My motivation or lack thereof

I'm now devoting four hours a day to my memoir, which means I've had to rearrange my daily social schedule. No more loitering in front of the TV watching reruns of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, or  looking at endless Facebook photographs of some stranger who leads an infinitely more exciting life than I ever will, or trying in vain to complete a Times Cryptic Crossword on my own.

I've spent the best part of this afternoon re-reading the Holy Grail of Memoirs, which lists several major reasons why people are motivated to write a memoir:

• To gain a deeper understanding of yourself and your life
• To heal the past and create hope for the future
• To create a legacy for your family
• To expose injustice or abuse
• To settle emotional scores -- from anger and revenge to acceptance and forgiveness
• To present a point of view about a controversial issue
• To share with the world your unique experiences with travel, education, illness and recovery, family, or a spiritual quest

I'm not going to say which of those reasons specifically apply to my memoir (that will only spoil the surprise), but I think there's probably a little bit of everything swirling through the memories in my head. Well, maybe not the settling of emotional scores. That's not for me. I'll leave that to the far-reaching powers of my voodoo dolls.

Back to work now!