The Gap Between Family Legend and Fact

With respect to family history, legends are those stories that survive through generations, like Grandfather Flynn was a Methodist circuit rider, or Uncle Roger fought with Pancho Villa, or Grandma Flowers single-handedly fought off Indians with an empty gun while her husband was out plowing.

The legends tend to be headline length and seldom have much substance. They contain the hook of a good story, but more often than not, the story has come off the hook. If you like the legend, you may prefer to keep the hook and forget the story, and that’s okay. Just know it’s a choice. If you’re a stickler for facts, you’ll check things out, and that’s getting easier to do.

The clipping above is related to a  legend about my maternal grandmother. I’ve known most of my life that she (not my grandfather, but she) was a delegate from New Mexico to the Republican National Convention in both 1952 and 1956. I was proud of her for that. Somewhere along the line I heard that she started the New Mexico Republican Women’s organization.

Last summer while visiting a cousin, I copied the clipping above. A couple of days ago I found the copy and took the time to read it. That clipping seemed to validate the fact that she really was head of Republican Women. Turning to Google, I discovered that Stockton ran for Governor in 1954, and the Republican State Convention took place the end of February that year. So the picture was surely from that Convention.

I flashed back to a memory of a thumbnail story my grandmother told me in 1987, 33 years after that picture was taken. We were talking about her involvement with the Republican Women and she said, “Ed Mechem (a long-time family friend who began his first term as governor in 1951) asked me to help him get them started and I said yes.” That’s not much of a story now that I think of it, and it has a lot of holes, but I didn’t notice that at the time and didn’t think to ask questions.

So I clicked over to Google and discovered that a huge movement was begun in 1952 to get women to vote for Ike. That muddied the water floating my legend. I felt stymied. After finding her contact info online, I shot off an email to Jo Mitchell, current president of the New Mexico Republican Women. I included the clipping and what I thought I knew about my grandmother, including that “fact” that she worked with Ed Mechem to found the NMRW.

Jo promptly sent a long and thoughtful reply explaining that the organization actually began in 1939 and that Rene Dinsmore’s name was not on the complete list of presidents. Furthermore, Jo pointed out, the article does not say what she was elected chairwoman of. Most likely she was the state chairwoman for the party. If she’d been in charge of Republican Women, she would have been elected president, and not by the State Committee. As state chairwoman, she would have gone to the convention. That makes sense.

I’m grateful to Jo for the time and effort she put into her reply. I love the helpful spirit I generally find when I ask for this sort of help. Her explanation makes total sense. Discovering the communication disconnect doesn’t damage the story. On the contrary, the revised version is more consistent with my perception of my grandmother, so I’m pleased she set things straight.

This small disconnect is a perfect example of how we hear through the filters of what we already know – or think we know. I thought Grandmother was involved with Republican Women, so I heard her explanation that way and read the news item from that perspective. We hear a tidbit and our imagination goes to work, embellishing or coloring in details. Over generations, these legends may shape shift like messages in the game of Telephone.

In the end, what does any of this matter? Not much. I enjoy untangling stories, and I enjoy writing and telling them. I like to tell my grandchildren about my grandparents and older ancestors to connect them with history and help them feel rooted in a sturdy tree. I want them to know that our family has survived, one way or another through thick (many ancestors were wealthy a few generations ago) and thin (the Civil War and the Great Depression depleted those fortunes). I want them to know that many of their ancestors started with nothing or less and went on to thrive and enjoy success. I want them to know that many of us, perhaps most, have dared to be different and march to our own drummers.

I like to stick as close to the facts as I can, but I do admit that I will let at least one family legend stand unchallenged. I love the legend too much to risk deflating it. So I explain that it may be fiction when I tell it, and include the evidence of why I think it could be true.

What about you? What family legends do you cherish? What about those you don’t? Have you hit the web to look for facts? Do tell! Jot a comment now and stories for your family.

Add Your Voice to History

Today marks the 16th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. Who can forget?

I heard it on the radio as I drove to a  meeting. At first I thought it was a retrospective of some old show like War of the Worlds. But no. It was real. We cut our anxiety-filled meeting short to dash home to the news. I sat near the TV with my laptop for days, getting news on both channels while my thoughts and guts churned.

That’s thumbnail account does little to convey the emotional impact of the day and season, but it does note my involvement and hint at the event’s impact on me.

Where were you? How did you hear? What did you do, think and feel? Write it down!

Don’t stop there. What other significant historical events directly affected you? My short list includes

• Sputnik launch
• JFK’s assassination
• Great Northeast Blackout of November 1965
• Airline strike, 1966
• USA moon landing
• Total solar eclipse, 1979 and 2017
• Mt. St. Helen’s eruption
• Desert Storm bombing begins
• 9/11/01
• Hurricane Harvey

I’ve already written those stories. I wrote them to let my descendants know I was there and how they affected me. I want to make the events real in a personal way, to let younger generations know history is a collection of dots that live in people’s guts. Perhaps one day I’ll expand on those stories, including detailed description and my perspective over time, and tie them together into a coherent memoir (probably mini). Or maybe not. Loose short stories are valuable in their own right.

So where were you when Big Things happened? How did they affect you at the time and now? Tell the future. Make history more than two paragraphs in a text book!

Preserve a Record of Life As It Was

Believe it or not, this post is not about politics. It’s about change. Regardless of your political position or beliefs, you’d have to be living in a deep jungle to be  unaware how fast things are changing. It’s too soon to say if life will be better for Americans in general or if some form of Armageddon is at hand as current headlines seem to suggest. Heavens above, collecting those headlines today for the collage you see above was an anxiety-laden task!

For better or worse, I’m betting on the end of life as we’ve known it. It’s already drastically changed from what I knew as a child.

