20 Reasons You Should Blog Your Family History Book

June 22, 2015June 22, 2015| LynnLynn| 2 Comments|

I believe in the paper book especially when it comes to leaving a lasting legacy of our family history. Don’t get me wrong, I own an e-reader, and I love technology, but paper books remain for me the best choices to record our family history stories. Paper has proven to stand the test of time, and it remains the best option for leaving a legacy for future descendants.

Who knows where technology will lead us in the years to come.  I do know that printed books have been around for thousands of years, and despite our advancements in technology they continue to hold on.  You do not have to worry about whether your stories will be found in the vast world of internet or whether your information saved on your computer or CDs can be opened and accessed by your descendants. Books don’t require any special technology to read them.

However, I also believe that we need to consider today’s technology for reaching out to our living relatives.   I hear it over and again. Family historians tell me how their family is not interested. But we need to consider how and where we are delivering these stories.

E-books, blogs, e-newsletters, and Facebook are just a few ways we can convey our stories to our living relatives.

To reach out to our children and grandchildren, we need to deliver our stories to their laptops, tablets, and smartphones. We need to address our family, particularly the younger generation where they live – online. We need to distribute our family history, in short, digestible stories, that fit today’s fast-paced lifestyle.

Enter blogging, an excellent tool for providing your family history stories in small, easily digestible snippets for today’s generation.

However, blogging has an added advantage. Not only can you use it as a tool to entertain and educate your living family, but you can also curate those blog posts into a paper book to leave for your descendants. Family history blogs give you the advantage of addressing today’s generation but also leaving your stories in a printed format for tomorrow’s generation. We need to focus on both so that our descendants will find our stories.

Family history blogging offers a variety of benefits for family historians and should be taken seriously as a means of bringing your family history to the online world and in a printed book.

Here are 20 benefits you can gain from blogging your family history book.

 

  1. Simplify an overwhelming project–breaking down the task of writing a book into small blog posts.
  2. Organization – short blog posts help you to organize your book into chapters, isolate themes, and ancestors to focus on.
  3. Establish a writing routine – learn to write on a regular schedule compiling a collection of narratives.
  4. Develop your writing skills –with each post your writing will improve. (I promise)
  5. Find an audience for your book – introduce yourself as a writer to not only your family but a worldwide
  6. It’s free – write a blog for free. Work out your stories before you invest in printing costs.
  7. Get feedback from readers on your stories.
  8. Create an email list of readers who may want to buy your future book
  9. Draw out distant cousins and find new leads on brick walls.
  10. Promote your genealogy skills and or business.
  11. Develop your social media skills.
  12. Produce material to share with your social media networks.
  13. Test book ideas before you invest a great deal of time in writing them.
  14. Build your authority as an expert in your field.
  15. Reach a younger generation where they live – online.
  16. Leave a legacy online for future generations to find.
  17. Increase your income.
  18. Attract an agent or publisher.
  19. Attract media to your business.
  20. Accountability and deadlines – hold yourself accountable to an audience to produce content in a timely and consistent manner.

Do you want to learn how to write a family history blog? Join our Family History Blog Writing Course, our first online course in The Family History Writing Studio. Learn to write and publish your family history one post at a time!

 Family History Blog Writing Course

This intimate, hands-on workshop will assist you in outlining and writing content for your family history blog for the purposes of curating your stories into a family history book.

Begins Jan 3rd. 2017, Registration now open.

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How Reading Can Improve Your Writing with 6 Actionable TipsHow Reading Can Improve Your Writing with 6 Actionable Tips

March 14, 2017March 14, 2017| LynnLynn| 0 Comment| 11:19 pm

 

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” —Stephen King

 

I believe three things make you a better writer.

Learning the craft of writing.

Practice, practice, practice.

Reading books by other authors.

 

I can help you to learn the craft of writing. The practice, well, that’s on you. So today,  let’s address the third item on the list, reading. Let’s first look at why reading can make you a better writer.

A good writer should read for pleasure but to also learn the craft of writing. When we read the books by other authors, styles, voices and other genres, we expand our knowledge.  Most importantly, it presents us with writing that’s better than our own, and through osmosis, as well as applying the techniques it helps us to improve our own writing. Reading can help you to expand your vocabulary and to craft better sentences. It helps you to understand language better. Quite simply reading helps you to learn from the best and gain new knowledge.

Reading can help you to understand how others think and process information.  This is an important skill to learn if you wish to express yourself through the written word to others. When you analyze what you read and share it with others, you learn to understand a book and in turn convey that understanding to others.

Reading reveals the secrets of a writer’s job in practice. And finally, you will find reading will offer inspiration.

