write my autobiography

I’ve gotten to 43,000 words. I’m happy with it so far, and frankly could only see lengthening it if it became a journaling repository. Which might not be a bad idea.

.....up to 26,000 words. I’d like my final autobiography to be around 65,000 to 70,000 words. However, by final I mean final. Hopefully a few more chapters of life remain.

Autobiographies can be tricky. Some people are able to describe themselves adequately (at least in their own mind) with their epitaph, such as Thomas Jefferson. Others need 200,000 words. So I set out to survery some autobios and memoirs so I can get a better grasp for how long my own should be. I found Amazon’s supremely helpful “text stats” page, and did far too much research. Here’s what I found. The percentage given is the percent of books with fewer words. From this we can derive that the average memoir/autobiography at Amazon is roughly 70,000 words.

Elie Weisel….......32,000 26%
Benjamin Franklin… 64,000 48%
Jimmy Carter…..... 82,000 64%
Johnny Cash…...... 94,000 71%
John McCain…..... 114,000 80%
Ulysses S. Grant… 119,000 82%
Richard Feynman…..125,000 78%
Frederick Douglass..129,000 80%
Mark Twain….......142,000 88%
Frank McCourt…....148,000 85%
John Glenn…...... 149,000 90%
Malcolm X…....... 152,000 90%
Vince Lombardi….. 244,000 93%

“If you would not be forgotten,
as soon as you are dead and rotten,
either write things worth reading,
or do things worth the writing.”
-Ben Franklin’s Autobiography

My life’s first important book has become the inspiration for summarizing it.