1. Determine how much time you can dedicate to writing your personal history, and schedule specific writing time for yourself every day or every week.
2. Choose and prepare a format for recording your history. This could be a regular pen and paper, typing into a word processing program, creating a personal history website or blog, or recording into a tape or video recorder. Work with the format that best suits your preferences.
3. Regardless of the format you are using to officially record your memories, keep a small notepad and pen handy so you can jot down memories that come to you at unexpected times. It's surprising how quickly these memories can surface and then disappear again. (I love this notepad from Wellspring because it doesn't get all bent or torn apart in my purse, it comes with a pen, and it closes securely so I can stick Post-Its or other scraps of paper in there until I have a chance to go through them.)
And remember to always keep these two things in mind:
1. Don't feel overwhelmed. Thinking about writing the story of your whole life can feel daunting, but if you capture it memory by memory, soon you wil have a rich treasury of stories, memories, and thoughts.
2. Take it at your own pace. I'll post prompts pretty regularly, but they shouldn't dictate the pace of your writing. You don't need to finish with one prompt just because I've posted another. In fact, one prompt could lead you to think of so many stories and memories, you might spend a month working on a single prompt!
So, here's what you can expect from me:
- At least once a week I'll post a prompt that is meant to guide your writing or get you thinking of other related memories to write about.
- The prompts will come in many different forms: pictures, single words, questions, a story or news article to respond to, etc.
- I may include short examples or stories from my own life. (I promise not to bore you with super-long self-indulgent examples.)
- Sometimes I will ask for a visual response along with/in place of your writing (i.e., a drawing, photograph, cartoon, collage, or whatever visual medium you can use to portray a certain event or memory in your life). If you don't want to do a visual response, you can just write.
- The interpretation of the prompt is entirely up to you. (It's your life, I'm just here to help you get started.)
If you have prompt ideas, questions, or need to contact me for anything else, you can drop me a line any time using the email on the sidebar. I love feedback, and I take constructive criticism really well, so if you have thoughts on journaling, personal histories, or this project in general, I would love to hear them.
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3 comments:
This is such a great idea, Sarah! I started writing my personal history after my dad had a heart attack a couple years ago. The entire time he was in ICU, I kept having all these memories come to mind. I kept a notebook in my purse and just wrote down a keyword for each memory. Then, when I finally got around to doing anything with it, I was able to make separate chapters for the different categories of my memories. I'll have to email you part of what I've done so far. I'll add a link to this blog on mine so I can make sure to check it on a regular basis. Thanks too because this is just the motivation I need to continue where I left off.
This is so great! I think I might just start a new blog for this. Not private, but not one that I tell EVERYONE about. Hmmm, I am going to have to think about this for a bit and decide what to do. I just gave a RS lesson on a talk given by President Eyring in Oct. 2007 called O Remember, Remember. So I have been thinking about this journaling thing this week anyway.
Thanks!
Brooke, I would love to see what you've done so far, especially since you've got some kind of system down for organizing it. That's definitely something I've been trying to figure out.
Scrappy, I think that's what I might do, too! I definitely think paper and pen will doom me to fail right from the start, so I'll either just keep it on my portable hard drive or I'll put a new blog together.
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