General information from a recorded webinar, not legal advice for your situation.

How do you get ready to write an obituary?

Quick answer · 0:47 · From Legacy Writing: Obituaries and Memoirs · Recorded Aug 27, 2026

Short answer

Get organized first. List the essential facts, achievements and milestones. Then list what makes you you, like hobbies and passions that would never show up on a resume. Free write everything down and edit later. Even if someone else writes it, this groundwork is a gift to them.

Key points

  • Collect dates, places and milestones.
  • Add what you love, like birding or canoeing in the Boundary Waters.
  • Write freely first, edit later.

Kate LeibfriedWriter and ghostwriter, Click Clack Writing · Guest presenter

Read this part of the transcript

This is also a gift you can give to your loved ones when you’re going about writing an obituary. If you don’t want to write your own obituary, you can lay the groundwork for somebody else to write your obituary, and that means getting organized. You also will have to be organized if you write your own obituary. So this means collecting and listing essential facts. It means listing your achievements, noteworthy moments, milestones, just those basic nitty-gritty facts. It also means thinking about what makes you essentially you. What are the things that you love in life? Do you love bird watching? Put that in there. Do you love painting?

Created automatically from the recording. Full transcript on the webinar page.

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