If you ventured to try, how hard would it be for you to write an autobiography from memory?

I remember quite a bit of detail, including dates, and events back to when I was two and a half. That’s just how my mind works. For me the biggest challenge would be editing it down to an interesting read.

We have something in common there. My biographical memory is next to non-existent. I don’t even remember last year’s Christmas, never mind early childhood.

I remember a lot of my 46 years. Although there are chunks that are kind of fuzzy.

Why is that @ragingloli? I remember a lot of stuff. Except for September and October of 2012. That part is gone gone gone.

@Dutchess_III May I ask why those two months are hazy for you?

I suppose I could, if I possessed legitimate writing skills. I remember most of my life, enough to have a decent amount of material. The problem would be structuring a good flow and making it interesting.
Of course, there’s a limit to how interesting it can be without making shit up. Other than moving around a lot as a kid and having some turbulent teen years, all I could really write about are video games and horror movies.
But as for remembering things, as I say I’d have no probs with that.

@Foie_Gras Well, I was hospitalized with walking pneumonia at the first of November of that year. I didn’t know it, but I had been sick for months, and those last two months were particularly bad. I had emergency surgery, then slipped into a coma for 2 or 3 days. I was in the hospital for 2 weeks. Just the trauma and the drugs (from the hospital) just wiped that part of my memory out.

Hard; it would not be an autobiography as much as an epic tragedy.

I am always amazed by autobiographies where the author remembers their entire life in great detail. I am not like that; I just remember bits here and there in isolation. A huge amount is missing. My life is hardly of interest to anyone else anyway but I have kept diaries for the last 50 years.

I couldn’t. Like you @ragingloli, I remember very little of my early past. I think I’ve repressed the memories because much of it was bleak. Did you have a happy childhood? I can’t remember names, people I went to school with… so much of it is gone. I’ve often wished I’d had the discipline to keep a diary. If I had I could at least go back and read over things to prompt my memory.

Back in around 2009 I was living in a RV with no internet access. I was incredibly bored and decided to write the story of my life. It was actually pretty interesting. I started with doing chapters of big events since there was a lot of blank spots in my memory.

But over time I started to recall more as I wrote. I would wake up and remember more things that filled in a lot of gaps. And that process started going faster and faster.

I’m still doing it. The original with my major life stuff was around 200 pages. It is currently at 3715 pages.

Keep in mind that includes about 1000 words about when I was at a Dairy Queen and couldn’t read the menu without squinting and reconciled that I needed glasses. Then a few more pages about my first trip to the Optometrists.

And then there was the embarrassing stuff like the first time I masturbated. It was to a copy of Playboy my sister had hidden in her closet I found. Pamela Anderson was the centerfold. So yeah..

But the file is encrypted. I have a website where I have to check in every six months. If I go six months without visiting it sends the key of the file to my sister and mom. It is pretty much to make sure I am dead before anyone can read it.

Not hard. I have tons of memory of my life. Some of it blurs together, especially the years where I had health problems (a gift probably) but I could still fill a book with many details and feelings I had during events in my life.