HOW to SAVE
YOUR LIFE ONE CHAPTER AT A TIME
A Step-by-step Guide to Creating a Life Story Book Tom Taylor and Alison Armstrong Taylor
Š Copyright 2013, 2015 Pictures and Stories, Inc. by Tom and Alison Taylor All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal. Printed in the United States of America Cover photo: Tom's mother, Joyce Johnson Taylor, seeking adventure in the Utah desert about 1960.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Tom and Alison about 1972
Husband-and-wife team Tom and Alison Taylor own and operate Pictures and Stories, Inc. which has helped hundreds of clients preserve their life stories since 1994. Tom has an MBA from the University of Utah and a 25-year career in business development. Alison worked as a professional photographer, artist, and designer before joining Pictures and Stories in 2005. The Taylors have taught at the RootsTech family history conference, BYU Education Week, Westminster College, and at numerous family history conferences across the country.
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CONTENTS
Introduction: How to Save Your Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Step One: Purpose, Audience, and Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Step Two: Creating a Lifeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Step Three: Your Life Story Assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Step Four: Selecting Your Stories and Making Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Step Five: Drafting Your Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Step Six: Theme and Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Step Seven: Editing Your First Draft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Step Eight: Selecting and Preparing Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Step Nine: Putting it All Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Step Ten: Celebrating Your Accomplishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
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HOW TO USE THIS BOOK We've included a number of worksheet pages in this book. Feel free to photocopy them if you need more, or use them as a guide to create your own worksheets. For even more detailed and up-to-date information on the topics in this book, check out our blog at www.picturesandstories.com. No ads, no spam. Just useful articles to help you tell your life stories. We've also left an awful lot of white space in this book. Feel free to scribble notes, ideas, or doodles in the white space. That's what it's for.
white space
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What The Doodles Mean Life saving tips. Just some things to make saving your life a little bit easier.
Quotes, inspiration and other happy thoughts.
Key concepts. Usually a little recap at the end of a chapter.
Low-tech solutions and alternatives for those not using a computer.
“Danger, Will Robinson!” (We’re dating ourselves here.) Warnings about things that might trip you up or discourage you.
Story time. After all, we are all about stories.
Tasks. This is your to-do list. If you do everything that has a checkmark next to it in this book, you will have a finished book at the end!
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A life that is not documented is a life that within a generation or two will largely be lost to memory. What a tragedy this can be in the history of a family. Dennis Neuenschwander
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INTRODUCTION
HOW TO SAVE YOUR LIFE Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable. Brenda Ueland
What is your life worth ? Every day you have lived, you have made unique contributions to the world that no one else in history could have provided. Your life experiences have infinite value—to your loved ones, to future generations, possibly even to strangers you’ve never met. Yet the percentage of people who make an effort to capture their unique life stories and share them with others in a lasting way is quite small. We think this is an epic tragedy. This guide will show you how to “save your life,” capturing your life’s most important stories and pictures in beautiful coffee-table-worthy books that you can share with loved ones and hand down to future generations.
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Wh y did we create this program? Well, for one thing, we got tired of looking sheepish when students in our classes asked us, “Where can I buy your book?”
Helping a friend or parent? Although the instructions and commentary in this guide are mainly directed at those who are recording their own life stories, this method will work just as well for those of you who are helping someone else do so. This method can also be adapted for couples who are writing a history together, or for those who may be writing about a parent, family, or ancestor(s).
But mostly, it is because we have witnessed first hand the power and impact of personal stories. Over the years, we have seen hearts touched, hurts healed, understanding revealed, and families reunited by the power of story. We passionately believe that everyone should record their life’s most interesting and valuable experiences and “send them out into the world for good.” Whether you tell a story to a larger community, or just to your family and friends, we promise you that your story will have an impact—perhaps beyond your ability to see or understand; perhaps on generations yet unborn. Our passionate belief in this worthwhile endeavor stems from years of working with people to record their unique life stories. With our company, Pictures and Stories, Inc., we have guided hundreds of people through this process to preserve their experiences in beautiful books and videos. We would love to be able to personally help everyone, but that would obviously be impossible! So the next best thing: to come up with a way we could coach and inspire as many of you as possible without actually having to take up space in your living room. We have seen many people begin a life story project and then get stuck or overwhelmed; many more who want to preserve their stories but don’t even know where to start. And so we decided to design a step-by-step program based on our methods we use with our clients.
