“One of the markers of a life well lived must surely be the stories, experiences and memories that are told, retold, remembered and re-experienced throughout the life span,” said Kathleen Adams of the Center for Journal Therapy in Denver which conducts life story writing programs for seniors.
The Grub Street Memoir Project in Boston has recently published its second anthology My Legacy is Simple. The first is titled Born Before Plastic. Alexis Rizzuto, the Memoir Project manager and senior writing coach, says that two striking features of both books are the ability of the seniors to make their stories “come alive” and the “profound sense of place” their stories of Boston contain.
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Faced with the need to close and renovate the west wing of the American History Museum, interim director Marc Pachter had a problem: what would happen to all the beloved and famous objects housed there, like Kermit the Frog, or Archie Bunker’s chair?
The museum staff solved the problem by selecting just over a hundred objects for display in a new exhibit titled American Stories. These objects were chosen to symbolically represent the larger American story.
“We wanted to create an exhibit that would give people an introductory experience to American history,” explains curator Bonnie Campbell-Lilienfeld. “…this was supposed to set a context for the rest of the museum.”
Memoir writers and family can learn a valuable lesson from the way the Smithsonian dealt with its problem.
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“A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens--second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter,” said Reynolds Price, novelist, poet and professor at Duke University.
Not necessarily, asserts Tim Parks, a novelist, essayist, translator, and an Associate Professor of Literature and Translation at IULM University in Milan writing in a New York Review of Books Blog post, Do We Need Stories?
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As you use the exercises outlined in our article “Gathering Life Story Ideas for Your Memoir” or those described in greater detail in the Stories To Tell Author’s Guide, you may feel a bit overwhelmed by the number of memories you have triggered and the volume of stories you might include in your memoir. Relax. You can’t include everything that has happened in your life in your book, nor would you want to.
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How can you know if your audience will find your book interesting? That depends on who your audience is, and what they find interesting. Your hard-earned knowledge is fascinating to you, but what excites your readers? The earlier you ask yourself this question, the easier it is to choose the contents of your book.
Many family histories are intended for private publication and they will only be read by the family. In this case, you can concentrate on sharing personal, or even intimate, family stories, photos and documents. This “insider” history, along with the family’s jokes, beliefs, recipes and myths, will fascinate your relatives, and intensify the sense of identity and belonging that families enjoy.
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A few years ago we worked with four members of a family who wanted to collaborate on a family history book. The problem was that they all lived in different states. Trying to manage their contributions and revisions of the manuscript was not always easy for anyone involved. So, I was excited when I saw a recent Wired article that described, GitHub, a new tool for online collaboration and version control.
GitHub was originally created to help software developers to manage collaborative open source projects As Wired explained, “It keeps track of who made what changes where. And it helps merge all those changes together. It “controls” the various versions of an open source software project.”
Recently GitHub has been employed to manage collaborative projects far beyond software development.
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Richard Gilbert, in a recent post on his excellent blog, Narrative, “Undercurrents in Narrative Essays” explored what engages readers.
“Stories that grip us,” said Gilbert, “ involve some tension—a conflict or question.” When that conflict isn’t present the “narrative lacks any urgency or even movement…Such flat writing flunks the ‘So What?’ test.”
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A good story, like a good picture, is more striking with a frame.
Family history is more than a collection of facts gleaned from the vital records. When well written, it tells the stories of ancestors, giving their lives context and meaning. To you it is obvious: your ancestors’ stories are illustrations of a larger point. But will your readers understand that point?
A frame is a narrative device to help your reader understand. A thoughtful introduction and conclusion frame a chapter or story by adding levels of meaning that aren’t explicit in the story itself. The frame is like a magnifying lens. Your reader can get a clear overview of the themes revealed in the stories of your ancestors.
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A good reporter must "…provide the emotional reality of the news, for it is the emotions, not the facts, that most engage and excite readers and in the end are the heart of most stories," said Tom Wolfe, journalist and author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities.
