know.

CookbookBooks and writingNo. 4

A memoir from vignettesa hundred small memories put in order

Recipe No. 4Books and writing

For
A retired teacher writing a memoir for the grandchildren, and perhaps for publication
You bring
A notebook of memories written as they came, typed up or photographed, a rough idea of the chapters of your life, and an hour or two most mornings
You get
A memoir in six or seven chapters, each a document of short vignettes in the order you chose, with an overview that tells the chapter’s arc, and a link per chapter for the family
Time
A morning to set up, then a vignette or two a day, and a weekly half hour putting the new ones in place
Works in
know.sh on the web · your AI assistant, through MCP
Keep it
Private while you work; share one document by a read-only link when it is ready.

Nobody remembers a life in order. You remember the smell of the chalk in Room 14, the flood of 1957, the morning your father sold the cows, and they come back in whatever order they like. Most memoir advice says to write them down as they come and sort them later. The sorting is the hard part, and it is where most memoirs stall.

This recipe gives each memory a place. You keep writing by hand or on a tablet; once a week your assistant, whichever one you use, files the new vignettes word for word into the right chapter, a period of your life named after where you lived it. You drag them into the order the chapter needs. Then the assistant reads what you have written and asks the questions a good interviewer would, about sounds, smells and who else was there, and it lists the years you have not touched. When a chapter’s vignettes are in order, you write its overview: the arc.

The words are yours throughout. The assistant files, asks and counts; it does not write your memories, and this recipe never asks it to.

What you will use

Shelf
One shelf for the memoir, What I remember, with a line on who it is for.
Research document
A document per period of your life, named after the place you lived it; its overview becomes the chapter’s arc.
Finding
One vignette per finding, filed as an Observation, titled with a concrete thing and a year; gaps you mean to fill as Question.
Your AI assistant
Files each week’s vignettes word for word into the right chapter, asks questions that jog your memory, and finds the years you have not written about.
The editor
Where you drag vignettes into order, correct what the assistant misread, and write each chapter’s arc.
Revisions
Every earlier telling of every vignette, kept, marked as yours or the assistant’s, with Restore for the day you rewrite one too far.
Public link
A chapter at a time for the family, on a link with a password, with private vignettes left out.

Method

  1. 1

    Sketch the chapters, and let your assistant make them

    On paper, sketch six or seven periods of your life and name each after a place, not a theme: “The farm on Pike Road, 1952–1964”, “Room 14, the Harlan Street years, 1971–1989”. Places hold memories better than ideas do.

    Connect your assistant to know.sh and ask it to make a shelf called What I remember, with a line such as “For Maisie, Leo and June, and whoever else wants to know”, and a document for each period, with a one-line overview. The arc of a chapter is the last thing you will write, not the first.

  2. 2

    Hand over each week’s vignettes, to be filed word for word

    Keep writing wherever you write best. Once a week, give your assistant what you wrote: a typed file, or photographs of the notebook pages. Ask it to file each vignette as a finding in the chapter it belongs to, as an Observation, word for word: no tidying, no improving. A local model through Ollama can do this if you would rather your memories never pass through another company’s assistant.

    Have it title each vignette with something you could touch and a year: “Mr. Okafor’s chalk, 1974”, not “A kind man”. Names that recur in titles and first lines, such as Okafor, Pike Road and the Buick, reach the index; find the chalk and the flood with Look up (⌘K).

  3. 3

    Check the transcription and drag the vignettes into order

    Open a chapter and press Edit. Read each new vignette against your notebook first: an assistant reading handwriting will misread a name or a date, and may smooth a sentence you meant to leave rough. Put your words back.

    Then drag each vignette by its grip, or press Alt and an arrow key. The numbers follow the order. It need not be the order things happened in: many memoir chapters open on the memory that explains the rest and then go back. Read the chapter straight through afterwards, the way a grandchild will.

  4. 4

    Let your assistant ask the questions

    Ask your assistant to read a chapter and ask you questions that might bring back more: what the kitchen sounded like, who else was at the table, what happened the next morning. Tell it to base each question on a line you wrote and to quote it. Good questions are specific; “tell me more about the farm” is not.

    Answer by writing, in your notebook, in your own voice. Some answers become new vignettes; most improve old ones. The assistant knows only what you have written, so its questions are prompts, not research.

  5. 5

    Find the years you skipped

    Every few weeks, ask your assistant to list each vignette across the whole shelf with the years it covers, in order, and then the years nothing covers. The gaps are often the hard years, and you may choose to leave them. But choose; do not skip them by accident.

    For each gap you mean to fill, have it add a Question finding at the end of the chapter it falls in, “1959–1961: when Tom was at sea”, so it waits for you in the chapter itself.

  6. 6

    Write each chapter’s arc in its overview

    When a chapter’s vignettes are in order, reread them and write its overview in the editor: three or four paragraphs on what changed in you over those years. This is the hardest writing in the book and the part only you can do.