In any case, it’s time to preserve memories of the past. WRITE ABOUT LIFE AS YOU HAVE KNOWN IT. You can’t count on history books to tell it like it was for you. History is always written through filters, and those filters change over time, subject to prevailing culture. If lifestyles in the future are an improvement, let your progeny know how much better it is.

On the other hand, if, as some fear, tyranny is at hand, preserve a picture of freedom. Keep its memory alive.

I am convinced that it’s important for families to create personal archives, and to keep print copies as well as backups in pdf format on DVD disks or thumb drives. What if the internet came tumbling down? What if libraries full of books were burned? What if …?

No, I do not anticipate a Doomsday scenario, but … what if?

In addition to preserving your memories of the past and what life was like, share your reflections about it. I’m not writing about politics and my personal beliefs here, but I am writing piles of journal entries and essays that aren’t public, but will be available for family. I want my grandchildren to know what I believe, what I feel, what actions I’m taking.

Writing prompts for preserving a picture of life in the past

• How much freedom did you have as a child? Did you freely roam the neighborhood? Ride your bike across town when you were 10 or 12? Play hide-and-seek with the neighborhood gang after dark in the summer?
• What did you do to pass the time before computers and electronic games? Did your family play cards or other games together? Do crafts?
• What was it like to cook real food from scratch without frozen entrees?
• Did you go to church? What were/are your beliefs?
• What political party did your parents support (if any)?
• Were you ever involved in any protests or demonstrations? Which ones? How and what did you do?
• Did you or your dad ever change the oil in the family car or fix a flat tire on t he road, or do other maintenance?
• What was medical care like? Were you ever in the hospital? How much did it cost when your children were born?
• How have your views changed over the years?
• What are your views on the corner our country seems to be turning right now? What was your position on the 2016 election? Keep a log of your thoughts as things unfold.

This mini-list should get your wheels turning.

Don’t put this off another minutes. Write fast. Write off the top of your head. You may edit it later, but get it on paper, write now!

Six Things I Learned Going from Memoir to Fiction

Invited guest post by Carol Bodensteiner

Long time readers may be surprised to find a post about writing fiction on this blog about life writing. While it’s true that my focus is on memoir, lifestory, journaling and other forms that draw upon actual experience to express personal truth, sometimes the freedom of fiction is more effective in conveying truth. Carol Bodensteiner found this to be true. She has successfully written in both genres and her experience moving from memoir to fiction has lessons for all.

---

I’d been a business writer all my life, so I was used to working with facts. Memoir was a logical first writing step. Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Girl, tells the stories of my childhood growing up on a family farm in the middle of the United States, in the middle of the 20^th Century.

When I finally raised my head from writing, publishing, and marketing the memoir, I looked around for what I’d write next. I turned to family-inspired fiction, which I’d never written before.  My novel, Go Away Home, which I indie published in 2014 and was acquired by Lake Union Publishing (an imprint of Amazon Publishing) later that year, is the result of that effort.

The road from memoir to fiction brought many adventures and a lot of learning. Here are six things I learned along the way.

1) A family story can be a great launching pad to fiction.

Go Away Home was inspired by my maternal grandparents. My grandfather died of the Spanish Flu in 1918. Throughout my life, I’ve been intrigued by my connection to this major world event. As someone used to writing from facts, a family story gave me a starting point: A story I cared to write and people and places that were familiar.

Writing the story as fiction was necessary for many reasons. One was that I didn’t have enough facts to write it any other way. Of course I never knew my grandfather and even though my grandmother lived until I was well into my 20s, I never asked her a single question about him or their lives together. And she was not the type to share. So though the story began with family, it is fiction.

2) Don’t get stuck on the facts

Once I got into writing the story, one of the biggest challenges was letting go of the facts. Since the genesis of this story rose from people in my family, and I knew a bit about the people, places, and events, my inclination was to use those facts. But I quickly found that the facts didn’t work for the story I was ultimately telling. They didn’t create a good story arc. There was no drama. On his website, Write the Truth, Robert McKee said, “The weakest possible excuse to include anything in a story is: ‘But it actually happened.’”  Having gone this route, I believe him.

3) Do get stuck on the facts

Since Go Away Home is historical fiction, research was critical to creating the time period accurately. Clothes, transportation, hairstyles, technology, colloquialisms. The list of topics I researched and fact checked was long. Readers of historical fiction really care about the details. Writers must, too.

Research also helped shape the story. One example: Family lore was that my grandmother went to a sewing school. Research revealed that the town in question didn’t have a sewing school, rather that young girls apprenticed with seamstresses as a way to learn an important life skill and to meet a man to marry.  The idea that seamstresses were invited to their clients’ house parties had terrific dramatic potential, so I ran with that.

Another bit of fact to fiction. My grandmother took pictures, but the whole part in the book about the main character’s work for a photographer and her relationship with him is entirely fiction.  Most of the book is that way. Tiny fact. Huge fiction.

4) Planner vs. Pantser

Writers fall into two general camps: Planners and Pantsers. I wrote my way into Go Away Home, discovering the story through countless re-writes – by the seat of my pants. I always knew the end of the story; I didn’t know how we got there. In the first draft, the story started in 1900 and my main character Liddie was 10. In the second draft, the story started in 1915 and Liddie was 19. In the published draft, the story starts in 1913 and Liddie is 16. Believe me – those changes create seismic waves throughout the story.

Having used this highly inefficient “pantser” approach once, I’m reasonably certain that I’m a “plotter” at heart and will be more plan-ful in future writing.

5) Fiction is freeing

While I thought it would be easier to start with some facts because that was what I was used to, the reality was there was great freedom in starting with nothing. As the story developed (pantser), it became clear that connections were missing. I needed a scene to show my main character’s inexperience with men. No problem. I made up a guy. I found it was great fun to let my imagination run. Over and over, I filled holes with scenes that met a plot need.

