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Along Those Lines . . .
Resources for Writing Your Family History
by George G. Morgan
One of your goals is to perhaps collect enough information to sit down and write a family history or a biography of particularly interesting or favorite ancestors. Regular readers of this column have often seen me refer to the wonderful town of Rome, Georgia, and to my great-grandfather, Green Berry Holder. He is my favorite ancestor and one to whom I feel very close. He was an exciting man, born in 1843, who served as a Confederate soldier, relocated with his parents and older brother after the war to western Georgia, became a merchant, was the first postmaster of two post offices, and bought land on which there was a cave and started the North Georgia Fertilizer Company, and much more. He had a successful marriage and produced twelve children. I've been working on a biography for quite a while, but it has been a slower process than I have hoped.
I attended the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Salt Lake City this month and found some very interesting books and software to help your (and my) writing efforts. In "Along Those Lines. . ." this week, I want to share a few of these with you.
Writing the Family Narrative
Writing narrative text can be a challenge to many family historians. You may be an ace researcher who enters data ands source citations into your genealogical database with great ease. Entering data and writing the type of flowing, interesting family history that will capture people's attention, though, is much different.
Lawrence P. Gouldrup, Ph.D., has written a pair of great books that can help you realize your dream of creating a great family history. Writing the Family Narrative, published by Ancestry, is actually two books that together make a great instructive set. One is the actual textbook that helps you use genealogical and historical records to create historical context. He then instructs you in how to write the actual narrative, and how to develop and use point of view in writing the document. Bibliographies and other citations are well-explained, as are other essentials of writing the history. The other book is the Writing the Family Narrative Workbook, the perfect complement to the textbook. The workbook further defines information presented in each chapter of the book, provides examples of writing styles and techniques, and provides ample space for you to apply your new knowledge and to improve your writing style. Used together, I think you'll find that your own writing style will greatly improved and your family history narrative will become a more natural extension of your research.
Producing a Quality Family History
One of the best books about publishing your family history is Patricia Law Hatcher's Producing a Quality Family History, also published by Ancestry. Ms. Hatcher addresses writing and style, of course, but she also discusses the technical issues associated with preparing a manuscript for publication. That includes page layout and formatting, the use of various type fonts, developing and including charts and diagrams, using photographs, preparing camera-ready art and manuscripts for printers, technological issues, and thoughts about self-publishing. This book is considered one of the standards of family history writing.
Personal Historian Software
Personal Historian is a software package sold by RootsMagic, Inc., publisher of the RootsMagic genealogical database program. Personal Historian is an affordable software package that assists you in writing personal histories about yourself and other individuals. A wizard-type facility guides you through setting up an individual or family. You may either enter information manually or you can import a GEDCOM file and select the person whose information you want to import. Of that person's information, you can select the other persons related to your subject or unselect and exclude them. You can do the same with events, and you can even specify the time frame of lifespan events you want to include (the entire life or a selected range of years). Once the data is imported, you can select to use one of a library of "Life Capsules," packaged sets of timelines, historical events, cultural events, prompts, and "memory triggers" covering a wide range of subjects. The Life Capsules will incorporate detailed chronological historical events into your ancestor's life. You can delete those which aren't applicable. Here you can develop context or see gaps in your research.
The program gives you the options of adding new journal entries or topics and deleting items that are not important to your story or that of your ancestor. For each topic, you can write text with a built-in word processing facility. You can copy and paste data/notes from your genealogical database's notes (these are not imported). The program also allows you to insert photographs and files into the textual document to add interest. (You also can copy-and-paste photos and then resize them within the text area.)
Finally, you can publish everything that you have created as a history. The resulting document can be saved as an RTF or PDF file and/or can be printed. When you preview the print document, you may decide to revise what you have already done. Simply close the preview window and return to the topic and event areas you wish to revise.
Genealogical Writing in the 21st Century
Those genealogists interested in writing for periodicals such as The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, New England Ancestors, and other journals and, in fact, any kind of genealogical writing will be interested in a book published by the New England Historical and Genealogical Society. It is titled Genealogical Writing in the 21st Century: A Guide to Register Style and More, edited by Henry B. Hoff. The book is a compilation of articles by professional writers, with each article presenting invaluable tips, techniques, and styles for producing quality written material for publication, regardless of the medium: journals, magazines, genealogy books, family histories, and the Internet. This small volume, available from NEHGS, will help you polish your writing into a professional style.
The International Society of Family History Writers and Editors
It's always fun and informative to network with other writers. The International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE) is a membership organization whose primary goal is to encourage excellence in writing and editorial standards in genealogical publishing. This embraces all media, including newspapers, magazines, newsletters, professional journals, books (including compiled family histories), online columns, society and personal websites, Web logs (blogs), and broadcast journalism of all sorts.
ISFHWE publishes an excellent quarterly newsletter, Columns, that includes informative articles about writing, news, tips, websites, book reviews, and many other items. ISFHWE hosts an annual Excellence-in-Writing Competition with cash prizes. A public website allows members to submit their publications and writing venues for added exposure and a public mailing list is used for discussion of writing topics. Members have access to a Members-Only website graciously provided by MyFamily.com. Here our members share information on a private message board, can upload files with sample writing for peer review and comments, a chat room for discussions, a calendar of events, a photograph gallery, and more. ISFHWE maintains a presence at the NGS and FGS Conferences with meal functions, sponsored lectures, and a booth in the exhibit hall. A new Member Book Promotion Project was introduced at the recent FGS Conference in Salt Lake City, in which members submitted copies of books they had written, edited, or published, along with a fee to cover ISFHWE's expenses of shipping the books and publishing a catalog of those books that was distributed to conference attendees. Bookplates were placed in each book and, at the conclusion of the conference, the books were presented to the host society for placement in one or more libraries of their choice. If you are interested in joining ISFHWE for $15 a year, visit their website.
Electronic Options
The traditional print publishing process is still considered the method of choice, although there are electronic publishing options as well. Printing on demand is another topic that you may want to investigate on the Internet companies that may offer this type of service. One of these is Lulu. Books by You offers a personal publishing kit for Our Family History that you can use to compose a family history book, and then you can order additional copies of the book. Llumina Press may also provide a print-on-demand resource for you.
You Have Options!
As you can see, there are many options for learning more about family history writing and publishing. It takes the investment of some time and energy to learn and consider these but it helps to know you are not alone.
Happy Writing!
George
Check out the new Genealogy Guys Podcast at http://genealogyguys.com!
Visit the ISFHWE Web site at www.rootsweb.com/~cgc/.
Visit George's Web site at http://ahaseminars.com/atl for information about speaking engagements.
Copyright 2005, MyFamily.com. All rights reserved.
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