“I’m gonna make it to heaven. Light up the sky like a flame. I’m gonna live forever. Baby, remember my name.”

Isn’t that what most of us want: to be remembered?

The above lyrics from Fame by Irene Cara have been rattling around in my brain for several days now. I do want to be remembered, and many have suggested that getting a life on paper could be a way to do that. But that feels daunting somehow. It always sounds like “go to your room and don’t come out until you have a book.”

How do you even start?

I have taken memoir writing courses and I have loved the prompts they give, like “dinner at my house was...” (thank you Nancy Aronie) because they would make me take off writing. But absent prompts, I become overwhelmed with capturing a life.

A friend suggested I sign up for Storyworth because they send you a prompt every week and if you write to those, they will even organize them into a book for you at the end. It sounded promising, and now every Monday they send me a prompt. But so far none have made me take off writing immediately.

I’m going to blame that on summer — fine weather, more friends and events that seem to eat up my time — because there is nothing wrong with their prompts. They are questions like, “What was your mother like when you were a child?” or “Describe your grandparents” or “What was the best job you ever had?” or “What are the most important lessons you have learned in life?”

It took me a while to understand that, yes, these questions are simple, but my answers don’t have to be. I can make my answers as layered and complicated as I choose. And I will.

But why do it at all?

I have always written so that is part of the reason. But looking deeper I see that at my age in my 70s it is natural to want to look back, reflect and try to make sense of it all. For example, it’s amazing how wise and prescient my parents look from this distance. 

I also think I can say a thing or two about setting intentions and taking risks. From this vantage point I really don’t believe how cavalierly I bought a one-way ticket to Buenos Aires at 26 with no job and no knowledge of Spanish. But I did and stayed two years.

I also know something about not giving up until goals are realized, but also about why failures occurred yet did not permanently derail me. For example, I failed at least three or four auditions for TV work before I wised up, listened to good advice and finally won my shot.

And, of course, I would write about the best decision I ever made, how this Irish Catholic Bostonian decided to marry a smart, kind, thoughtful, confident and often hilarious, divorced Jew from Denver. We had a blast, but he’s gone now.

I guess I’d better start writing now that fall has arrived; there are no valid excuses in the off-season not to write. Perhaps I will begin with my own prompt, one that starts this way: “Baby, remember my name.”

Paula Lyons lives in Vineyard Haven.