 

6 Tips for Improving Your Reading Skills

 

  1. Establish some good reading habits.

    Dedicate a set amount of time each day for reading. I like a minimum of 60 minutes. Somedays, I will read more. But no less than 60 minutes every day. Carry your book with you to maximize your time. Consider making a book list and plan your reading for the year. I choose a minimum of 24 books each year. That’s 2 books a month. My goal is to improve on this each year. Choose your books wisely, plan your books, read from a variety of books from classics to trash to contemporary literature. Read outside your genre. Join a book club – it forces you to read books outside of your genre, to read with a deadline and to read with a critical eye.

 

  1.  Take notes.

Break down the stories you read. Analyze character, plot and theme. Highlight passages, make notes of words or passages that stand out for you and the effects they create. Make notes throughout the reading process. I love Kindle for this reason. I can highlight passages and make notes right in the Kindle. After finishing the book write a one-page Keep a binder with your one-page summaries of each book you have read.Write reviews, Amazon, Goodreads, or consider a book review on your blog. It helps you to analyze the book and think about the story with a more critical eye.

 

  1. Consider creating a reading journal. 

A reading journal combines the skills of reading and writing. You record your impressions and ideas about a book you’ve read in your journal.  A reading journal will help you record the not only the feelings it created within you as you journeyed with the characters but the writing lessons you learned. It is worth taking a few minutes after each book to record your thoughts in a reading journal. All these things can help you become a better, offer inspiration and build your confidence.

 

  1. Try the techniques you’ve learned in your writing.

Experiment with what you discovered, and then give the techniques you’ve discovered a twist to make them your own.

 

  1. Don’t read more than two books at a time

I recommend limiting the number of books that you read at once. If you do read two books at a time, read from two different genres, for example, read a fiction and nonfiction.

 

  1. Enjoy your reading.

Don’t waste your time reading books you are not enjoying. Life is too short to read a book you dislike. But before you put it down learn from it. Identify why you are struggling. Write down your analysis of why the book is not landing for you before you move on. We can learn from the bad books as well as the good ones.

 

To learn more about how to read to write, I recommend. How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren. For more books visit our Writers’ Resource Page.  (affiliate links) 

 

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The Writer’s NotebookThe Writer’s Notebook

March 8, 2015March 8, 2015| LynnLynn| 0 Comment| 3:44 am

The writer’s notebook, it’s not a diary or a journal but a valuable tool to help you develop your writing skills.  It’s a place to be a writer.

A writer’s notebook can help you develop your writing skills through a variety of ways.

  1. A writer’s notebook will help you to pay attention to the world around you. By recording events, ideas, dialogue, people that you come across in your day, you become more aware of your surroundings, the setting, how people interact. In your notebook capture what moves you in the day. Perhaps it was a conversation you overheard, or person you saw, or something in nature that caught your attention. Write it down, explore what it means to you. Practice transforming what you see, hear, smell, touch, and taste during your day in to words on the page.

 

  1. A writer’s notebook will help you develop ideas. Your book is a place to capture seed ideas. Whether they are ideas for stories or scenes or even if you’re not sure what you plan to do with them.  It’s a place to nurture ideas, keep them safe until you’ve ready to explore them further.

 

  1. A writer’s notebook can help you develop your creative writing skills. Practice scene writing, dialogue and descriptive writing. Heard a conversation,  recreate it in words on the page, what did they say, how did they say it. It can teach you to listen. It can teach you to be aware to details.

 

  1. A writer’s notebook can help you to expand your vocabulary. Record favourite words, unusual words you hear in your day, or a new word you’ve recently learned.

 

  1. A writer’s notebook is a place to explore your memories bring them out of your head and onto the page.

 

  1. A writer’s notebook is a place to map a story, draw a plot line, sketch a setting, or draw a character, maybe an ancestor?

 

Spend 10-15 minutes a day free writing in your writer’s notebook. Carry it with you throughout the day. It will help you to develop your voice and your sense of self as a writer.

 

Don’t restrict your entries to family history thoughts and ideas. Our ancestors lived in the real world. They interacted with the world around them. Observing your world today can help you add tremendous detail to your stories and help you to learn the tools of character, setting, dialogue and description enhancing your creative writing skills.

 

Here are a few prompts to help you get your notebook started.

 

  • A gesture, word or phrase you found interesting
  • A conversation you overheard
  • An interesting person who you met or observed
  • A person from your past, you want to remember
  • A description of a photograph
  • What you see outside the window
  • Surroundings you may have passed in your daily travels
  • A quote you heard today
  • A dish or meal that you made or ate, note its characteristics using all your senses or just one.

 

One thing is certain, to become a better writer; you must be an observer of the world and you must practice writing.  Starting a writer’s notebook is an opportunity to incorporate both into your daily routine.

 

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