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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My dad wrote an autobiography. He’s had a misguided perspective of how my life went for decades,and I’ve refused to read it. So, long story short, he doesn’t “remember” it. I would say in general that’s why autobiographies are not that authoritative on factual events but rather a good way to find out how someone felt at the time things happened.
They may base it on diaries they’ve written earlier and stories family members have told them. In addition some may have a better memory than others. People who are good visualizers may remember certain details better than others. Recalling memories isn’t a perfect process and some inaccuracies may occur
I suspect that people with larger and closer families remember their childhoods better in part because they swap stories about one another so many times. You remember the time something happened because it has been brought up at Christmas and birthdays and funerals for many years. You even imagine that you remember things that you were too young to remember, but you get the details right because they’ve been fed to you over and over again. You get five or ten people all contributing their own details about the time your grandmother set the kitchen on fire.
A lot of it is embellished or extrapolated. Some of it is taken from diaries and some is taken from talking to friends and family members. My memory is awful, I can’t remember much of anything beyond even the age of 15, just bits and pieces here and there.
They can always make stuff up to fill in the blanks, but people writing autobiographies usually have a reason to write an autobiography in the first place IE: lots of big, interesting events happening in their life.
You might not remember your childhood well because odds are it was pretty normal. If you had multiple life changing events at a young age, you would probably remember those a lot more clearly.
They’ll talk to people close to them who went through the experiences with them. Parents, siblings, coaches, coworkers… They might not have the exact same memories but it will often help to fill in the gaps.
My mother-In-Law is currently writing her biography. She started by jotting down different memories/stories she wanted to include, then she asked family members and super close friends if there’s anything we think should be included. She started writing those all out as individual chunks. She has an editor that is helping her pull more stories from her.
Once she had written about 100 pages she sent it to close family and a few close friends for an initial read. We all gave her more stories to add/sections to change some stories a bit. There were a few stories that were duplicate.
She got different feedback from everyone who read it, and is currently adding a bunch more stories. The stories also show where additional background info on a subject is needed.
She in general has a good memory. She has lived a fascinating and busy life, so probably she’s forgetting/leaving out a ton of stories. There are many people reminding her of stories, adding their edits, correcting stories.
When you start writing about your life you’ll remember more of your life. It’s incredible. Please try it.
having a poor memory is a symptom of depression and lots of other conditions. not in the sense of trauma necessarily, but it took me well into my 30s to realize other people genuinely remember their childhoods and not just the 3 or 4 family stories that were retold and I didn’t even really hold a memory of the event, just familiarity with the storirs.
Some of it is embellished, I’m sure, with the assistance of a ghost writer or their own imagination- nobody wants to read “I remember our next door neighbor, Mr. Somethingorother,” so they call him Mr. Smith.
Some of it is documented and can be referenced, especially if someone’s life has been notable enough to justify writing an autobiography. This could be public record or personal papers, photos, and journals.
But also, not everyone can “barely remember” their childhood. I have quite a few vivid childhood memories, and I would say I could give a *reasonably* accurate broad-strokes narrative of major events as well as daily routines in my life back to age three (accounting for the fact that of course what I understood about things going on around as a three year old was limited compared to what I know as an adult). I probably wouldn’t get everything right, but I could remember enough to use as a starting point for fact-checking to confirm dates/locations/names. I have some snapshot memories from earlier than three, but since that was the age at which I first moved houses, it’s harder for me to place them precisely in time.
I know this isn’t universal- my husband has said that he remembers hardly anything before school age. We’ve had some debates over whether our young children will “remember any of this” when it comes to daily life, because I (based on my experience) think they will, and he (based on his experience) thinks they won’t. I guess we’ll see.
I would venture that most people are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between “remember everything” and “remember nothing” and that people who decide to write an autobiography in the first place are more likely to be on the “remembering things” end of the spectrum.
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