A life in pictures

 Flannery O’Connor said that the art of writing fiction is the art of drawing pictures.

I think that might be a helpful thought in writing autobiography too.

I have some friends who have talked about writing theirs. I hope all of them do.

If I were going to try it, I think I’d write short items that drew a picture — the written equivalent of a sketch or snapshot — of moments in my life.

How many of those pictures would it take to give an accurate account of you?

Could you do it in 10? Fifty? 

It took Gandhi 167, as I recall. He wrote The Story of My Experiments with Truth as a series of columns for a weekly newspaper. Newspaper columns tend to be short — 500 words in my day, somewhat longer in Gandhi’s. When the columns were collected and published as a book, people commented on how short the chapters were. Some contemporary writers have compared Gandhi’s chapters to blog posts.

Gandhi’s book is sometimes called a spiritual autobiography. He was a complicated soul. I could see why he’d need so many pictures. He had a lot of important moments in his life.

Me? I’d need fewer pictures to tell a simpler tale. I’d say closer to 10 than 167. An essay, rather than a book.