David Archuleta knows what you’re thinking. The smiling, sweet-natured singing sensation who swept through the seventh season of “American Idol” like a hurricane — only if hurricanes were adorable, sincere and charmingly awkward — asked himself the same questions after New York-based Penguin Group contacted him about the possibility of writing a memoir.

“At first I was like, ‘What am I going to talk about?’” Archuleta said, speaking by phone from California, where he is writing and recording songs for his third studio album. “Don’t you usually write those when you’re older and you’ve lived more of a life? What am I going to talk about that’s interesting?”

There’s an echo of that hesitancy on the first page of “Chords of Strength: A Memoir of Soul, Song and the Power of Perseverance,” which filled up sales racks on Tuesday and which Archuleta will personally be pitching to his home state fans with a pair of appearances this week at Deseret Book stores in Salt Lake City and Orem.

The first line of the book reads, “I have no idea why I’m doing this, but I know I need to be doing it for some reason.” It’s possible, of course, that’s exactly how one of the best-known “American Idol” runners-up felt about sitting down to write his life’s story. The line is actually from Archuleta’s journal, however, jotted down during a break from “American Idol” auditions. It’s the last entry he made before fame happened.

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