6) New craft to learn

I learned a lot about creative writing as I crafted my memoir, much of which was also applicable to fiction. Dialogue, scene development, visual characterization – all come into play in both genres. Plotting was a new challenge in fiction writing, as I noted earlier. Developing multi-dimensional fictional characters was another challenge.

I used a number of techniques that contributed to creating the real, individual people living in my novel. I visualized people I know who were somewhat like the characters I had in mind. Writing exercises helped to identify key traits and to express them in fresh ways. I used Enneagram research to flesh out the positive and negative traits of various personality types.

From memoir to fiction, from craft to research, I will always be able to learn something new about writing, and for me, that’s great fun.

Go Away Home is available on Amazon in paperback and ebook formats.

Growing Up Country is available on Amazon in paperback, ebook, and audio book formats.

Carol Bodensteiner – Bio

Carol Bodensteiner is a writer who finds inspiration in the places, people, culture and history of the Midwest. After a successful career in public relations consulting, she turned to creative writing. She blogs about writing, her prairie, gardening, and whatever in life interests her at the moment. She published her memoir Growing Up Country in 2008. Her WWI-era, debut novel Go Away Home was acquired by Lake Union Publishing, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. It launches July 7, 2015.

Carol’s online links
Website/blog 
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook

Write now: think of an interesting ancestor or other person who has influenced your life that you know relatively little about. Drawing on Carol’s experience, write a short story about how you imagine this person’s life might have been. Don’t worry about facts. Just let that story rip. Have fun with this!

Respecting Your Writer’s Voice

“It’s critically important to find an editor who will respect your writer’s voice and not try to change it into her own.”

Electric agreement surged through  the room during a Penn Writers self-publishing workshop offered last weekend by acclaimed Pittsburgh author Kathleen Shoop. Heads nodded, and a ripple of “Mmm hmm” rose and fell.

I exchanged nods with friends sitting on both sides. Then a memory tempered my thought. Ten years ago a group fondly referred to as “angel editors” banded together to help a mutual friend – I’ll call him Will – hammer a complex memoir into publishable shape..

Aside from structural concerns, as editors we faced a delicate challenge: Transforming Will’s voice from a stilted style with big words and convoluted, page-long sentences into something that flowed smoothly into readers’ eyes, ears and brains. Will finally agreed that we needed to streamline the language without compromising the message or completely losing his voice. The resulting book went into a third printing.

Will’s purpose for his book was to inform a wide, general readership. Thus his voice had to be changed for reader appeal.

Conversely, when compiling a vast array of drafts and notes my mother left behind, I changed only documented factual mistakes, a few flagrant grammatical errors, and typos. Since she was no longer around to discuss style and voice, I left things like her strings of dots and signature clichés so it sounded like a letter from Marje.

Marje’s purpose for writing was to leave a legacy of personal and family history for posterity. Leaving it in her words and phrasing was an additional way of documenting the writing style of her generation of women.

Where is the balance? These are two extreme examples. In general, when I edit a story, I find ways to smooth rough edges and make words flow more smoothly. My edits are only suggestions. My fix for a phrase that sounds awkward to me may grate on the author’s ear.

The extent to which I change things depends in large part on the author’s purpose. If I’m helping a friend finish a family project, I’m less inclined to tinker. In my opinion, a bit of colloquialism and cliché lends authenticity. If an author hopes to sell truckloads of books to the public, buckets of red ink may flow.

So, you see, how much an editor (that includes friends and critique groups) should mess with your voice depends on your purpose. If you plan to appear on stage, appropriate makeup will emphasize your message. Stage makeup is out of place on a mountain trail.

Experience and practice are additional factors. A polished writing voice is not necessarily the sign of an expensive editor. Writers follow a learning curve much like musicians. Beginning piano students do well to tap out Chopsticks. Ten years later, they may perform Beethoven sonatas with ease. In between lie thousands of hours of practice with gradual improvement.

Your writing voice will likewise gain tone and force as you seek constant feedback and work to improve. That does not make your voice less authentic. It reflects the years of practice you put in and becomes natural and authentic for you.

As you continue down your writing path, you’ll discover that each story has a unique voice. Some are humorous, some sassy, some sad or mournful. Let your stories whisper their way, and your voice will grow in range.

Write now: if you have some, read a few unchanged stories you wrote several years ago and consider how you might change them today. Even if you’re a beginner, start a practice of keeping versions of stories to help keep track of how much your writing has developed. If you change a story after more than a year has elapsed, rename it to preserve the old version so you can compare. Think of this as your growth chart and celebrate your continuing improvement!

Chili or Chile? Check It Out

Adventures of a Chilihead is the title I chose ages ago for what I intended to be a story album or themed collection of short stories about my experiences eating hot chili peppers and other blow-your-head-off food. As usual, getting the book pulled together is an adventure itself as it morphed from loose stories to mini-memoir, and part of that adventure includes resolving a quandary about the proper spelling of the main subject.

More years ago than I can remember, my father sorted me out on the proper spelling of chile. “Chile is a country in South America. We eat chili!” He grew up in New Mexico, staying there until he was a grandfather. He’s a reliable trivia consultant and can always back up his opinions, so as far as I was concerned, that settled it. I consistently used the correct spelling in my manuscript.

Or so I thought. I follow a couple of Facebook groups populated with people who grew up in Los Alamos. On a whim, I posted a request for comments testifying to their love of chili. Results were completely unexpected. A few posted short comments about their love of chili, their favorite varieties and so forth, but far more made sure I know the New Mexican way to spell CHILE!

The word was originally adapted by the Spanish explorers from Mexico’s native Nahuatl term, “xilli” o(alternately spelled “chilli”). The Spaniards adapted it as chile, which was subsequently rendered chili in American English. The Brits, whether by design or fluke, stuck to the Nahuatl spelling, chilli. Although most of the United States accepts chili as the proper spelling, many southwesterners assert that the word is of Spanish origin, hence the Spanish spelling should be retained.

New Mexicans are especially assertive about this, and on November 3, 1983, Senator Pete Domenici, R-NM, had a statement read into the Congressional Record 129 (149) entitled “The correct way to spell chile.” However, I know of no resolution introduced or legislation passed, so the question continues to loom.

Not relying strictly on a well-informed, but possibly biased, sample, or grandstanding Congressional hoopla, I turned to my own definitive resource, a decades old publications from the New Mexico State Agricultural Extension Service. The title says it all: CHILE.

You may wonder why I’m taking such pains to detail all this. Why I don’t just quietly make the change? Because of the cover. I’d like to be true to my roots, but I also want an instantly recognizable title. So, I’m asking you to help me decide. Please look at the two images below and leave a comment to tell me if you see any reason to stick with Chilihead rather than changing to Chilehead.

Stay tuned for more of the writing adventure.

Write now: make a list of colloquial terms specific to the area where you live or grew up. Select a couple of related ones to include in a story, and consider how to make them clear to your readers while remaining true to your roots and voice. Do any necessary research to support your usage. Involve others who share those roots.

How Will They Ever Know?

It took me a second to recognize the Skype ringtone. Knowing it must be Susan calling from New Zealand,  I ran to my computer. We talked for a few minutes about the people she met whose home was destroyed in the earthquake. It’s in the Red Zone and can’t be rebuilt. She mentions that everywhere they go, Kiwis swarm around and strike up conversations. “They are so friendly, so unlike your average American! I love it down here!”

The girls told me they baked chocolate chip biscuits (British word for cookies) with their babysitter last night. They told me about other new words, like riding in lifts (elevators), and pushing trolleys through the grocery store.

When we hung up I had goose bumps. My girls are literally on the other side of the world, and we had just had a real-time video chat. Fifty years ago a computer-based video chat was beyond imagining.

I had goose bumps. The girls take it for granted, much like I took telephones, radios, flush toilets and electric lights for granted, but my grandmothers didn’t. What could I do to let these little girls know what life was like before WiFi, iPhones, and Homeland Security?

How can I clue them in that there was a time when anyone could walk out onto the runway to see someone off on a flight? How do I tell them about lighting stoves with matches, and the pleasure of standing on a floor furnace with hot air ballooning out your skirt? How will they ever know about 45 rpm vinyl disks that held only one song? What about typewriters? Or making cakes from scratch?

You already know the answer: I can write stories! I can write stories with detail rich scenes, dialog and tension-laden plots. These kids are not going to read how-to manuals.

"“How do you make a story about getting on an airplane exciting?” you ask. Adventure is a matter of perspective. A question as simple as “What will happen if I make cake icing with regular sugar instead of powdered?” can create tension. Remember how you felt when you first sat down in front of a computer? Use your description skills to convey that awe. You certainly faced plenty of challenges getting it to do things!  I once read that many people feared electricity would gush into the room if they unscrewed the light bulb, and heaven only knew what would happen then! Wouldn’t you love to read a story written by someone who had faced that fear?

We live in a time of such change. I moved to Pittsburgh 26 years ago when the Monongahela River was lined with rusty abandoned steel mills. Today that real estate is covered with sparkling research and shopping centers. I never saw this area in the days when street lights were on all day if the mills ran at full capacity.

It’s entirely possible that ten years from now, half of all manufactured items will be made on 3D printers, completely revolutionizing industry and the world economy. Who will tell the story of what life is like now, and what it was like within our lifetimes? Does it matter? I think it does, and I believe it’s up to each of us to save our little piece of that history.

Write now: write a story about an amazing innovation in your life, like getting your own typewriter, or your first computer. Polish it up with description and a little dialogue – write your thoughts if no other people were involved. Send your story to somebody young, or somebody who will love the memories.

The Story of Every Thing

In a frenzy of activity to clear my space for the New Year, I whip out my dust rag and go to work in the living room. How I'd like to get rid of this clutter, I think, dusting away. For a moment I seriously entertain the thought of getting a big box from the garage and … what?

That thought stymies me. What could I do with this stuff? I ponder the hand thrown pottery vase. Mother gave me that for my birthday one year. It's gorgeous. It's exactly the kind of pottery I most love, natural earth colors. I feel the potter's love each time I glance at it. I feel connected to earth and to Mother. She's long gone, but her spirit lingers in that vase.

Likewise with the pewter-washed copper candelabra next to it. It's a cunningly crafted item, old, hand-worked, slightly off-balance. I don't even remember when I got that. Did she give it to me, or was it part of the loot I scored when Daddy cleared out her stuff? I recall that trip, packing boxes, stabbed with the knife of sorrow, knowing she'd never be home again, that life had turned one of those irreversible bends,

Seashells? They nestle so nicely on the small shelf in the bookcase Hubby built when we moved into our first house. My mind wanders off to that long-ago day when we were young and getting acquainted with life as parents and contributing members of society. Ah, the stories.

The Japanese tea set, a gift from Mitsui when Hubby visited his home in Japan all those years ago. It's such a thing of beauty, deep cobalt blue. What about the Gurkha knife, the Buddhist prayer wheel,  remnants of Hubby's trek in Nepal, or the soapstone cats from our trip to Egypt or the grandfather clock and family Bible and tree. Our roots are in this room.

I look around the room, recalling the trips to Pendleton to order the custom-built sofa and loveseat and a later trip to the Fabric District in Philadelphia for new upholstery. I remember sitting in the dark chair with nursing babies, which reminds me of the time Phyllis came to visit after Susan was born and how she seemed to freak out when I handed her that tiny person to hold for “just a minute.”

Each of the lamps has a story, especially the one I found in Seattle — another hand-thrown pottery piece in earthen tones. Aside from books, every item in this room is hand-crafted or customized. Each item has a story, and its acquisition is part of my story. This room documents much of my life.

