How do people writing biographies recall their lives in such detail. I barely remember my childhood just bits and pieces here and there. But nothing close to writing a book.
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Most autobiographies will have a ghost writer who “helps” with the writing. Part of that will be interviews to help jog the person’s memories together with interviews with others who knew them at that time. And if all else fails they can make something up that is in keeping with the image they wish to convey.
First, they might have had diaries. Second, they can elaborate and build on the bits and pieces that they do remember. Third, they can make stuff up, it’s not uncommon with autobiographies.
People’s memories vary quite a bit. People with eidetic memories can recall minute details from pretty much every day of their lives. Give them a date and they can pull it up from their brains. The actress Marilou Henner (sp) is one such person. I have near eidetic memory. I can’t do what I have seen her do, but I can recall events and conversations back to the age of three.
So, some lie. Some remember. Most people probably mix memories with having heard the event discussed later. Most writing autobiographies are probably a little liberal filling in some gaps (re. enhance) of their memories favorably.
Some people just remember better than others. I have quite a good recollection of my life-memories. I remember things like what my favorite t-shirt was, where I bought it, those kinds if details. I can usually remember who got me that present. It makes it harder to throw things away, there’s always memories attached. My mother on the other hand, hardly remembers mundane daily stuff. When I was young she was a secretary somewhere. She learned how to use word and excel and the like. She taught me ctrl+c and crrl+v. About 10 years later I’m in my teens and she had migrated to another job. I see her work with word, she uses right mouse button to copy and paste. She helps me with an essay for school and sees me do ctrl+c and ctrl+v. She remarks: “oh that is a handy trick, how did you do that so fast?” I teach her. She ask ” how did you learn that?” I answered with “you, you taught me”. And no, her memory in general is quite good, she doesn’t have dementia or something. She is a fully high functioning adult, with a great memory for other stuff, just not for the mundane daily things.
I am detail oriented, she is summary orientated. I remember a lot with a lot of details, she only remembers summaries. That’s how our brains work.
Id also guess that people who write autobiographies usually had interesting or traumatic lives. Such events are much easier to remember than just random events from my unremarkable childhood.
Dude I can remember my friends’ friends’ birthdays and sometimes their spouses’ birthdays. Do I want to remember those? No. I just remember them for no reason. Not just that, I remember taking a helicopter in new Zealand when I was three and crying because of it, I can recall how the volcano smelt like a rotten egg when I went near it when I was 8 and much more memories when I was younger. Sometimes my friends would ask me what their friends told them a decade ago and I would remind them what they said and they would be like “oh yes thanks now I recall those”. I’m not sure if having such a memory is a good or bad thing because I can recall these moments in vivid detail.
My father-in-law writes his as he goes.
He’s a professional author (dozens of properly-published books in all kinds of genres) and documents his travel, etc. and has done for something like 30 years. He’s on about book 8 I think, starting from when he had a nervous breakdown in his 30’s.
Even then, he often embellishes, transposes, etc. all the stories (which were all true) to be a more coherent narrative, to put them in a better order for telling them, etc. so sometimes the stories he uses are from when he was in entirely another country, or with a different person. That’s how authors write, “based on a true story”.
And they were all true originally. I know, because I feature in about 3 of those books.
He says that, when he had an agent/publisher (they both died in 9/11), they would often reject the absolutely strictly true parts of his life story (calling them “too fantastical”) but lapped up the absolute bullshit parts that he basically over-egged or completely made up to join the narrative together.
Now he is just publishing them himself, makes enough money out of it to keep him in a few cups of coffee a day, and keeps writing the next one all the time. It’ll take about 3-4 years of actual events and hard work to make one book of “stories” (basically both funny and very dramatic things that happened to him) that he would weave into an autobiography.
I imagine people that are already famous do just that… have someone who makes notes of all their anecdotes and then they pull them all together even if that’s done via a ghost writer. And people who later become famous? Well, you have decades of slight mentions of anecdotes and some personal assistant or researcher will jot them down for the agent for when the time comes to write a biography or autobiography.
I’ve always just assumed it’s fiction. They’re telling a story based on their life, not recalling what happened in their life.
Ghost writer. Pads out all the anecdotes with texture, detail, and often times total bullshit.
I heard once that as we age our short term memory fails but our long term memory becomes sharper. Which is why your grandpa can’t remember what he had for breakfast but details everything that happened to him in the third grade.
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