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If you wrote a memoir, what would it be about?

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If I wrote a memoir, it would be about growing up during the Great Depression and World War II, raising my family of baby boomers in the '30s and '40s --- mostly as a single Mom after their Dad left us --- and about the unique successful grownups they became.

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If I wrote a memoir, it would be about growing up with the father I was lucky enough to have. I was really daddy's baby girl and loved every minute of it. He was just a country boy, but a kind and generous man who tried to provide in ways that he could for others who had less than him.

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If I could write a memoir...well, I wouldn't. I think most are boring unless written by the actual person himself, and I mean the actual person with no help. Your life should be remembered by those you "touched" and not have to be put into words for profit. Just my opinion, however.

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I've thought about this for years, writing a memoir of my childhood and youth. I came from an Italian immigrant family --- my father was illiterate and we did not have one book in our house when I was growing up. Yet I became a writer. I would like to explore that.

Jan in Edmonds
If I wrote a memoir it would be about my family, beginning with the stories my mother told me about herself, her sisters and parents. She said she'd led such a colorful life that she'd wished she had written such a book. She's gone now but preserving her memories would be well worth the effort.

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My memoir would be my thoughts and experiences with the Internet. At the ripe old age of 66, I would attempt to convince those of my generation that the vast information font available to all is at our fingertips, if only we take the time to become familiar with computers.

I wince whenever one of my friends makes a statement like "I barely know how to turn a computer on." This is often said with pride, as if the lack of computer knowledge is somehow positive.

There is a blog called "Grow A Brain" that could well be the title I would use, if the author would allow it. It happens to be a superb example of the amazing breadth and depth of Internet content.

Marlie from St. George, UT
I would write a memoir about the struggles of growing up the oldest of four children and the only girl in the midwest in the early 1950s. From a very poor farm family, I would tell about our life without running water, electricity, indoor plumbing, surviving on everything homegrown, never going to a grocery store, not knowing about simple things like tuna fish in a can or what it was like to take a bath in a real porcelain bathtub! I'd include how I went on vacation to a big city three states away with my aunt and uncle at the age of eight, and got left behind with another aunt and uncle when they went home because my parents had decided to go there and visit too. 

After my parents visited they decided to MOVE there so they left me behind again, this time to start the third grade without friends and in a city where everything was new and different from what I'd known before. I never got to go back HOME again; I became a struggling country girl in a big, urban city! It was bad enough to lose my real home and then, the most difficult of all, to lose my mother to the evil and wicked city ways when she walked out on our family when I was barely 13 years old!   

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I would write about my life, or what it could have been. I would call it "My Failed Life."

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Well, I don't really know. That's part of the reason I'm currently revising my autobiography to include myself.

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I am writing a memoir about my complex relationship with my father.

Nancy from Wilmington NC
My memoir would be about the trials and tribulations of the extended family, called "The Crooked Tree."

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If I wrote a memoir, it would be about what I write about in my journal daily. My life as a mom and wife. My life trying to juggle my household while having chronic disease and pain, with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus. My life while I homeschool one of my three children, my eldest, who has Asperger's Syndrome, and form of autism, and is also a genius. 

It would be about my funny, happy, wonderful life, full of love and luck and ups and downs. That is what my book would be about. It is also my dream to write one, think the Erma Bombeck style. That is what I do and what I am best at.

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I was the third generation growing up on our family farm. My brother and his family, the fourth generation, still live there. This is what I would write about.

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If I wrote a book of memoirs it would be about my father, who was a bit of a character. When he died at 83 he was still in his first childhood. If it interested him he explored it!

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My memoir would be about growing up in a home with six sisters and one brother; the fun things along with the want-to-pull-your-hair out things.

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I was an elementary teacher for 35 years, so I have much material for a memoir. I would tell stories from those days --- including interesting and inspiring students and teachers, funny happenings, bureaucratic nightmares, juggling my career and motherhood, favorite and memorable field trips, and successes and failures. I could never hope to be a Torey Hayden, but she would inspire me to tell a good story. Her memoirs about this subject are awesome.

