© 2020 Harriet Michael

“Gather up the fragments … that nothing be lost.” Recorded in John 6:12 (KJV), these were Jesus’ instructions to His disciples after the feeding of the 5,000. I think of them every fall as I busy myself gathering the fragments of summer produce to store up for winter eating.

I’m a fragment gatherer. As a child I kept scrapbooks. As an adult, I frame old heirloom pictures to hang on my walls. Fragment gathering is one of the reasons I love writing memoirs.

Here are 5 more reasons to write a memoir:

1. To gather and preserve fragments of your life for yourself. Scenes come alive on pages long after those scenes are gone. My memory will fade, but I can remember and relive the snippets of my life that I have recorded. These will also continue to live after I am gone.
2. To gather fragments of your life to pass on to children and grandchildren. I find this to be one of the primary motivators for people to write memoirs, whether in short form—an article or short story—or in long, book form.
3. To gather fragments of history. Were you part of an important moment in history? Write it down. Your perspective is valuable to help complete the record. I’ve done this in different forms. My husband was a trustee at Southern Seminary during a time of great change. I helped him write his story in book form. In my senior year of high school, my school’s football team went from barely squeaking into the state play-offs to winning the WV AAA state crown, a great Cinderella story I wrote for “Bluegrass Country Magazine.”
4. To help others gather fragments of their lives. This can be done by ghostwriting someone else’s memoir, by cowriting as I did with my husband, or by writing in third person. My novel was sort of like that. It’s not a memoir since it has some fiction woven in. It falls in the category of fiction-based-on-fact but is based heavily on my parents’ memories. It was, perhaps, the best gift I ever gave my mom. She passed away last August, but her story still touches people’s lives.
5. To help readers reassemble fragments of their lives. What you have experienced will undoubtedly help those who have experienced the same thing. This may be the best reason to write a memoir.

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Harriet Michael is an eclectic writer widely published in several different genres. She has hundreds of published pieces in regional, national, and international magazines, including 5 Chicken Soup stories, devotions in The Upper Room, The Secret Place, Reflections, and Open Windows and is now a regular contributor to The Quiet Hour. Her books include A Stand for Truth, The Whisper of the Palms, and her best-selling, Prayer: It’s Not About You, a finalist in the 2011 Women of Faith Contest.