Writing Bios
To sum up your life in a four paragraph narrative for someone to read as an introduction or to attach to a resume seems like the greatest contradiction to actually living a life worth mentioning. Here, let me recap my life by recounting major benchmarks that I think are worthy enough for you to pay attention to and will ultimatley impress you. Therefore building an expectation before I speak to you (or interview with you) that I have achieved more than you have and am much more intelligent, creative, valuable, etc, etc.
OR….
Maybe it’s just a touch. A brief but informative impression that you get from someone like starring at a piece of art in a gallery. You read the title of the piece, the card tells you “it was done in a Greco-Roman style, brushed with horse-hair and boisenberry root and the canvas was made of blowfish intestines and brine or something like that”; and you can’t pronounce or remember the artists name but maybe, just maybe you have some connection with the art. People, of course are more complex than what they create. But their expression, whether written or painted or photographed contains an element of them.
So, a biography- both short and long can at least or at most be a simple touch with a complete stranger in the uncertain hope that the elemnts contained within the words are felt.
Nicholas R. Wimmer 