It’s good advice for family historians as well as reporters.
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Some of our Stories To Tell workshops begin with a “Dedication Page” exercise. We ask participants to answer two questions:
• Who is your book for?
• Why are they special to you?
The exercise is designed to make participants think about the people who will be reading their books. Understanding the audience for your book can sharpen its focus and make it much more engaging.
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David McCulloch, who has won Pulitzer Prizes for his books on Harry Truman and John Adams, knows how to write a good life story. Says McCulloch, “I believe very strongly that the essence of writing is to know your subject…to get beneath the surface.” As you create your personal or family history book that’s advice you should take to heart.
Unfortunately it’s something we often forget when we set out to research our genealogy or create a family history. We turn into Joe Friday, the character played by Jack Webb on the old TV series Dragnet, who was fond of saying, “Just the facts, ma’am.” A plethora of tools beginning with ancestory.com and familysearch.org help us find more and more of those facts. But as we gather the facts we may miss the stories that would make the family history memorable.
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Not everyone who thinks about or even starts to write a memoir succeeds in completing her book. One of the things that helps many who are successful to achieve publication is having someone to support them in completing the project. One great way to find that kind of support is to organize a group of other people in the process of creating memoirs. Here are some simple tips on how to do it.
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You’ve been thinking about creating a memoir or family history book. But you may feel a bit like you’re set off on a bit of an uncharted course. Creating a book seems like an overwhelming task. Looking at creating a book as a six-step process helps give you a roadmap which will make successfully seeing your book through to publication much less daunting.
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Many first time memoirists and family historians think that their first responsibility is to create a complete record of everything that happened. As a consequence their initial draft often reads like a list. All events great and small get equal treatment. Unfortunately these lists are missing the elements that make stories interesting and compelling: conflict, emotion and drama.
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One of the most famous pieces of advice that professional writers will share is, “Show, don’t tell.” But what does this really mean? Essentially, to describe, and let the story unfold, so that the reader can experience it as you did, firsthand. This dictum is directed at writers, but whether you record your stories or write them, the same techniques apply. In fact, oral storytellers are more likely to tell a story well, naturally.
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Writing a book can be a complicated process. You have multiple elements to manage: Generating ideas, research, planning and organizing, as well as the actual writing. You are juggling a lot of ideas, details and tasks. Thoughts related to any of the things you’re working on occur at odd times and can be forgotten before you act upon them if you don’t have a tool to capture those odd thoughts. That’s why a lot of great writers keep journals.
Think of your writer’s journal as a project ,management system. Here are just a few of the ways you can use a writer’s journal:
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What do a book and a pair of shoes have in common? A slogan.
Nike has made a fortune admonishing people to “Just do it!” The writer, staring hesitatingly, at the blank first page of a book would be well served by the same advice.
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A family history writer is something very different from a family history researcher even if they are embodied in the same person. A researcher ransacks the vital records to discover the facts. A writer goes beyond those facts to find their meaning.
“History at best has to be literature or it will go to dust,” said historian David McCullogh during his 2003 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities.
How does that transformation of fact to literature occur?
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It's National Novel Writing Month.
According to the National Association of Memoir Writers it's also National Memoir Writing Month.
Can you write a book in a month? I once saw the prolific pulp mystery writer Mickey Spillane on the Tonight Show. Johnny Carson asked him how long it took him to write a book.
“Depends on how bad I need the money,” said Spillane.
“What's the fastest you ever wrote one,” asked Johnny.
“I wrote one over a three-day weekend once,” he replied.
So it can be done, if you're skilled and experienced, not to mention highly motivated.
However, if you've never written a book, expecting to finish a manuscript in a month might be a tad unrealistic.
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You’ve probably seen the sign that adorns office cubicles, “"You don’t have to be schizophrenic to work here, but it helps."” That touch of humor might well describe the dual roles of the author of a memoir.
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