Those who come after us will want to know we really lived and loved as intensely as they do. Tell them.

WHO ARE YOU? WHY DO YOU ACT THE WAY THAT YOU DO?

These questions capture the essential things we want to know about ourselves and explain to others. Yet so often we fail to do so. Instead many of us spend a great deal of effort researching the history of our ancestors to discover no more than the fact that they were workmen, servants and grocers of whom we can learn next to nothing. If only they had written the story of their lives!

A Message to the Children is a book with a difference: an account of the author's life, a memoir to his children, a love letter to his wife, and a guide to how you, too, can write about your own life. Written in an easy and amusing style, it explains for the benefit of the non-writer such subjects as how to break the task down into manageable sections; how to exploit photographs and scrapbooks for materials; and what themes to write about. Then it applies those lessons in a way that will both touch and entertain you.Jim Williams is a Booker-nominated author of thirteen novels and two works of non-fiction.