Writing stories about your life is like plying the waters of some familiar yet exotic sea. It is the act of casting your sails for adventure. Imagine it: The sun melts in a thousand shades of orange on a long horizon as your tiny craft cuts through swells undaunted by the gathering challenge, because out in the haze awaits–you can see it–the dream of your story, the possibility of immortalizing your life experience of speaking the truth of what you have seen, and heard, and felt. This can be a long voyage, full of tempest, but I know of no other that can net such riches, for when you write a memoir you change your life. When you set down a truth about the past,  a new future dawns.

–Lisa Dale Norton, Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir