Writing Your Family History - Tips for Organizing Your Memorabilia

Some of you have probably already begun recording your family stories and you may be very organized about it. For the rest of us, here are some ideas, which might work for you.

You may want to start a file for bits of memorabilia (birth or death announcements, letters, postcards, recipes, passports, old graduation certificates, etc.), so that these can be scanned and included in the final product. Don't underestimate the importance of including culinary heritage in your book of family stories. These can provide a wealth of memories and information about life in a particular era.

Photographs: Date each photograph and identify the people in them. If your memory book is going to be produced on a computer, scan the photos or have them scanned at a drug store or copy shop. Give each one a title which will make it easy to locate. This way, they will be preserved and will be ready for incorporating into your book.

You are also going to want to keep track of your ideas. As you get further into the process of recording stories, you will probably find more and more ideas popping into your head. It is helpful for you to keep a book or journal for jotting these down in one place. Another method is to use 3 x 5 cards. You can write each story idea on a card and later sort through them and place them into categories. If you are using a computer, create a special folder and separate sub-folders or files to keep track of your notes.

There are many paths to writing your family history and you will doubtless venture down all of them in one way or another. Mekeel McBride summed up the writing of family stories when he wrote:

"You look out the window and you see the tip of a tiger outside, and you know there's a whole tiger attached to that tip, and you wonder about the tiger."

Keep working with your notes and ideas as they flow. Don't worry too much about the order in which they appear; they can all be organized later when you are in the design process. Before you know it, you will have enough material to fill several books!

Carol M. Upton is a writer and personal historian whose work has appeared in The Vancouver Sun and Province, The Coast Reporter, The Cup of Comfort Cookbook, The Change Agent and several trade publications. Carol owns a business called Recollections and offers a free consultation and a free monthly newsletter called Living Legends, for those who want assistance in telling their family stories. Visit Carol at www.memorybooks.ca