    Your assistant can help you see the material. Ask it which people, objects and places recur across the chapter, and in which vignettes; a creek that appears five times may be what the chapter is about. The arc itself is yours to write.

  7. 7

    Rewrite without losing the first telling

    Memoirists rewrite a vignette many times, and the first telling is often the truest. Every version is kept: open Revisions on a vignette to see each earlier one, marked as yours or the assistant’s, and Restore the one you want back.

    When a relative corrects a date or a name, change it in the text and add a Note beside the line saying who corrected it and when. Your notes stay private, even on a shared chapter.

  8. 8

    Share with the family, one chapter at a time

    When a chapter reads well, press Share, set a password, and copy the link: it is shown only once. Send the link and the password separately. Chapters sent one at a time, a month apart, are something the family looks forward to.

    Before you send it, open each vignette that names a living person who has not read it, and leave it out of the link from its own page until they have. The family reads; it cannot write in your library, so their memories come back to you by phone or letter.

Specimen

  1. You

    Using know.sh, file the three vignettes in week-38.txt in the chapter “Room 14 — the Harlan Street years, 1971–1989” on my What I remember shelf. One finding each, as Observations, word for word. Do not change my wording.

  2. research_list_findingsRead 11 findings from Room 14 — the Harlan Street years, 1971–1989
  3. finding_addAdded “Mr. Okafor’s chalk, 1974” to Room 14, 12
  4. finding_addAdded “The winter the boiler failed, 1978” to Room 14, 13
  5. finding_addAdded “The spelling bee we lost on rhythm, 1983” to Room 14, 14

  6. A local model through Ollama

    Filed all three at the end of the chapter, unchanged. The third had no title in the file, so I used its first line. You may want to drag them into place.

A local model files a week’s vignettes word for word at the end of the chapter. Putting them in order is your job, in the editor.

  1. You

    Using know.sh, read “The farm on Pike Road, 1952–1964” on my What I remember shelf. Ask me questions that might bring back more, and tell me which years I have not written about yet.

  2. Claude

    Some questions, each from a line you wrote:

    1. You wrote that your mother “kept the egg money in a coffee can”. Where was the can kept, and what was it spent on?
    2. In The flood of 1957, “the water came up to the second porch step”. Who was on the porch with you, and what did they say?
    3. You mention “the Sunday dresses” three times. Who made them?
    4. Selling the cows ends as the truck leaves. What happened at supper that night?

    Years with no vignette: your chapter covers 1952 to 1958 and 1962 to 1964. Nothing is set from 1959 to 1961, the years Tom’s letters says your brother was at sea. Shall I add that gap as a Question at the end of the chapter?

    From your library

    1. The farm on Pike Road, 3: The flood of 1957
    2. The farm on Pike Road, 8: Selling the cows, 1958
    3. The farm on Pike Road, 9: Tom’s letters, 1962
Your assistant asks what an interviewer would, quoting your own lines, and points to the years you have not written about. It does not answer them for you.

Prompts to try

  1. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, file the vignettes I am giving you in the right chapters on my What I remember shelf, by the years they describe. One finding per vignette, as an Observation, titled with a concrete thing and a year. Copy my words exactly; do not correct, shorten or improve them. Tell me any you could not place.

  2. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, read the chapter “The farm on Pike Road, 1952–1964” on my What I remember shelf and ask me fifteen questions that might bring back more: what I could hear, smell and touch, who else was there, what happened next. Base each on a line in a vignette and quote it. Do not write any of the answers.

  3. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, list every vignette on my What I remember shelf with the years it covers, in order, then list the years no vignette covers. Add each gap longer than a year as a Question finding at the end of the chapter it falls in.

  4. Your assistant, connected to know.sh (Claude, ChatGPT or a local model)

    Using know.sh, read “Room 14 — the Harlan Street years, 1971–1989” on my What I remember shelf and list every vignette that names or clearly identifies a living person other than me, with what it says about them, so I can decide whom to ask before I share the chapter.

Variations

  • Writing down a parent’s memories instead of your own? Record the conversations, file each story as a vignette in their words, and see the oral history recipe for consent.
  • A memoir of one thing: a year, a house, a marriage, a classroom. One document, forty vignettes, and the overview as the whole book’s arc.
  • Keep the iOS app on your phone (it is in TestFlight beta) for the memory that arrives in the car park; your assistant can file it properly later.
  • Once the memoir is done, the people and dates in it make a start on a family history.

Where it falls short

  • No photographs in know.sh. Your assistant can read a photographed notebook page, but the library holds only the words; describe a photo in the vignette and say where the print is kept.
  • No printed book. There is no PDF or print layout; for a bound family edition, copy the finished text into a layout or print-on-demand tool.
  • Dragging reorders vignettes within a chapter only. Moving one to another chapter means asking your assistant to copy it there.
  • Assistants misread handwriting and smaller local models call tools less reliably. Check every vignette against your notebook; Revisions shows every change.

A note on living people, and on publishing

Indexed under

MemoirVignettesLife writingMemory promptsTimeline gapsPrivacy of living people

See also