Roughly translated, the words above mean that people who lose touch with their origins also lose their identity. Spaniards of a certain age will remember them as the lyrics of a popular folk song, first heard in the seventies.

Unfortunately, it takes most of us half a life time or more to realise just how important knowing about our orígenes is, and then when we finally do it’s often too late. Family gossip and half-remembered stories of unfamiliar places and remote events are all we have to go on in our attempts to fill in the gaps.

We want to know more, but by now there is nobody to check things out with. It feels like we are chasing shadows. What wouldn't we give, in these circumstances, to hear a convincing, first-hand account of the events and people we are interested in?

If you commission a Wordportrait of yourself now, you’ll be accurately preserving personalities, places and events in a context that makes sense for those who come after you. And what's more, you’ll be the star.

You'll have ensured that your memory will live on in your heirs, and the heirs of everyone you have cared for in your life. And at the same time, you’ll have done your bit towards helping them to preserve their identity, by making sure they can keep in touch with their origins.

Consider, for a moment, the Mona Lisa. What makes this such a great portrait? Her smile intrigues, no question about it, but it is not any single one of her individual features that is really responsible. It is the depiction of her as a whole person that makes the portrait such a successful study.

In a similar way, your Wordportrait amounts to more than the individual episodes in your life that it contains. It is an inclusive and convincing picture of you told in your “voice”, captured and expressed in 40,000 words that say everything about you that you have chosen to reveal.

And if you have a sneaking suspicion that your life is not interesting enough to be a worthwhile subject for a Wordportrait – well, perhaps you should think again. As Jack Keroucac said, "Every man's (he could have said and woman's, but he was Jack Kerouac) life is an epic", and that includes yours. It's the form the epic takes that is the point.
 

Here's a small note of caution, that may as well go here as anywhere: producing a Wordportrait is fun, but it is not a light-hearted undertaking. To make the most of it you should be clear about your motives, your priorities, and what you hope to achieve. The exercises I give you to do at the beginning of the process, the questions I will put to you, are designed to help you achieve this clarity. This is an important part of my role. However you may think of it, I think of the payment you make for your Wordportrait as - mainly - the price of my participation in a collaborative effort.

You are perhaps asking yourself why you shouldn't write your own Wordportrait, and save yourself some money. There's no reason at all why not, of course. Give it a go. What’s more, if you’d like to send it to me when you’ve finished, I’ll tell you what I think of it. And if I think it could be improved, I’ll give you a few tips. Perhaps you'll give me some ideas as well - I'm always on the look-out for new ones!

Maybe you’ve already written a good part of your life story, but can't quite finish it? Fine. Send it to me and if I think what you’ve done could provide a good basis for a Wordportrait, I’ll tell you that too. I’ll tell you how much work I would need to spend on it, and I’ll give you an estimate of the cost.

You may have thought a lot about biographical and autobiographical writing, or you may not have thought much about it at all until now. You may have read everything the experts have to say on the subject, or you may be completely ignorant of their pronouncements.

If you are in the knowledgeable category, you'll recognise some (or even all?) of the following:

REBECCA WEST has a good claim to being the original source of this old favourite. A lot of people would say she had a good point. My reply would be - not necessarily.

 DOROTHY PARKER made this observation, along with a boatload of others equally sharp. It bears thinking about – for a while, anyway.

REBECCA WEST again. Who could deny the truth of this?

MARY CABLE is credited with this insight. Long-winded, but true enough, in my opinion

That's NIETZSCHE, just reminding us of our place in the cosmos, in case we'd forgotten. He should have got out more, lived it up a bit, some would say.
 

BERNARD MALAMUD this time. Brilliant.
 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON said this. If both he and Rebecca West were right, it presumably means that all history is fiction, too. Now there’s a thought.

That's from the pen of the wonderful, incomparable, AVA GARDNER.

 And for a final final reflection, how about this?:
 

Boom Boom! That, as you may have guessed even if you didn't get any of the others, was a SAMUEL GOLDWYN special.