Write Your History as a Book

Jul 7, 2021 family history your book

A Plan to Write Your History as a Book

WHY?

• Everyone has a story to tell. Your story matters.
• You might want to write your life story, but you don’t know where to start.
• If you don’t write it, who will? It’s your story, you should tell it.
• In two or more generations, how will your progeny know you without your story? Perhaps your family has a better tradition of oral story tellers than average?
• Yet, consider that oral history does not last as long as written history.
• See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2011/10/the-hearts-of-the-children-shall-turn?lang=eng
• You want to be like my Dad’s Dad who wrote about his life, not like my Mom’s Dad who did not write anything and I have struggled to learn his story. You want to make it easier for your great-grand kids and their kids to know your story when they are ready to find out.
• I would have appreciated a guide when I struggled to figure out how to do this in addition to writing about life.

WHAT?

• “Your Story” starting in this year and wrapping up a year from now in Aug
• For this “advanced family history” work, I am inviting only interested people in the ward to write their own personal history.
• Having done it, I can guide you through it together step by step.
• It can be 2 pages or 400 pages.

WHO?

• Author: You
• Guide/Accountability Partner/Technology Consultant: Me
• Audience: Your loved ones. Consider parents, children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews, your great-grand kids and their kids and on down the line.
• Editor(s): Recruit someone in your family to edit later in the year. Or ask another of the group deciding to do it this year to edit each other’s work.

WHEN? - 2021

• For those of you who don’t want to commit to this in 2021, please put it in your perhaps list for 2022 or when you are ready.
• See https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/church/news/how-to-get-started-writing-a-personal-history?lang=eng for an article.

HOW?

• It is nice that we don’t have to go to the temple by ourselves the first time, so we’ll copy that pattern and not ask you to write your story alone either.

• I’ll be a guide and walk you or a group of you through the do-it-yourself process.

• When doing something new and challenging, it can be helpful to have the help of someone who has done it already.

CAUTION: This is the only invitation I will extend. I will not follow up with everyone in the ward on this optional “advanced effort” that will last a year.

Only those expressing interest will get reminders and invites to the monthly Zoom call to review the month’s prompts and actions to make your story available to your family audience.

If you are interested AND respond by email with an active confirmation that you are interested and committed to have a go at this, I will add you to the group participant list. If no one responds, no worries, we’ll just skip it and move on to other activities for Temple and Family History work. I just wanted to offer this optional effort. It is NOT required by anyone.

If you don’t want to proceed at this time, stop reading here.

If you want to accept the invitation, please skim the following to give you a sense of what’s coming if anyone is interested.

A Possible Plan

Sep

• Give yourself permission for your story to be imperfect. We don’t expect super high quality from our ancestor’s stories, and neither will the 4th generation from now expect that from you. Let go of the inner critic for 2021. Do the best you can and let that be enough.
• Decide if you want to use traditional pen & paper or computer tools or smart phone apps
• Gather photos that (a) you may include, and (b) that will prompt your memories.
• Review any old journals, awards, trophies, etc. to see what memories they prompt.
• Short Story Option:
  • For those who only want a short life story, write a few pages as 1st draft
• Comprehensive Story Option:
  • Let’s make a skeleton to stick memories on when they surface. One will often spark others.
  • Write a bulleted list of each year of your life as an capture skeleton (not necessarily how you will present your story)
  • Initially group into (a) childhood, (b) adolescence, (c) early adult years, (d) marriage, (e) being a parent, (f) middle adult years, (g) being a grandparent, (h) later adult years
  • Consider a grouping for bullets called reflections or lessons learned
  • Write bullets (short statements) of any significant events you can remember that impacted you. We’ll expand on it later.

Oct

• Write where you lived each year (some have moved much, others not)
• Write bullets for things you did for family, school/work, lessons learned
• What were your main interests? What hobbies or activities did you do?
• Ask family & friends for ideas or details of a certain situations to give you a another perspective of the event.
• Show them the photos you collected to prompt their memories
• Write everything that surfaces in your memories as bullets initially, you can flesh them out later.
• Add more bullets to your story outline or add detail to any strong memories
• Add your school years (elementary, high school, university, grad school, continuing education). Did you have a favorite teacher? Who and why? Did you have a first crush?
• Add your marriage or significant other in your life. How did you meet, etc?
• Add your life seasons (spring of youth, summer, fall, winter of age)

Nov

• Add any goals & achievements you can remember. We all love to read about people struggling to accomplish a goal and overcoming obstacles along the way. This is the stuff of stories!
• Write about your family holiday traditions.
• List your life’s turning points and the emotions associated with them; those times when you were standing at a crossroads and the direction you chose marked a significant change in your life.
• Decide your options for finishing a. Do-it-yourself b. Pay others to do things you don’t want to learn to do

Dec

• Use memory prompts I’ll provide and add more bullets
• As you recall events, try to remember the smells, tastes and sounds that accompany them. Add bullets for those sensory details.
• When did you join the Church? What is your conversion story? How did you feel?
• Describe when you talked to another person about the restored gospel.

Jan

• Decide which option you want to use to organize your story
• What problems did you solve, how, what impact did the experience have on you and others? How did you feel after solving it?
• Tell the story of your faith:
  • What were your earliest spiritual experiences and feelings?
  • When have you felt close to heaven? What prompted that closeness to home? Please express this to your loved ones.
  • How did you gain your testimony of the Gospel of Christ?
  • Write your testimony.
  • How has the Gospel helped you in your life?
  • Describe how you felt in your own ordinances and who was there.
  • How did you feel about various callings? What went well and not so well?
  • If you served a mission, tell that sub-story with the emotions to go with the events.
  • Tell about a particular service opportunity and how you felt.

Feb

• Tell your own truth as you saw your experiences. This is your personal history. Let others write their own. You’re not writing THE history, but your personal story as you experienced it.
• Have you included uplifting memories yet? Add some.
• If writing a print book or ebook, digitize any photos you want to add to your story.
• Tell about your travels. Where in the world have you been? Where was your favorite vacation? (As a child, as a teenager, as an adult, etc.)

Mar

• Write the first draft
• Look at significant historical events to prompt memories.

Apr

• Take a break

May

• Run spell check and grammar check
• Ask you editor to review

Jun

• Revise the draft manuscript, incorporate editor’s comments

Jul

• Optionally, create PDF for the printer
• Create the eBook for phones and eReaders

Aug

• Send your personal history to specific people as a gift.
• Say a prayer of gratitude and celebrate.