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Questions and answers on writing life experiences for ourselves and others.

Index of Questions

1. Why is it important to record life stories?

2. What if your life seems boring and ordinary? Who will
want to read it?

3. What is the best way to capture the story? Video, oral
tapes, written narrative etc.

4. What is a story? Definitions of different types of life
experiences and how they are captured.

5. Who’s who in the capture of a life event: Story teller,
listener, interviewer, historian, audience, transciptionist,
archivist etc.

6. What is the role of a listener? How should the questions
be phrased so that bias or personality is subdued and the
storyteller is in charge?

7. Is the role different if the storyteller is facing a life
threatening disease?

8. How do you handle it if in telling of the story emotions
and repressed feelings surface?

9. How do you get enough information? When do you turn
to family members or public records?

10. How much time does it take to complete a story?
Everyone is so busy and life goes by so quickly, how can
I ever squeeze this in?

11. What is truth? Why would two different people
present at the same event see it entirely different and
which version do you believe and record?

12. How should you convey the story? First person, third
person, lots of photos with captions, small easily read
sections or one long letter?

13. What are the main types of personal anecdotes, life
events, experiences, tragedies and triumphs that make a
good memoir?

14. How do you narrow it down to the “real” story? What is
hidden beneath the iceberg?

15. What are some questions to jog memories?

16. What about editing, spelling, composition etc? What if
others judge your work and find it less than perfect?

17. How do you structure the narrative so that it is
interesting, believable and leaves the message the story
teller wanted to convey?

18. What do you do with the narrative when you have
finished writing it?

19. Who does the finished work belong to?

20. Where can you find additional assistance on personal
historians or story telling issues?

21. Where is the paper and pen?

If you are interested in getting the answers to these and other
questions about life story writing, please contact us at
judywright@artichokepress.com and sign up for a tele-class
and our FREE e-zine: “The Artichoke” - finding the heart of the
story in the journey of life..

©Judy H. Wright, Personal and Oral Historian - www.artichokepress.com

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The other day someone told me I was eccentric, arrogant, egotistical and cocky? I said so what? At least I am not fat, ugly, stupid and subhuman like you? No, I really did not say that, but I thought about it later, after remembering a Winston Churchill quote at a party. Why did the person email me to tell me this? Well apparently they read an article that I had written about myself; yep it was your basic; Me, Myself and I article.

Why did I write the article, well because I was having a writer’s block session and needed some topic to write about so I simply started writing about myself and it turned out the article came out fairly nice so I posted it online? The article gets good traffic and good reviews, except this one person. Anyway back to my point here. If you have writer’s block and you cannot seem to find another topic to write about, write an article about yourself.

Why you ask?

Well if you are hung up on writing write about yourself or an event that happened to you or a scenario you dealt with, write it as a story from another perspective as if it was someone else and you were telling the story. People do this all the time and often these stories make good articles. It is by far the easiest why to break writer’s block and I am convinced most novelist base at least one character in every story on themselves. Consider all this in 2006.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

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Many high prolific online article writers who submit articles to online article submission sites and directory web sites have been criticized with writing the same article over and over again and basically only changing keywords. That is to say that they simply keep rewriting the same material.

The Google search engines are said to penalize the rewriting of articles. But this is not necessarily so. If someone is to use entire paragraphs and long complex sentences over and over again then it is possible that these articles could cause a problem with the web sites search engine rankings and it has been theorized that Google is doing this. Recently a blogger stated that most online article submission sites and prolific online article writers we write all their own articles over and over.

Well, personally I am the most prolific online article writer on the Internet was 7800 articles and I do not rewrite my articles, so it is unfortunate that because I am prolific online article writer that a blogger would criticize my method and intensions. He seemed to be indicating that those web sites, which use content from high prolific online article writers will be penalized and that simply is not so.

Now then, if every single article is a remake using the same sentences and paragraphs then in this could be the case, but no one has ever proved that the Google search engines do this and it is all speculation. Google does not publish the way their search engines work and therefore all these bloggers who claim to know all the secrets to the Google search engine are completely out of line with their comments. Please consider all of this in 2006.

Lance Winslow - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

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