My thoughts turn back to Stuff. I don't want to get rid of this clutter. It's part of me. It connects me to my Story. If someone else wants this stuff someday, it will become part of their story. A fragment of mine may be woven into it, as a fragment of Mother is part of a few objects in here. Hubby's mom is here too, and his ancestors.

I feel connected to family, to continuity, to the world in this house, and most of all to Story. I live in the midst of deep, ongoing Story. The Story of Every Thing. Simply walking into this room connects me with my Story and I'm grateful for that. I celebrate my stuff!

Write now: look around a room in your house. Jot down story ideas that come to mind as you eye moves from one item to another. Notice how one story links to another. Consider the effect of telling the story of one item compared to telling about the whole collection of objects. What is your connection with the object? Let your mind run wild and write about your thoughts. How are you connected to your Stuff?

Stick Stories

The crude stick drawings above tell a story: Soku and Buho have a spat. Soku apologizes. They reconcile. The end.

 In October I attended a Road Scholar program at the Pilgrim Pines Conference Center near West Swanzey, New Hampshire. During the course of the week, Alan Rumrill, Director of the Historical Society of Cheshire County shared stories of local history and legends. One of my favorite was about Mrs. Taggart.

One winter day in the pre-Revolutionary era, Mr. Taggart took off for town to stock up on desperately needed provisions. He got caught in a blizzard that detained him for an indefinite period of time, and back then this meant days or weeks, not hours. When he was finally able to return, he did so with dread, fearing his family had perished from hunger. As he finally emerged into the clearing, he found smoke rising from the chimney and his family hale and hearty. Mrs. Taggart had slaughtered and butchered a moose with the family axe, ensuring her family's survival. Frontier women always were a force to be reckoned with!
 
As I reflected on Mrs. Taggart's story, I noticed that story is as simple as the stick figures I used to draw when I was six years old. Just as the sticks in the figures above represent entire people, the sticks in Mrs. Taggart's story form a complete story with beginning, middle, end, tension, characters — it's all there. The term “stick story” came to mind to describe this level of simplicity. Obviously there is a lot more to that story, and we spent a couple of pleasant mealtimes speculating with tablemates about story embellishments. But we kept coming back to the “sticks” of the story to regroup. Perhaps the story was told in more detail 250 years ago. Perhaps time has gnawed the meat from its bones. But the bones persist in local legend, and today we enjoy adding our own meat to revive them.

The tie-in with life story writing is the challenge of making modern stories as memorable as that stick story, as simple as Dick and Jane. Of course we want to add the details that flesh out those sticks and breath life into them, but if the stick structure isn’t there, the story won’t stand the test of time. 

Two tips for working with stick stories

1. Draft a new story in stick story form before developing it further. This should make it easier to stay focused and avoid pointless sidetracks
2. Keep basic story ideas in stick story form to cement the concept for later development. This takes only minutes and should fit on an index card.

The stick stories are what people remember. You can count on them forgetting the details soon after reading or hearing, but if the sticks are well-drawn, well-assembled, they’ll remember the story!

Write now: pull out your story idea list and select half a dozen entries. Write these in stick story form to be fleshed out another time. Or check a few older stories to make sure their stick stories stand on their own.  

Blowing off the Dust

When I saw this picture in a viral PowerPoint going around the email universe, it was love at first sight. Perhaps that's partly because I just returned from a couple of weeks of studying colonial New England history and it came alive for me in ways I'd never expected. My world became larger when I “blew off the dust” from pages of history I'd never explored.

In this picture I also see the potential for my own volumes of writing to be stored away on a shelf (physical or virtual) for decades — maybe a century or longer. This picture gives me hope that at some point, someone will blow the dust off those words and they will enrich the future just as olden stories enrich my life today.

Who knows? I write primarily for my own enjoyment and edification, and then for the enlightenment and entertainment of family. Should future generations derive unexpected value, so much the better!

Write now: explore some old pages. If you are fortunate enough to have family history documents, take a look at those. Pull out old letters. If you don't have such documents at home, check out biographies or historical accounts of bygone days and listen closely to the messages those old words hold for you today. Write an essay or story about your reaction.

Fleshing Out the Bones

 What do Google, the Rootsweb database, my online Albuquerque Years eBook memoir, and this blog have in common? There could be any number of answers to that question, but the one I’m looking for is that they led to the unexpected email appearance a couple of days ago of a far-removed cousin on my mother’s father’s branch of the family.

His great-grandparents are brother and sister to my mother’s great-grandparents. I already knew a lot about that branch of my family, and the bare thread of the story as it moves through nearly two centuries from Ireland to Scotland, to Illinois, to New Mexico, looping up to the Klondike, back to Seattle, and down to New Mexico again before it frays at the end. Several relatives have been hooked on genealogy for decades and have probably found all the documents there are to find. My diligent daughter-in-law has posted an amazing number of entries on the Rootsweb site, making the collective knowledge easy as pie to access.

All that research has produced a helter skelter array of facts, but facts alone are little more than disconnected pieces of a puzzle. I had already set about the task of sorting and arranging the pieces to compile a more comprehensive narrative. The information Dan shared gave me quite a few new pieces and a broader view of others.

Wanting to anchor these new insights before they evaporate or I lose the notes, I pulled out the timeline I began compiling some time ago. Timelines are excellent tools for making sense of family history. The computer is perfect for making them, because it’s so easy to make changes and add extra rows as new information comes to light. I also color coded sets of children and added a column to indicate who the parents are for each birth. I'm feeling my way along on the format, trying to make it visually obvious.

As you arrange things that way, you begin to notice new connections. For example, I had assumed the Dinsmore brothers came over from the same mining camp as the Cowan sisters. However, the longer I peered at places of birth and where the earlier generations were born, I realized that they are unlikely to have known each other in Scotland. The brothers were probably near Edinburgh in the east, and the Cowans left from the Glasgow area in the west.

