TUESDAY TUTORIAL
One useful thing you can do with AI today.

My dad started writing down his life story once. He got a few pages in, in his own handwriting, answering questions about his childhood and his family. Then he stopped. He never finished it. My sister kept the notebook after he passed and showed it to me years later. Most of the pages were still blank.

That notebook is the reason this post exists.

I am now a senior citizen. I decided I wanted to leave something for my kids and grandkids that my dad never got the chance to finish. The difference between us is simple. He had to write everything out by hand. I can talk into my phone. That one difference is why I actually finished mine and he didn't.

Here is exactly how I did it, using AI as the tool that made it possible.

Before you start, know two things

This is not a weekend project. Mine took about three or four months of sessions, spread out whenever I had twenty or thirty minutes, and I am still adding to it. That is normal. If you try to do this in one sitting, you will burn out before you get to the good parts.

You also do not have to share it right away. I have not shown mine to my kids yet. I told my wife where the file lives, so if anything happens to me, she knows how to find it and pass it along. That is enough for now. This is not a race.

Step 1: Talk instead of write

The single biggest reason people never finish a project like this is the blank page. Staring at an empty document is exhausting. Talking is not.

I use Wispr Flow, a voice dictation tool that types out what you say almost instantly, in any app on your phone or computer. Instead of typing my answers, I just talked, the same way I would tell a story to a friend at dinner. Wispr Flow turned that into text I could actually use.

If dictation feels strange at first, it will not for long. After a few sessions it becomes the most natural part of the whole process.

Step 2: Let AI ask the questions

I did not sit down and write a memoir from scratch. I had a conversation with Claude, and it asked me one question at a time. Where did you grow up. Tell me about your parents. What do you want your grandkids to know about you.

That single prompt started the whole project. Every session after that, I just kept answering. Some days I only had time for one question. Some days I answered five. The AI kept track of everything and organized it as we went.

Step 3: Let old photos jog memories you forgot you had

Two photographed pages of my ad’s his handwriting in the unfinished journal are still one of the most important pieces of my own book, not because of what he wrote, but because of what he never got to.

Old photos work the same way for your own memory. A photo of a childhood street, a work event, an old car, will surface a story you would never have thought to mention on your own. When one came to mind, I described it to the AI and let it fold the memory into the right chapter.

Step 4: Turn the answers into real chapters

A transcript of you talking is not a book yet. This is where AI earns its keep. I asked Claude to take everything I had said and turn it into actual chapters, written in my own voice, not a stranger's.

I reviewed each chapter, corrected details I remembered wrong, and asked for revisions where something did not sound like me. This back and forth is where the book actually became mine.

Step 5: Add the photos last

Once the chapters were solid, I gathered photos from my phone and old albums, about 45 of them so far, and had the AI help me figure out where each one belonged in the story. A photo of the house I grew up in goes with the chapter about growing up. A photo of my wedding goes with the chapter about meeting my wife.

This part takes patience. Photos rarely match your memory of them on the first try, and you will move a few around more than once. That is fine. It is supposed to take a while.

Step 6: Export it somewhere safe

When I was ready, I had the whole thing turned into a Word document I could read, mark up, and hand off to family later. From there, a service like Blurb or Lulu can turn it into an actual printed book, the kind that sits on a shelf instead of living only on a hard drive.

You do not have to get to this step quickly. Mine is not there yet. A finished Word document that exists is already more than most people manage.

Try This With AI

What it does: Starts the exact conversation that got this whole project moving, using the same interview approach that turned scattered memories into real chapters.

Before you begin: Have a rough idea of who the book is for, your kids, your grandkids, or both, so the AI can tailor its questions.

Customize it: Swap "my family" for the specific people you are writing this for, like "my three kids" or "my grandchildren," so the tone lands right from the first question.

Try it now: ChatGPT · Claude

Then ask this: "Based on everything I've told you, what are two or three stories I haven't mentioned yet that you think my family would want to know about?"

This will not be finished next week, and it does not need to be. Mine still is not. Open a new chat this weekend, answer the first question, and stop whenever you feel like stopping. You can always come back to it.

WHERE TO GO NEXT
More on this topic, from sources worth your time: