Who is the storyteller in your family?
Rose Osborne, 67, was a registered nurse for 45 years before retiring to become a personal historian, owner and creator of Write My Journey, a life story writing service that turns memories into a beautiful hardcover book.
This is the second part of Rose’s monthly column on life writing. Read the first column on how to preserve your life story here.
Becoming the family storyteller is a privilege and a responsibility. It is about leaving a legacy fundamental to the fabric of society – family stories. Anyone who embarks on the journey of documenting their family history is doing so because it matters to them. This alone will bring truth, beauty, and love to the pages and its readers in years to come.
The family storyteller is providing a link within the family to member’s dreams, strengths, and challenges that will be woven into the lives of present and future family members. However, it does come at a cost. It can be expensive and is definitely time consuming. It is an active and creative process and may seem like a straightforward task but the revelations that are unveiled will, no doubt, be rewarding and sometimes difficult and unexpected. For one example, family members may have different perceptions of events and may hold many secrets tight to their chest.
Preparation for your creative journey
Once you have made your decision to be the family storyteller, don’t let doubts and uncertainty daunt your progress. Be content to start with a little trepidation and embrace your commitment. Deal with any procrastination by understanding its origins, e.g. “I don’t know where to start”, “I have too much material”, “I enjoy telling people I am writing my family history even though I have done little” or maybe “I’m busy – but I’m going to do it”.
Here are a few hints to consider before you set sail.
- Is your family history about your life journey and your reflections and interfaces with the family or is it a composite project for all family members to contribute? This decision will decide how you write. Some people solve this by writing two books – their personal memoir and a composite family album. Others just throw it all into one body of work and produce a deliciously rich tapestry of family history.
- Decide if you are going to include some local, cultural or world history in your work, e.g. wars, depression, and other such events significantly impact people’s lives. The social media world of today is a totally different world to the environment your great grandparents grew up in and future readers may not understand this distinction unless they are told.
- Decide if you are setting a time frame for completion or just letting it flow. While this seems a minor point, timelines keep us focussed and can always be readjusted. A realistic and generous flow chart can stop you from becoming bogged down on one subject or task. Months spent over-researching a topic or endless time spent waiting for relatives to respond are time-wasters and serve no purpose other than to fertilise resentment and anxiety.
Information gathering
Information gathering is time consuming and expensive. Be strategic and deliberate in your efforts and make the most of all your opportunities.
- It may be a good idea to sabotage part of an annual family gathering or create a specific Family History Reunion to display all your collected materials and a rough outline of the story so far. You may decide to do a PowerPoint and oral presentation telling of your progress. You can ask questions and engage the relatives to tell their stories. Contacting people individually and trying to get past their “Oh I don’t have any stories” is time consuming and frustrating.
- Discussions with small groups are a wonderful catalyst for memory tantalising. People will feed off each other with their stories and forgotten facts. Ask people to bring along a photo, piece of jewellery or ornament and talk about the history behind it. Be specific in your questions and allow people to tell their story without interruption.
- The sense of smell is a wonderful memory jogger. It may be a favourite family biscuit dipped in tea, baby powder, Vicks VapoRub or a freshly cooked pizza straight out of its home delivery box.
- Memory, however, is tricky and people remember things differently. Be prepared for different interpretations of the same event. You could perhaps revert to fact checking of dates but whether your great-great grandparent’s marriage was arranged or a love-match could be harder to prove. Alternatively, you could include both versions and allow the mystery to continue.
- Your photos need to be scanned to become digital. Encourage people to get their photographs scanned professionally as this will improve the quality of the final product. If any photos need restoring, encourage the photo owner to get this done as a benefit to them and to the family album.
Sitting in the narrator’s seat
The narrator is in the driving seat of the family tale. As any good driver will tell you, you need to pay attention to the twists and curves in the road and manage the hills and gullies. You are the decision-maker and your name goes in the book. You will decide if all the research and writing is to be done by you, if others will contribute sections or if the project will be done as a group. Dividing the writing between different people will mean there will be different writing styles and perhaps a conflict of information, but this may not be a problem for you and could add to the tapestry. If someone is contributing to the writing, you should ensure that you as narrator have editing rights. It is wise to make it clear this is a family album and not a venue for an airing of disputes, bad blood or gossip.
You might find these hints helpful.
- Be relaxed about the project. It is best for the project to start simple and grow as the family tree of stories and information grows.
- Make a list of five brief stories that are classics within the family. These can be used to start your project off as story ideas and examples.
- Make a list or complete a family tree of everyone in the family. Chose a key person in each family group who is willing to be an active supporter of the project.
- Collect as much information generically as you can. For example, give the family a list of basic information to provide, e.g. full names, maiden names, date of births, pet’s names, place of residence and anything else you want gathered for consistency across the family.
- Organise relevant photos and memorabilia including letters, certificates, etc. into sections and scan them.
- Start anywhere in the family story – just start.
- Work in bite size projects.
- Be in charge of the structure and don’t let it run you. In other words, just because something happened do you need to include it if it doesn’t add value to the overall work? Don’t let some topics dominate and others get a mere mention. Keep some similarity within the topics of each chapter, otherwise, you will have a tangle of stories that readers will find hard to connect.
- Keep a little distance between your personal feelings and the family tale and stick to the facts.
- If you are narrating stories from different time periods, ensure you are clear on the relevant context. For example, your great grandmother may have lived 30 kilometres from town which in her time was a difficult journey but in modern times using a car, that journey would be negligible.
- Remind your contributors (and yourself) that trivial details don’t add up to depth. For example, listing the holidays enjoyed, the name of the ocean cruiser and the seat number of the flight are pretty trivial details.
- Your readers are going to want to know about moments, about how you felt, what it was like, funny and sad things that happened.
- Try and include descriptions in your stories of moments as if you are talking directly to your readers, wanting them to feel as if they were present.
- Use language and words that you would normally use, even a little jargon and slang is colourful, if that is part of your family scene.
The total cost of doing family history is expensive. You can decide to deal with it all yourself or ask family members for contributions. You could also increase the amount of the Family Album so everyone at least contributes to the final bill. Enjoy your family life story and make the time.
If you want more information, read your way through my website. There is lots of information you may find helpful. If you would like to chat about Write My Journey writing your family story, give us a ring.
Rose is writing a monthly column exploring all aspects of memoir writing. If you have any questions for her, please leave them in the comments below.
Related links:
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I tracked down my father-in-law’s long lost brother
Connecting children with the natural world