First I would suggest that you read other people's memoirs and decide if there is a particular style that you enjoy reading. In all honesty, some memoirs are extremely tedious and some are rather entertaining as well as enlightening. I finished mine last year, not for mainstream publication but for my grandkids and nephews. I kind of wrote mine in the method of a tribal elder telling stories, I suppose it turned out to be more of an anthology than a mainstream type memoir but everyone seems to enjoy it. If you are writing for your grandchildren, write from your heart. Don't worry about perfection. I kind of thought about all the things that I wish I could ask my parents/grandparents if they were still living and tried to incorportate some of those details in my memoir. For instance I wrote a story about where I was and being with my daughter and granddaughters on 9/11.
I knew all about the statistics of my older family (when/where born, jobs, when/where died) but I didn't really know what life was like for them during the dustbowl, why my grandmother became such a die hard Republican, why my grandfather read the Bible constantly but never went to church etc etc. I wrote about what it was like to be bullied in school, I wrote about the first time I met a man who dressed as a woman, I wrote about my experience going to an all black church for a chicken dinner. Some of those stories actually encouraged conversations among the whole family about their own experiences. If you are wanting to mainstream publish, check with publishers to see what they are looking for. If wanting to self publish for your family- enjoy the journey but don't get too bogged down with unnecessary dates/details that make your memoir sound like you are filling out a spread sheet rather than telling really great stories.