Before too long, I began to feel the need to add explanations of simple facts, so I opened another document and began writing. In this phase I’m able to look up events and other historical evidence of living conditions in that time and place and extrapolate what life was probably like for them. For example, I can raise the question of how they survived the notorious six-month coal mine strike in Braidwood, Illinois in 1877.

As I worked I also added snippets of material from other documents, like testimony from divorce proceedings I have copies of, notes my mother made, and similar material. The picture has developed considerably.

Adding story to flesh out the bones dug up by the family genealogists is a lot of work, but it’s a labor of love. I’m certainly learning a lot and coming to have even deeper appreciation for the variety of challenges my ancestors, especially my foremothers, faced! Hopefully it will make that corner of history come alive for my descendants too.

Write now: start jotting down some memories of your ancestors. If you have genealogical records, make a timeline of a branch of the family, and use that to draft an overview of people and events. Track down some distant relatives and see what else you can learn. You’ll have lots to talk about at family gatherings and your descendants will thank you.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I’m proud to have Irish ancestry on my mother’s side of the family. One branch left as recently as the Potato Famine, the other left earlier. I know quite a lot about the more recent immigrants. They were coal miners, arriving first in Braidwood, Illinois then moving down to New Mexico where the family dug in.

Maybe it’s that Irish blood in my veins, or maybe not, but Celtic music is among my favorite, and I feel most at home on earth in summer, surrounded by green. Perhaps those roots explain the dreamer part of me.

Three years ago my husband and I spent ten glorious days rambling wild Irish roads in the southwest corner of the Emerald Isle. For reasons of economy we reserved a subcompact car, with a trunk so small that it wouldn’t hold both suitcases and carry-on luggage, and the choice was serendipitous. Many of those roads are paved over cart paths, with lanes only inches wider than that mini-car and stone walls tight beside. Hubby is a veteran left side driver, but our nerves were taut as the natives careened along at twice our pace.

I was able to verify that Ireland really is as green as the pictures, and unexpectedly sprinkled with jewels. Especially in older parts of towns, houses are vividly painted in all colors of the rainbow, perhaps to offset the frequent grayness of the sky that provides the mists and rains to keep the isle emerald. I couldn’t tangibly verify the spirits that lent mystique to the misty Cliffs of Moher, but I felt their presence before hearing the legends.

It was a long way, but we did get to Tipperary, and we kissed the Blarney stone to boot. We stayed in the countryside rather than exploring cities. We saw sheep, sheep and more sheep, and almost as many ancient ruins of castles, churches and cottages. Some were old when Columbus sailed. We got tipsy on mead and ate with knives and fingers at a medieval banquet in Bunratty Castle. We saw seashore, rivers, and plants with leaves that made me feel leprechaun-sized. We discovered that Ireland has mountains! We visited a couple of “living museums” with villages and farms demonstrating the old ways, making it easier to envision the Spartan conditions my ancestors lived in.

We visited a famine museum that explained why they left. From the exhibits I learned that before the famine, the average male Irish peasant ate eleven pounds of potatoes per day. The women ate eight. They had a few wild berries, greens and fruit in season, and some buttermilk now and then, but their primary diet was potatoes. Historical studies show that those potato fed people were stronger, taller and healthier than their counterparts on the Continent who primarily ate wheat in the form of bread and gruel. Imagine that! My respect for the potato soared.

Yes, especially now that I’ve visited my Irish homeland, I’m proud to be at least part Irish, and drink a toast to St. Paddy.

Write now: about your roots. Where did your ancestors come from? Has your ethnic background influenced your life in any significant way? Did your family observe ethnic traditions? Do you continue to keep those?

Happy Anniversary Dear Blog

Today marks the third anniversary of this blog, an event that calls for celebration.

I began the blog for the specific purpose of promoting The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, which was undergoing final editing and due for release six months later. I may have begun the blog anyway because my delight in teaching other people how to write lifestories developed long before I to write about writing at least as much as I like to write stories, so what is more natural than blogging about writing?

When I first began, ideas for posts gushed so fast I could barely keep up with listing them. I determined not to overwhelm readers and settled on a pace of two to three posts a week. Like any large writing project, ideas have been more abundant some times than others, and occasionally I was convinced my muse Sarabelle (who introduced herself to me and blog readers on June 19, 2006) had abandoned me forever.

The blog has evolved in several respects. The appearance has changed from the generic two-column Blogspot Dots template to a fully-customized three-column layout aligned with the theme of my main website, sharonlippincott.com. On January 1, 2009 I changed the title from The Heart and Craft of LifeSTORY Writing to a more inclusive one, The Heart and Craft of Life Writing, to reflect broadening interests that have expanded beyond simple stories.

If Blogspot offered the ability to add labels when I first started, I didn’t know about it. The first post to feature labels was on November 16, 2006. The “Write Now” writing prompt debuted on October 13, 2007. March 2, 2008 was the last time I signed off with “Write on, Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal”. (That signature line was redundant so close to the writing prompt.)

Certain themes, like Truth in writing, recur often. Others are topical and unique.

This is post #306, making an average of just over 100 posts a year, about two per week. Posts average around 600 words each, which totals over 180,000 words — enough to fill three average-size print volumes. (Just think — if you had been writing even one single-spaced page of story a week, you would have filled a finished volume of stories by now.)

This history came to mind as I sorted through posts to select the most relevant to include in Dazzling Descriptions, an eBook bonus gift for those who sign up for the NAMW Make Your Stories Sparkle teleclass I’m teaching, beginning on February 13. Creating this volume was so much fun that I plan to produce additional “Blog Digest” volumes available as eBooks, Print-on-Demand hard copy, and perhaps even Kindle format. I’ll keep you posted on this project.

I continue to write and blog because I continue to learn and grow as I do. I think of myself as an explorer, always wondering what’s around the next corner, and how else to get from here to there. I look forward to many more years of sending continual “trip” updates from the Writer’s Path, sharing new angles, insights and thoughts on writing compelling stories, learning more about ourselves and creating a written legacy of our lives in the process. I hope you will continue to walk with me on this path.

Write now: take a few minutes to review the progress of your writing projects. Do you have a plan, and end result, in mind? How are things shaping up? How has your writing changed over time? What new topics or writing skills would you like to work on over the next few weeks and months?

Turkey Day

Turkey Day is nearly here. The radio is my head playing “Over the River and Through the Woods,” that old Thanksgiving classic I learned in second or third grade. I love that song, even though I never have seen that much snow as early as Thanksgiving. The other traditional Thanksgiving tune that stick in mind is the hymn, “Come Ye Thankful People, Come,” which I just discovered was written in 1844, the same year as “Over the River.”

Thinking back over my personal Thanksgiving history, I find a lot of variation. Childhood Thanksgivings in New Mexico varied. Some years we visited my mother’s family in Las Cruces, where most of my cousins lived. Those years enough food for a small army filled my aunt’s kitchen table, and tables for eating were set up in the living room for adults and an enclosed porch for the kids. Other years we went to visit my father’s parents in Clovis where things were a little quieter. Or we stayed home in Los Alamos, enjoying the meal with various combinations of friends and/or visiting relatives.

When Mother fixed the dinner, we always had turkey stuffed with my mother’s cornbread dressing. She left the seasoning of that dressing to my father, which baffled me at the time. Aside from making pancakes on weekends, seasoning the stuffing was his only contribution to cooking. We always had mashed potatoes with giblet gravy, candied sweet potatoes with toasty marshmallow topping, green beans (plain ones, not the soupy casserole version), 24-hour salad and fresh cranberry-orange relish. Dessert always included both pumpkin and mince pies, with lots of whipped cream.

During the years our children were growing up, Thanksgiving was always at our house, with my parents and brother joining us. In later years my brother's growing family was added. The menu remained stable, though the dressing was never quite the same without my father’s deft touch to season it. The last twenty-some years, the feast has changed. The distance between most family members has multiplied by a factor of ten. We alternate between staying home, often including assorted friends whose families are also far away, or going to visit my mother-in-law, who lives just east of Philadelphia.

Although this is not a tradition in our family, many families center the food preparation and meal around television with the Macy’s parade in the morning and football later in the day.

Isn’t it ironic how most of us primarily connect this holiday with turkey, travel, and television, followed by Black Friday shopping sprees? The holiday was instituted to remind us to be thankful for the many blessings we enjoy in this land of plenty. Even this year as the economy is melting like ice cream on hot pie, there is plenty to be thankful for, and I hope you’ll join me in recording some of those many blessings in stories. Encourage family members to share stories as you gather. Keep a recorder running, and/or make notes. In future years, your family will have a collection of stories to add to their Gratitude lists on Thanksgiving.

Among the many things I’m thankful for is the technology that allows me to create this blog, and for all my many readers. I wish each and every one of you the very best Thanksgiving ever, and another year of blessings.

Write now: a list of things you are thankful for, and then go on to write about your memories of Thanksgivings, past and present. Gather a collection of your family’s traditional recipes. Do you always stick to the same ones or vary the menu? What other traditions do you have? Do you recall unusual events or circumstances? How were people arranged for eating — all around one table, or a separate one for children? Keep those fingers moving and get it all down!

National Day of Listening: an Adventure in Multimedia

Have you ever wished you could watch movies of your ancestors and how they lived, or at least hear their voices? Although it's too late to capture your ancestors on video StoryCorp is doing something about that for future generations. They recognize the value of hearing voices from the past and are dedicated to preserving them. They are an independent nonprofit project whose mission is “to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.” Jerry Waxler wrote an inspiring blog post on Memory Writers Network about his heartwarming experience with StoryCorp.

Realizing that a very small percentage of the world’s population will ever be able to visit a StoryCorp studio, they have begun urging people to use their own equipment to record interviews with family members and others they care about. This Thanksgiving, “StoryCorps asks you to start a new holiday tradition—set aside one hour on Friday, November 28th, to record a conversation with someone important to you. You can interview anyone you choose: an older relative, a friend, a teacher, or a familiar face from the neighborhood.” You can learn more about this and find detailed guidelines to help by visiting their National Day of Listening website.

This StoryCorp request and nudge toward multi-media lifestory and family history projects seems timely. I still advocate print and written stories as the basic medium, because it is the most durable and accessible, but sound recordings, video, digital scrapbooks and photo albums definitely add impact to your stories by involving more channels of sensory input, and younger generations are becoming increasingly used to multi-media, even if they are avid readers.

If all you have available is a tape recorder or an older video camera that records on tape, don’t hesitate to use it. Just keep in mind that both audio and video tapes tend to deteriorate over time, and it’s becoming difficult to purchase players for them, so as soon as possible, get any tapes you have, new or old, transferred to digital format and burned to CD or DVD disks for storage. You can convert audio tapes yourself with a tape player that has a port for connecting to an external speaker, an audio cable (available for a few dollars at any electronics department), and the free open source Audacity sound capture program. If you ask around, you probably know someone with a combination VCR/DVD recorder to use for playing the tape and simultaneously recording it to a DVD disk, or you can purchase such a device for as little as $59 online (check reviews!).

If and when if your budget allows, prices for digital recorders and camcorders are plummeting. If you already have an iPod or other mp3 player, it may have a voice recorder function that will do the trick. My Creative Zen V Plus mp3 player that I spent $79 for a year ago isn’t quite studio quality, but it’s as good as most tape recorders and quite adequate for the purpose. Cnet.com offers excellent product reviews along with buying guides such as this one for mp3 players to help you choose.

Most digital cameras today have a video mode. It may produce a rather small image, but it’s better than nothing, and you won’t be able to turn the clock back later when you get a better one. Even if the video is less than the best, you'll have the audio. Start with an empty card, the largest you have, and set the camera on a tripod or prop it on a solid surface while you do your interview.

A scanner is the only equipment you need to take old photos and pop them into PowerPoint (or the free OpenOffice equivalent, Impress). Add captions, and get as creative as you want with special effects. You can even record a voice track and add music if you feel adventurous and dig around in Help to figure out how.

Think out of the box and use the toys you already have to create something wonderful. Your imagination will be stretched, you’ll form lots of new neural connections to keep your brain healthy as you learn new tricks to use the software involved, and your family will love the results.

Write now: inventory your gear and use the guidelines on the National Day of Listening site to make plans for recording an audio and/or video interview on the National Day of Listening this year. Find half a dozen old photos, scan them into the computer if you haven’t already done so, and make a simple PowerPoint slide show.

Light At the End of the Tunnel?

In one more week, 168 hours, we’ll be watching the early returns. This awful election will finally be over, and we’ll begin to have a sense of what direction things may go in the next four years. But I can't help wondering, is the light at the end of the tunnel a train?

Each presidential election for the last couple of decades has grown more distressing to me. I can’t recall the last time I voted for a candidate because I thought he or she was well-suited for the job rather than voting for the lesser of two evils. That is more true this year than ever.

As I contemplate this election and the state of the nation, I feel a strong urge to record these thoughts and my general political history for posterity. I want future generations to know how troubling this campaign has been for me and why I don’t trust or believe either candidate; why each one scares me, for different reasons. I want them to know my views of the issues of the times.

I also want them to know about our family political history. As a child I learned to take politics quite seriously, and was excited about turning 21 and being old enough to vote. (Yes, I’m so old I couldn’t vote until I was old enough to drink!) My maternal grandmother was the first state president of the New Mexico Republican Women’s Club, and she served as a delegate to the National Convention in 1952 and 1956. I remember listening to all the sessions of the 1956 convention on the radio, hoping to hear her name if not her voice.

I aspired to follow in her footsteps, joining the Republican Women in Richland, Wash. in time for the 1972 campaign. Those were also turbulent years, as much on the local and state level as national. That was the year we were voting on the Equal Rights Amendment in Washington, and I was in the thick of that campaign. I stayed active in the Republican party for several years, but thenI overheard the county chairwoman confide to someone that although she attended services and occasionally donated money to one of the churches in town, “the Republican Party is my real church!” My hair stood on end, and that was the end of my active party involvement.

I prefer not to look too closely at the way the government runs today; the way deals are made, ears marked, barrels filled with pork, and “walking around money” buys votes for members of the double-size Pennsylvania legislature. When I think of those things, I am filled with despair. What can one person do?

One person can vote. I can vote for the least of the evils. I can talk to the incumbents between elections and make my views known. I can send e-mails. I can talk to friends, and I can stay informed. Yes, there is a lot I can do, and will be doing more of in coming years than past, and I want to leave a record of that, perhaps in story, certainly in my journal. And when I record these thoughts, I will be sure to note that although I may sound pessimistic, I am convinced that the future will indeed be brighter than it looks right now. Whichever candidate wins will surely make sweeping changes, and ultimately that can make way for good things to happen down the road.

Write now: grab your journal or sit down at your keyboard and write down your feelings about the 2008 presidential election. Who will you vote for? Why? How do you feel about this candidate? Have your political leanings changed over the years? Do you make an effort to stay informed, or make your choices based on headlines and friend’s recommendations?

Your Place in History

Where were you when you heard the news of JFK’s assassination? How about the day Neil Armstrong took one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind? Do you remember the advent of credit cards? These events shaped our national awareness, but history books are full of lesser occurrences that also shaped the flow of history, most of which will pass unremembered.

You may not have thought of your life story as part of history — few people do. But just as the ocean is an accumulation of drops of rain, so history is the accumulation of the lives of individuals. We each have a part, if only as a participant in daily life and a recorder of developments. When you include larger historical elements in your personal story, you link your life with the overall flow of others in your time and space.

Kim Pearson, author and owner of Primary Sources, has written a book that makes it easy to do this. In Making History: How to remember, record, interpret, and share the events in your life, she includes lengthy lists of historical events and developments spanning the decades from the 1930s to the 1980s, arranged in eight chapters covering various aspects of society and culture. The text in each chapter gives an overview of the flow of history during these decades, and she includes a lengthy list of writing prompts at the end that should send you flying for paper or keyboard. You can learn more about the book by reading my review.

In the introduction she reminds us that history is always told and written from the perspective of individuals, whether it’s recorded in history books, encyclopedias, or other accounts. Anyone familiar with the women’s movement knows feminists claim that we read history, not herstory. When you write about your life, you are writing yourstory. Including larger elements turns it into ourstory.

You may have seen the viral e-mail going around claiming that in deference to the growing Muslim population there, Britain is revising history by requiring the Holocaust not be mentioned in history text books. That e-mail is utterly false (check it on Snopes.com), but something similar could happen. If it does, eye-witness accounts of those involved could be invaluable in setting the record straight at some future point.

Events don’t have to be that dramatic to matter. You will do your descendants a favor by writing of the flavor of your times on a larger scale, whether that’s a local decision of the School Board to increase class size, the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, or a declaration of war. Devote a few stories to telling them what was going on in the world around you in various years. Let them know what you thought about events and how they influenced and affected you for better or worse. That will give them a more rounded view of you, and as a bonus, it will teach them a few fragments of history in a way that will throb with relevance and energy.

Write now: about your experience of a historic event like JFK’s death, the war in Viet Nam, or some lesser historical event. Tell what you were doing when you heard about it, what you thought when you heard it, how it affected your life right then and later, and anything else that seems relevant.