on Jane Friedman site:
Two temporal elements—the time frame of the story and where you are standing in time while you tell your tale—are central to the idea of structure in memoir.
But they are tricky to determine because you are still living the life you are writing about in your memoir, and you existed at all the points in time throughout the story you are telling. It’s easy to think that you are just you and the story is just the story, and to believe that you don’t have to make any decisions around time the way a novelist does. But if you neglect to make conscious choices about time, you risk getting tangled up and writing a convoluted story.
Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog 