Mark Twain's Right Plan to Write His Autobiography

The gift card Sharon gave me for my birthday bought Mark Twain's autobiography, Volume I, which I've wanted ever since learning it was published. And wouldn't you know! On page 5 of the book, it says that the entire book is published on the Internet, right here:

Mark Twain's Autobiography

On that site, you can even click a "Cite" button next to any paragraph to keep the quote for your use! Still, I'm glad I have the book for highlighting and carrying on my dialogue with Clemens (Twain) in the margins.

I want to share with you today Clemens' brilliant plan for "writing" his autobiography, which, incidentally, he dictated to a stenographer. This is how he described his plan:

"Finally, in Florence in 1904, I hit upon the right way to do an Autobiography: start it at no particular time of your life; wander at your free will all over your life; talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale, and turn your talk upon the new and more interesting thing that has intruded itself into your mind meantime. Also, make the narrative a combined Diary and Autobiography. In this way you have the vivid things of the present to make a contrast with memories of like things in the past, and these contrasts have a charm which is all their own. No talent is required to make a combined Diary and Autobiography interesting.

And so, I have found the right plan. It makes my labor amusement—mere amusement, play, pastime, and wholly effortless."

Clemens also said that it is impossible for a person to write an autobiography, because acts and words are but a "wee part of a person's life." The real life is going on in our heads--our thoughts. He estimated that if we wrote down our thoughts, "every day would make a whole book of eighty thousand words, three hundred and sixty-five books a year." He concludes this idea with, "Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of a man--the biography of the man himself cannot be written."

Are you ready to write an autobiography by wandering freely, at your leisure through your whole life, moving from present to past and everything in between, as long as the subject matter interests you? Sounds like the question in a wedding ceremony! A project like this might take 'til death you do part!

That's what my intention has been with this blog, with a few differences. Clemens' idea was to publish his biography after he'd been dead for 100 years, so he would literally be speaking from the grave. He believed his orders to publish the book after he was dead would allow him to freely speak his mind in the present. "The frankest, freest, and privatest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter," he wrote.

My writing and publishing now is, for me, a statement that I'm releasing myself from the bondage of fear of abandonment from my friends and loved ones. What I write from my heart is a reflection of my relationship of acceptance and forgiveness with myself. If I survive this unscathed and stronger for it, maybe it will inspire other readers to do the same. 

Socrates wrote, "A life unexamined is not worth living." Writing our lives lays us out on the examining table and turns on the lights.