Interested in writing your personal memoir, but having trouble getting started? Author Abigail Thomas's book, "Thinking About Memoir," lays out ways to get started. To help, she also includes writing exercises that help shape a personal history.

Thomas knows what she's talking about. She is the best-selling author of the memoir "A Three Dog Life," named a Best Book of 2006 by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

"Thinking About Memoir" is the first in AARP Books/Sterling's projected "Arts of Living" series, a guide to helping AARP members reimagine life at 50-plus. For more information, visit online at www.bulletin.aarp.org [1].

(Kay Johnson is a staff writer at the Hutchinson Leader. She can be reached at johnson@hutchinsonleader.com [2]).