dates on the back, letters, school reports, employment records, property deeds, old diaries, and newspaper archives for public events. An hour with a shoebox settles more disputes than an argument does.

02

Write the uncertainty in

“I remember it as a Tuesday, though my sister says the funeral was on a Friday” is stronger than either version stated flatly. Readers trust a narrator who admits the edges are soft.

03

Interview who was there

They remember details you do not, and a recorded conversation with someone in their eighties is worth having whether or not the book happens. Ask what they remember before telling them your version.

04

Two accounts can both be true

A child and a parent in the same room did not experience the same room. You are writing your account, and saying so plainly in the first chapter solves much of the problem before it starts.

When to tell the family

This decision can cause real hurt, and there is no rule. Telling them early invites edits you did not ask for; telling them at publication can read as betrayal. What works for many people is telling them once the shape exists and before the draft is finished: what the book is about, roughly who appears, and that they will see anything concerning them before it goes anywhere. It is a conversation rather than a permission request, and it is easier in month three than month eleven.

One exception

If someone in the book is a danger to you, none of that applies. Do not tell them, and read the next section on people who are still alive.

Write it yourself or have it written: both paths, priced

Here are both paths side by side, so you can do the arithmetic against your own year. Prices are for a 70,000-word book, as of October 2026.

Write it yourself

Up to 400 hours

About a year and a half at five hours a week, or six months at fifteen. Fifteen hours a week is hard to keep up.

Timeline and scene list
10 to 20 hours
First draft, 70,000 words
150 to 250 hours
Revision
80 to 150 hours
Editing, cover, formatting, setup
$1,942 to $9,989

Hour figures are estimates, based on 300 to 500 usable words an hour, and change with how much of the book is already in your head. The cost runs from a light proofread with an ebook on Amazon to a full edit with print and ebook editions in every store, booked together. Want a deadline without handing over the writing? Book coaching starts at $849, or try one session for $399.

Have it written

From $13,600

For books up to 90,000 words, with editing included. Priced by length and interview time.

Calendar time
8 to 27 weeks
Voice interviews
Up to 10 hours, by book length
Story interviews
90-minute sessions, one or two a week
Your job
Talk, review chapters, approve

With ghostwriting, a Launch-Ready Bundle with cover, formatting, and publishing starts at $14,839 for a 20,000-word memoir. Full pricing, with a word-count slider, is on our memoir ghostwriting page.

The honest comparison

Put a number on your own hour, and the two paths often land closer than expected. A common outcome is neither: the hours never get found and the draft stops somewhere in the 1990s. That happens when a 400-hour job has no deadline, which the shorter book and the hired path each solve in their own way.

Three things to confirm with anyone you hire

  • Whose name goes on the cover, and whether solo credit costs extra
  • Who owns the copyright and royalties when it is finished
  • Whether a confidentiality agreement (NDA) is signed before you share the parts you have never told anyone

Prices vary widely between freelance writers, writing marketplaces, and agencies. A very low price for a full book often means little interviewing and heavy rewriting later, so ask what each quote includes before you compare.

What to do, by the reason you are doing it

Here is what each answer from the first section means in practice.

WritingWhat to doBest fit
To be rememberedTake the short book, 20,000 to 30,000 words, and print it for the family. If health means moving quickly, a book of 20,000 to 30,000 words takes 8 to 12 weeks.Either path, short book
To make sense of somethingWrite it yourself, since the processing is the point. Hold off committing to publication, and if you stall at the hardest chapter, put it down for two weeks and come back.Write it yourself
To be believedAccuracy first: build the documentation before the prose, read the legal section twice, and budget for a legal read. A writer who was not there brings useful distance to material you are too close to.Either path, legal read
To be seen as having matteredThe full-length book and the market question are both real, so the structure has to hold a stranger’s attention. You have told these stories before, and they are better out loud. The deciding factor is a year of writing or weeks of talking.Either path, full length

Whichever you are, the first step is the same. The timeline is a hundred lines with no prose, and it takes an afternoon. Do that before you spend anything. Many people who sit down to it find the book they want is the short one, and that book can be finished this year.

What a finished draft still needs, and how to publish it

Finishing the draft is the milestone, and four problems after it can turn a finished manuscript into a book nobody reads. Budget for them at the start, not in month eleven when the energy is spent.

01

The draft nobody can follow

Written across two years, so chapter one and chapter eighteen sound like different books, with a middle that repeats itself. A developmental edit (an edit of the story and structure) finds the problems and marks up the pages, $2,800 on 70,000 words, or written notes alone (an editorial assessment) for $1,260.

02

The typos

Readers notice typos fast, and few people proofread their own manuscript well. Copy editing and a proofread on 70,000 words come to $3,500 together, or $1,330 for a proofread on its own.

03

The cover that gives it away

The cover sells the book before anyone reads a page, and a snapshot of the author with the title in a default font looks homemade. Cover design from $199, or $399 with a print cover.

04

The file that uploads wrong

Page size, margins, and the book details stores need. Interior formatting (the layout of your inside pages) from $89 and publishing setup from $249, with every retailer account opened in your name.

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Thirty copies for the family is a real answer

Many people assume finishing means Amazon. For many readers of this guide, it should not.

Thirty printed copies

Print on demand (copies printed as they are ordered) produces a properly bound book for a few dollars a copy, plus shipping. Some services print private copies with no store listing and no ISBN (your book’s ID number). The family gets the book and the project is finished. It is often the right ending for a legacy book.

Wide, on the retailers

An ISBN, listings on Amazon and other stores, and a cover built to compete in a category. Worth it when the book is for strangers, which is far more often the one-period shape than the whole-life one. Our guide on how to self-publish a book walks through every step.

The first, then the second

Print thirty, let people read it, then decide about publishing with real reactions rather than guesses. The order locks nothing, and family feedback on a first printing often shows you what to fix before you sell it.

Working against a deadline you did not set? If you are ill, or writing for a parent who is, shorten the book rather than rushing it. Twenty thousand words finished and printed beats eighty thousand abandoned at chapter nine, and recorded interviews are worth having even if the book is never written. That is the one situation where hiring someone is about the calendar rather than money.

What people ask before writing their life story

Straight answers on time, length, memory, family, and whether to write it yourself.

Is my life interesting enough to write a book about?

For a book your family will read, yes, without qualification. For a book strangers will buy, the test is whether one thing that happened to you can be told well enough that a reader recognizes something from their own life. Many published life stories are about ordinary events written with unusual precision, and a dramatic life told flatly sells worse than an ordinary one told well.

How long does it take to write a book about your life, or a memoir?

Writing it yourself takes up to about 400 hours, which is about a year and a half at five hours a week or about six months at fifteen: 10 to 20 hours on a timeline, 150 to 250 on a first draft, and 80 to 150 revising. Hiring a ghostwriter takes 8 to 27 weeks of calendar time, depending on length, and asks for recorded interviews and chapter reviews from you rather than writing time. For other kinds of books, see how long it takes to write a book.

How long should a book about my life be?

A good memoir word count depends on the shape. Twenty to thirty thousand words suits a book printed for family. Sixty to seventy-five thousand suits a book covering one period of your life, a shape many published life stories take. Seventy to ninety thousand suits a full account told in order, which is also the hardest version to finish. For memoir ranges by type and page counts, see how long a memoir is.

Where do I start if I have never written a book before?

Build a timeline before you write any prose: one line per event, no sentences, aiming for a hundred entries added over several weeks. Then mark the fifteen or twenty entries you would tell a stranger at dinner, and those become your chapters. Starting at your birth and writing forward is a common reason projects stall, because it means writing your quietest years first.

What if I cannot remember enough to fill a book?

Many people think this at forty timeline entries, and it is rarely true. Memory works by association, so one entry drags three more up with it, and the events that surface in week two are often better than the ones from day one. Dated photographs, school reports, letters, employment records, and old diaries recover more than trying harder does, and interviewing anyone who was there recovers more still.

Can I write about family members without their permission?

You do not need permission, and you do carry the risk. In the United States a statement must be false to be defamatory, and on matters of public concern the person suing generally has to prove it false. Changing a name is not enough if role, timeline, or circumstances still identify someone, and private facts such as medical history can be true and still create exposure. This is not legal advice: a publishing lawyer reading the finished manuscript is the standard step.

What is the best app or software for writing my life story?

Microsoft Word or Google Docs handles it, and the tool is rarely what stops anyone. Scrivener is worth the cost only if you work in scenes out of order and reorder them often. A spreadsheet suits the timeline stage because it sorts and filters, and voice recording with transcription suits people who tell a story better than they type one, which is many people writing about their own life. For a wider comparison, see our guide to book writing software.

Can AI write a book about my life?

It can produce readable text about your life. It cannot produce your life story. A life story runs on specifics, such as what your father said or what you decided at nineteen, and a language model will invent plausible substitutes, which a memoir cannot survive. AI is useful for transcribing interviews and for a grammar pass on prose a person wrote. The US Copyright Office protects human authorship only, so text an AI generates on its own cannot be registered as yours.

Should I write my life story myself or hire someone?

It depends less on budget than on whether you will still be at the desk in month six. Writing it yourself takes up to about 400 hours, then $1,942 to $9,989 for editing, a cover, formatting, and publishing setup on 70,000 words. Hiring costs 68¢ a word, from $13,600, with all four editing levels included, and a Launch-Ready Bundle adds cover, formatting, and publishing. Put a value on your own hour, and the two often land closer than expected.

Start with the timeline

The first step costs nothing and takes an afternoon: a hundred lines, no prose. By the end you will know which of the four books you are writing and roughly how long it needs to be. Take the template, or talk to us about having it written. A free 30-minute call tells you honestly whether to write it yourself, have it written, or write a shorter book than you planned.

Download the templateBook a call

Your first weekNo cost

  1. Build the timelineOne line per event, aiming for a hundred
  2. Mark the heatThe fifteen or twenty rows that become chapters
  3. Choose the pathWrite it yourself, or have it written

Either way, the book and its rights are yours.

A confidentiality agreement (NDA) is available before the call on request, you keep 100% of your rights, and nothing is signed until you decide.

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