Rewriting Your Family History

Most families have one negative heritage or another associated with them. Some have struggled with these evil foundations for centuries. Others have accepted persistent reproaches as their lot in life. Yet others, in an attempt to change the tides of calamities, have sought for solutions in places that compounded their situation. What do you do when you notice the scourge of premature death in your family? How do you explain the persistence of poverty in the midst of plenty? Why do some family members work like elephants and eat like ants? Why are women in certain families unable to keep their husbands? Why is divorce a mark of identification for some families? These are the concerns we have chosen to address in this book on principles of dealing with evil heritage

Most families have one negative heritage or another associated with them. Some have struggled with these evil foundations for centuries. Others have accepted persistent reproaches as their lot in life. Yet others, in an attempt to change the tides of calamities, have sought for solutions in places that compounded their situation. What do you do when you notice the scourge of premature death in your family? How do you explain the persistence of poverty in the midst of plenty? Why do some family members work like elephants and eat like ants? Why are women in certain families unable to keep their husbands? Why is divorce a mark of identification for some families? These are the concerns we have chosen to address in this book on principles of dealing with evil heritage

Writing a family history does not have to be an overwhelming task. This book outlines a simple process that will aid your research and create pages of information that can be read and understood by all family members. Your research will become faster and more accurate and your family can enjoy the family history. Remember, our writing should go beyond finding documents and filling in charts. Hopefully, the methods discussed in this book will show the reader a simple format that will make this task much easier. You may be reluctant to write down these stories because you do not consider yourself a writer. Our ancestors were ordinary people. Why should we write about them? All of our immigrant ancestors contributed to America’s history and their stories should be saved for our grandchildren. Our family histories should give clues of their roles and this will help us understand our roots.

Many people want to write a family history, but few ever take on the task of publishing one. Publish Your Family History will tell you all the fundamentals of book production, together with the important details that distinguish a home-published book from a homemade one.

Maybe it has always been a secret dream of yours to create a book out of your research, but you have been too busy or overwhelmed to get started. I will help you break this process down into simple, manageable steps. You will learn about the research process, what to include, how to turn facts into stories, how to organize your book, how to get it printed, and finally how to share it. You can choose any software for this project, but I will show you how Family Tree Maker and Family Book Creator can make things faster and easier than you might think. Dive in now to learn how achievable a family history book is, and the important role it plays in preserving your research. What if your favorite ancestry website disappears tomorrow? Don't leave anything to chance. You and your descendants deserve the chance to sit on the couch and page through the story of your family, for years to come.

Gill Blanchard's practical step-by-step guide to writing a family history is designed for anyone who wants to bring their ancestors' stories to life. She looks at ways of overcoming the particular problems family historians face when writing a family history -- how to deal with gaps in knowledge, how to describe generations of people who did the same jobs or lived in the same area, how to cover the numerous births, marriages and deaths that occur, and when to stop researching and start writing.?Her book provides examples to help readers find their own writing style, deal with family stories, missing pieces of information and anomalies. It also offers advice on key aspects of composition, such as adding local and social history context and using secondary material. The focus throughout is on how to develop a story from beginning to end.?Exercises are a key feature of the text. There is guidance on the various formats a family history can take and how to choose the appropriate one, with examples of format and layout. Production and publishing are also covered -- books, booklets, newsletters, websites, blogs and ebooks.

Why Life Writing? How many times have you looked through the family album and wished there were more pictures of “the good old days”? William Hofmann’s message in Life Writing is that there are more pictures, thousands of them just waiting to be pulled from your memory and written down. Hofmann’s clear advice on how to get fresh ideas, how to write a rough draft, or how to use the basic principles of rewriting would be useful to any writer. But his book is specifically for those people who would like to use writing as a tool for preserving their past, for recording their own memories and the memories of their parents and grandparents. From the first sentence to the last page, Life Writing is at once supportive and practical, a comprehensive step-by-step guide to gathering your family’s folklore and keeping it alive.