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If I wrote a memoir, I would begin with the evacuation from New Orleans to Ft. Worth due to Hurricane Katrina. I would include the other trips to the Dallas Ft. Worth area that occurred in my 56 years. As an 18-year-old, I entered a Texas convent; as a 30-something, I moved to TX with my husband, and last Saturday I returned from inspecting my "totaled" home in N.O. Water and its force, I think, would feature in the title.

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It would be about the long term effects of child abuse, and the necessity of maintaining ideals in this all-too harsh world.

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If I wrote a memoir it would be about Guerilla Warfare as a part of marriage.

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My memoir would definitely be about surviving the things of my past, such as sexual abuse (incest), physical and emotional abuse, a painful divorce, financial problems, my career as a computer programmer, and living with several illnesses such as insulin-dependent diabetes, asthma, migraines, allergies and a panic disorder. I have finally found some peace in my life.

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I was born in Czechoslovakia and fled from the Nazis as a small child with my parents in 1940. We spent 5 months running and hiding.

If I had the assistance I need, I would write this fascinating story of fear, hope, survival and renewal as a memoir.

I do speak and lecture on the story all over the country. It is called "The Power of Perseverance - One Family's Escape from the Nazis."

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It would be about how growing up in the '50s affected my life. The '50s were not the "Happy Days" seen on TV...that is how it looked from the outside, but what was really going on was not all innocent. The home life was kept private and even if things were suspected or actually known, no one felt obliged to interfere with another's family or situation. It was a time of secrecy and looking the other way...Archie Bunker's attitude was very prominent, and not the least bit funny.

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I read a book a while back by Susan Cheever. I think it was billed as an amazing book by an amazing woman and her amazing generation (baby boomers). Frankly, all it was about was who she had sex with or what relationships she had during the turbulent sixties and early seventies.

I have always thought I could sure do her one better. I have had some more interesting experiences than she had...and they all were not about getting a husband!! So that is what I would write about.

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I guess If I wrote my memoir, I would focus on the fact that it took me 50 years to finally "get it right." A chapter or two on my fight and victory over breast cancer and the raising of my three children to the best of my ability at the time. I would write about sticking with a marriage to the man I love and married through good times and bad and ending up thankful that I did. I would not waste time nor paper on my mistakes, as there were many. As they say, youth is wasted on the young, but I'll take wisdom of age any day.

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My memoir would be about my emotional abuse growing up, preventing me from being the person I should have become, causing me to live with melancholy all my life.

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If I wrote a memoir, it would definitely be about being adopted. I was given up for adoption at 13 months old and found my biological mother 43 years later TOTALLY by accident!

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Someday I will write about growing up in the 1950s and 1960s on a cattle ranch in sparsely populated eastern Montana. We lived in poverty by today's standards, but my parents are survivors and taught us how to live from the land. I feel fortunate to have a wealth of experiences, such as attending a one-room school house with a two-hole outhouse, spreading freshly churned butter on a hot slice of homemade bread, and showing my blue-ribbon 4-H steer at the county fair.

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Ironically, I'm in the midst of doing just that --- writing a memoir.

It's a hilarious account of my dating history...how incredibly easy it is to manipulate men and, in doing so, how my percentage of proposals was extremely high although I accepted no one but complete losers as husbands (good thing I can laugh about that, eh?!!!)

Even though it's my own work, and I'm somewhat prejudiced, it is hysterical!

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My memoir would be about being a high school teacher (I could begin with last night's chaperone gig at the Homecoming Dance...) or about being a lifeguard/swim instructor/swim official. I even have a title for the latter: Walk, don't run, on deck. 

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For me, a memoir would consist of the dogs in my life and how they've affected me. As you grow, you choose different breeds for different reasons.