Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Writing Workshop
HIS STORY, HER STORY,
YOUR STORY:
A Writing Workshop
©Vera
Booksh Zimmerman 2019
<verazgenealogy.blogspot.com>
It's time to STOP researching and
START writing.
Grounding Exercise
Write down 5 things you can SEE.
4 things you can TOUCH
3 things you can HEAR
2 things you can SMELL
1 thing
you can TASTE
STEP 1 - Define the scope of your
project.
His Story, Her Story or Your Story?
One person or one family or one
branch?
One place?
One theme – Childhood, College, Job?
Travel?
How you researched and solved a
problem?
STEP 2 - Get a 3-ring
notebook.
Every time you remember something write
a quick summary on one page.
Put the year in upper right hand
corner. Expand on each memory. Name your book.
STEP 3 – Make
an outline
After you have accumulated enough pages of written memories, read
through them. Do you see a theme developing? Make a general outline
of your book. Timelines or Chronologies help in putting names, dates
and places into narrative form. They also help break the job into
manageable bites.
STEP 4 – Start
editing your stories
Remember to use all your senses, to SHOW instead of just TELLING.
Find your voice. Be true to yourself. Edit for content first, then
grammar and spelling.
Good book to help is Line by Line, Claire Kehrwald Cook (1985,
Houghton Miflin, Boston MA)
STEP 5 – Make
a deadline and tell someone about it, then DO IT!
BOOKS TO HELP
YOU
History of Brevard County, Vol.
1 and 2 – Detailed History of a Place
History of Brevard County, Vol.
3 – Brief History of a Place and Families from that place
Rick Bragg's books – All Over But
the Shouting – His story
Ava's Man – Her story and
His story
Mama Said: The Mostly True Story of
the Begue Family – My Mother's Family
Belle's Letters, A
blog - I'm currently working on a blog about my Great
Grandmother who left a trunk full of letters, papers and photos. My
plan is to turn it into a book when I'm done.
<belletisdale.blogspot.com>
Book of Ages:
The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, Jill
Lepore (2013, Random House, NY )
Good example of using social history to bring a narrative to life.
Memories to Manuscript: The Five
Step Method of Writing Your Life Story
Joan Neubauer (2002, Ancestry Pub.,
Orem UT)
1- Research
2- Organization
3 – Writing
4 – Editing
5 – Printing and Publishing
We're going to concentrate on
Organization and Writing and a little on Editing today.
Terry Armstrong will address Printing
and Publishing on September 9.
Patricia Charpentier of Orlando has
three books that can help.
Bringing Your Ancestor to Life
(2010, LifeStory Pub., Orlando, FL)
A booklet with an outline of 21
steps on Organizing and Writing your story
Eating an Elephant: Writing Your
Life One Bite at a Time (2011, LifeStory Pub., Orlando FL)
200 bites or short steps to
completing your story (My favorite)
I Remember: 50 Prompts to Write
Your Life Story (2011, LifeStory Pub., Orlando, FL)
Old Friend From Far Away,
by Natalie Goldberg, (2007, Atria Paperback, Simon & Schuster,
NY)
Another book of
writing prompts.
Sharon DeBrtolo Carmack, You Can
Write Your Family History
(2003, Reprinted 2008, Genealogy Pub.
Baltimore, MD)
Her
book covers defining the scope of
your project and points out the importance of breaking the job into
manageable pieces.
She describes 7 types of family history
books. (pages 8 – 10)
1 – Reference Genealogies - A
bare bones genealogy Who, When, Where
2 – Genealogical Narratives -- One
step further, includes research strategies and analysis
3 – Life Story - Historical
Biography, Memoir
4 – Family History Narrative - Creative, literary nonfiction
5 – Family History Memoir - Nonfiction story about the author's search for his ancestors
6 – Edited Letters and Diaries - Weaves together documents to tell the story of people's lives
7 - Fictional Family Sagas - Historical fiction based on author's family
She mentions helpful books for each
type, one of which is Writing Family Histories and Memoirs by
Kirk Polking (1995, Betterway Books, Cincinnati Ohio). A good
nuts-and-bolts book.
The Art of
Memoir by Mary Karr, (2015,
Harper Collins Pub. NY)
She is an award-winning author, a poet and professor of literature at
Syracuse U.
How to Think
like Leonardo da Vinci: 7 Steps to Genius Every Day,
by Michael Gelb (1998, Reprinted 2004. Bantam Dell, NY)
It has exercises and lessons on problem solving, creative thinking,
enjoying the world around you, goal setting, life balance, and
harmonizing body and mind.
Roots Magic has a
program called Personal Historian which is available at:
Amy Johnson Crow's
web site and her 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks program is very helpful:
Thursday, August 1, 2019
Finding Your Roots
The first new episode of "Finding Your Roots" will air October 8. I want to share this quote by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor,
Harvard University and Director of the Hutchins Center for
African and African American Research
Hosting “Finding Your Roots" is not
only profoundly rewarding as a scholar, it's part of a larger mission
to inspire us all to seek out the stories of our ancestors – to see
history as something that we are all a part of, that we all have a
stake in – and, in realizing this, to help us arrive at a deeper
understanding of what it means to be part of the human family.
Our series strives to show how all
Americans are related, despite our present divisive politics, at the
most fundamental levels of all: through our families, through our
immigrant experiences, whether forced or voluntary, and at the level
of the genome.
Published in the Orlando Sentinel,
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
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