Preserving Memories: How to Write a Family History 

PREPARE TO WRITE

People who haven’t written since school are often intimidated by the blank computer screen or sheet of paper. Your Information Center offers several helpful articles about writing, and other useful resources are listed at the end of this article.

However, when you're writing your memoirs or family history, you don’t have to follow all the formal rules like you do when writing something for a school assignment. You're sharing yourself with your loved ones, and this personal, creative writing can be done the way you want to do it.

Of course, no matter what your approach, scope, or audience, you still want to avoid major spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors because these kinds of errors make your story hard to read and understand. Resources to help you improve these areas are also listed at the end of this article.

The Outline Quandary

Whether you choose to create an outline is completely up to you. No one else will ever see your outline if you decide to write one, but some people find it helpful to organize their thoughts before they actually start putting words on the page.

Your “outline” can take on a conventional outline format, or it may consist of a series of note cards with a specific topic you want to cover in each chapter on a separate card, a white board on the wall with a list of things you don’t want to forget ... whatever helps you organize your ideas so they’ll make sense to the reader.

However, if you prefer to start writing without any preparation, that’s okay, too. My mother wrote individual “stories” as she thought of them. One year for Christmas, she gave us stories about her own high school years , as well as stories about events that happened when my siblings and I were in elementary school — seemingly chosen totally at random. She attached a sticky note to each story identifying the section in the binder where it belonged.

My mother-in-law, in contrast, organized her thoughts and notes in advance. Then she started talking into a tape recorder and described her life experiences in chronological order, beginning with her birth.

Even if you choose to write in random order without an outline, I recommend you keep a notebook to jot down ideas as you think of events and people you want to write about. It’s easy to forget that great idea if you don’t write it down when it comes to you, and you can concentrate on what you’re writing much better if you’re not trying to remember a half dozen other ideas you’re going to work on later.

Memory Triggers

If you just sit down in front of the computer or with a yellow legal pad, your mind may instantly go blank. You may decide that nothing worth writing about has ever happened to you or anyone in your family. If this happens to you, you'll benefit from reviewing some memory triggers:

• If you’ve ever kept journals or diaries, dig them out and skim through them. When you come to important periods in your life, read more thoroughly. Bookmark specific pages you want to refer to when you’re writing.

• Read old letters and look through photo albums and scrapbooks. If possible, share this activ ity with your spouse , siblings, parents, children, or other relatives. Talk about the events and the people in the pictures.

• If you’re writing a family history, interview older relatives and family friends and record the interviews.

• Visit places from you r past — former residences, schools you've attended, places where you worked ...

• Bring out physical items that belonged to your parents or ances tors , or ones that you treasured at other stage s of your life. See what experiences and emotions they evoke.

• Read old ne wspapers and magazines, both for historical events that affected your life and your family’s history and for social and business news (especially in small communities).

Perfection Paralysis

No one writes a perfect paragraph the first — and perhaps not even the tenth — time they try. Yet many would-be family historians spend so much time polishing and perfecting the first chapter or the first story that they never get anything else done . They think what they write has to be perfect before they move on.

But some of the best writing advice I ever received came from a novel -writing course I took several years ago. The instructor, Lary Crews, said it was fine for the first draft to be “pure green dreck.” His advice was to just get some words and ideas on paper (or compu ter screen) because you can always go back and make them better later. Keep writing, even if you’re not happy with what you’ve written. Focus on editing and revising only after you’ve got your basic ideas written.

Another form of perfection paralysis comes when you try to write in a formal style that ends up being stilted. People sometimes fear that the way they talk is too casual to use when they write. But I’d much rather read a personal story written in a chatty, natural style than something that sounds like an academic tome. Your family deserves to hear not only the events that happened in your life but also the sound of your distinctive voice.

When the family was gathered after my mother-in-law’s funeral, someone pulled out her memoir. Soon family memb ers were reading sentences aloud and saying, “That sounds just like Mother!” We laughed; we cried; we shared beautiful memories of the special lady who honored us by sharing herself in her own words. It was as if she were still with us.

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