How to write a biography about myself (without losing hair)

written by John Lim | Writing

July 30, 2024

I stared at the book I was writing, wondering if I was doing myself a career suicide by writing about my own experiences with depression, and how I had suicidal thoughts in the past. I was scared.

And if you’re writing about your own biography, you might be worried about 3 things.

Whether you sound like you’re just so full of it

It might sound like your head is full of air, and arrogance, if you tell people that you’re going to write a book about yourself. The last thing you would like to show up as is someone who is proud, with little self-awareness.

But it’s also that culturally, in Singapore, or in Asia, there might not be much of a culture around talking about oneself.

When is it worth writing?

So the question really becomes,

when is it worth writing?

This is what we call a threshold criteria before you embark on any book project. Because whilst books are easy to start, they are not so easy to sustain.

If you look at the bulk of books out there in Singapore, if you’re selling anything above 10,000 copies, you would already be considered a best-seller.

But what are the best-sellers about?

Best sellers from Kinokuniya
Best sellers from Kinokuniya

If you look at the bestsellers above, we see a majority of books that are based off Singaporean personalities.

Why do Singaporeans bother spending $25 on a book like that, especially when the common consensus seems to be that these books are not very ‘interesting?” After all, you might imagine that the life of someone else famous (like founding father Rajaratnam), or rich (like Ho Kwon Ping) does not concern the average reader.

Dig beneath, and you would quickly see that the reader is looking for habits, and ways to succeed.

That’s why you see that just behind those Singaporean books are the classic best-sellers – like Atomic Habits, and The Psychology of Money.

Over at Popular, another popular bookstore (forgive the pun), we see the same thing. People are interested in self-help, over biographies.
Over at Popular, another popular bookstore (forgive the pun), we see the same thing. People are interested in self-help, over biographies.

These evidence the fact that Singaporeans are still looking for self-help tips, particularly around how to rise in one’s career.

If you’re writing, what should you be writing?

  1. A local, Singaporean story of a famous personality that resonates with the average reader
    1. Here we see why the Musings of George Yeo have been such a hit. You would quickly see that people resonate with the fact that he was a small-time boy educated at St Patrick’s, before making it big on the international scene.
    2. Unfortunately, here the problem becomes that you might not have the access to reach some of these ‘famous people’.
  2. A biography that has practical self help tips, aimed at a niche market
    1. If you look at Daniel Wong’s bestseller ‘The Happy Student’, whilst it wasn’t an obvious biography, it offered tips to students that worked. Here the nuance isn’t just that he gave hacks, but that he showed them a comprehensive system that covered values, vision, and one’s definition of success.

When is it not worth writing?

As much as I would love to tell you that every story is worth writing, the truth is that it’s not.

You might end up with a book in your hands that not many want to read.

Sorry for being a dampener.

I would say this from the outset because we’ve seen many authors who’ve come to the push and shove of the daily writing, and realised that they can’t do it. They say they want a book, but when it comes to writing it, they finally realise they can’t do some of these:

  1. Writing consistently , at least once a day
  2. Dealing with edits from editors , that requires them to constantly change the book
  3. Developing the story – realising that some parts of the story are not fully fleshed out, and that you might need to find more information, or else to trash that part of the story

So how do you write it?

First put down a list of the major turning points in your life

In this section, you are not just looking for milestones, but you’re looking for turning points. These are the moments in your life where you’ve found a major shift in your life.

An example of the turning points in my life, which you can use as a reference for your own
An example of the turning points in my life, which you can use as a reference for your own

What pushed me to eventually write the book was realising that my story had a message of hope. It was the fact that being mindful of my own experiences, through things like a silent retreat, had genuinely brought me to a better place.

Or simply just talking to a therapist, rather than keeping it inside me, helped me a lot in becoming better at identifying the emotions inside me.

Those were the turning points that could help someone else.

Here’s another example. When we were ghostwriting the memoir of a CEO, we saw that whilst this was the hardest part to lock down. When you’re running a business, or working everyday, it might be hard to dissociate between the true turning points, and those that seem to be normal, everyday matters.

You can also use the Hero’s Journey as a framework to think about your story, shared extensively by Joseph Campbell
You can also use the Hero’s Journey as a framework to think about your story, shared extensively by Joseph Campbell

When the CEO spoke more about his daily activities, we began to identify some of these as milestones. But to him, they weren’t. They were just normal.

For example, we thought the first day of becoming a CEO was a big thing for this man. But yet he didn’t remember the day, as he felt it was actually more weight on his shoulders.

This is why you might want to write down every milestone that seems significant. Even if it seems small at first, just write it down. You can whittle it down later.

Write daily

You can expect yourself to take about 6 to 9 months to knock out a 18,000 word manuscript. As much as we’d like to give you better advice beyond ‘write, damnit, just write!’, I’m afraid there’s no other advice beyond this.

Find an editor

You can’t check your own work. You’re definitely going to need an editor to help you.

Find a publisher (or publish it yourself)

Finding a publisher might end up becoming one of the hardest things you do. We’ve been through the same process, where we were sending out to almost 9 different publishers, but getting no reply.

We eventually self-published.

You might want to do something similar. You either get a publisher, or you self-publish.

You should probably self-publish your first book

If you’re an untested author, let’s be honest. It will get harder for you to find a publisher who’s willing to take your ‘unsolicited manuscript’ (what the industry calls authors who have no agent to ‘sell their book’).

This is because the publisher isn’t just local today. With the internet, he gets manuscripts from all over the world. And if you’re new, untested, and have never gotten a book published before, why would a publisher take a risk on you?

This is not to pour cold water on your dreams, but it’s to tell you that there is value in being willing to self-publish.

We did the same thing when we first started.

Come look for ghostwriters

Of course, we do get that all of these can seem like a real full-time job. That’s why it might be worth taking time to do it with professionals like us, who can get the job done.

Ultimately, you’re not just paying for a book.

You’re paying for a brand.

Let me say that again. You’re not paying for a book, but a brand. Often when we speak to clients, we’ve come to see that the 5-figures they pay us for the biography they write isn’t just about the story.

But it’s a strategic act in communicating and re-inventing who they are as people, so that they can eventually learn and grow from it.

Take some time to think about it.

A book is never easy to do. But once you decide to take time to do it, it’s worth writing it well.

Or you can always just talk to us first about the book you have in mind, by clicking here.


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