Should you write about yourself?
- Aug 28, 2025
- 2 min read
I always used to tell writers NOT to write about themselves. For years and years.
This was in the interests of cultivating good fiction authors. And before memoir stormed the charts. I still believe you shouldn't.... but that's for FICTION (or a novel).
Because if you write about yourself in fiction, you really only have one story to tell. It is also a totally misunderstood maxim of writing that you must ‘write what you know.’
Many writers misinterpret this to mean – write about yourself.
This is not true. What you know is diverse. You may know how to make a bomb from HTH, or how to carefully conceal a crime. You may know how to annoy your sibling, make a rocket from jam jars or hack into the FBI mainframe. You certainly know all about jealousy, anger, rage, revenge, fear, loss and triumph. You know a lot more than just your own life story.
We simply don’t make for very good fiction. Not unless you are a ruthless trained killer (Jason Bourne) a damaged sex addict (Hank Moodey), a telepathic waitress dating a vampire (Sookie Stackhouse), selected to take part in a public fight to the death (Katniss Everdeen), a screwed-up billionaire with a prediliction for spanking (Christian Grey) or a sassy foul-mouthed bounty hunter (Stephanie Plum).
But now writing about yourself is a very realistic thing to do if you want to be published. In fact memoir and non-fiction are some of the easier books to get published.
But if you are writing a memoir or non-fiction OF COURSE you write about yourself.
Memoir has long been a fast-selling genre and its trajectory is still rising. It is compelling to read about other people’s lives in intimate, graphic, no-holds-barred detail. The more graphic the better. One of my favourite writers Joanne Fedler describes writing a memoir as "the verbal equivalent of streaking".
But memoir has to have a story.
If you are writing about yourself there has to actually be a story. You don’t necessarily have to have been reared by wolves, held as a sex slave in a basement for a decade, married to Mick Jagger or found God in a coma. Of course agony sells. But you could have simply left your husband and gone on a spiritual journey (Eat, Pray, Love), found joy in a year of pain (My Year of Magical Thinking) or just been a very pushy parent (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother). Â
It is not that these people did anything particularly extraordinary at all.... but they wrote about it in an extraordinary way. In fact what they did was to find A BIG IDEA within their life story.
Okay now you got me started. My writers know how critical it is to find this core idea... but I will save that for another newsletter. Or join a course where I will find it with you.
YOU MAY WANT TO READ:
How to write your story for a magazine
The 4 Universal Rules of Writing to be Published