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We want to see you finish a life story project. Our goal is to step you through the entire process, at your own pace, with a finished product at the end and the feeling of accomplishment that comes with it. Helping a family member record their own stories can be an incredible bonding experience. We have worked with many clients who are helping their aging parents record their stories, and we have seen the beauty of this two-way gift. Showing that you are interested in their stories is your gift to them, and in turn, they have the opportunity to give to you the benefit of their wisdom and experience.
Each of us is a unique strand in the intricate web of life and here to make a contribution. Deepak Chopra
What makes our method different? Hundreds of books have been already been written about autobiographical writing; many of them are excellent (check the membership website for some of our favorites). Here’s what is different about our approach: ǻǻ It’s a step-by-step method that takes you through the entire process of creating a life story book, from start to print. Supplementary materials to the book—a workbook, audiovisual materials, and a membership website with up-to-theminute information and community support—will help you get your questions answered and keep you motivated. ǻǻ We focus on story, because without stories, you are left with a dry collection of dates, place names, and other genealogical data. (Don’t get us wrong; as amateur weekend genealogists we adore this kind of data and value its importance. But facts can be easily woven into the stories, making the medicine go down easy.) Not everyone can write with the eloquence of Tolstoy or Dickens, but anyone can tell an engaging story. Some of you already do it naturally; others can benefit from just a few quick pointers. We will show you how to capture your best stories—as you would tell them.
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ǻǻ We focus on pictures and good design. You may have the most fascinating stories ever written, but if they aren’t presented well, your photocopies-in-a-three-ring-binder life stories may get buried in a box in the basement and never again see the light of day. Incorporating photographs and other memorabilia with your life stories makes them more inviting and accessible to your readers as well as adding additional layers of meaning. Fortunately, with the advent of print-on-demand technology, it is easier to print great-looking, short-run books than any time in history. It doesn’t take as much money or expertise these days to produce a book worthy of proud coffee-table display.
chronological comprehensive complete
News flash! You don't have to write an epic autobiography.
ǻǻ Your best stories, one story at a time. We will help you break down what could be an overwhelming, never-ending project into small, manageable pieces that can be completed quickly and even produced independently. More importantly, we will show you how to practice story triage: to select and share what is most important to you about your life. ǻǻ We passionately believe that your life story doesn’t have to be any of “the 3 Cs”—chronological, comprehensive, or complete. In fact, we encourage many people to preserve their life stories in short volumes or chapter books rather than epic autobiographies. A compact, tightly-focused book is easier for you to produce, so you can experience the satisfaction of a finished book that much sooner. And you can keep producing volumes as you add more fascinating stories to your life. One question we get asked frequently is, “When is the best time to write my life history?” Tom’s cheery reply to this question is “The day before you die, so nothing gets left out.” (What a kidder!) Sarcasm aside, there are countless advantages to starting now, whether you’re eighteen or eighty. You don’t have to wait for geezerhood to record your stories, and you don’t have to wait until you are planning your funeral to put them in a book.
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Wh y should you record your life stories? We’re pretty sure that you already understand (at least on some level) the importance of telling your stories, or you wouldn’t have bought this guide. But just to make you feel extra good about the money you’ve spent, here are some good reasons: ǻǻ Your life is worth saving. You possess a unique combination of life lessons, gifts, and wisdom that no other person on the planet can contribute in quite the same way. Isn’t that amazing enough to be worth putting on paper? ǻǻ If you don’t do it, nobody else will. Or if they do, they might get it wrong.
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. Winston Churchill
ǻǻ It’s cheaper than therapy. Assessing your life and writing about it can take you on an incomparable voyage of self-discovery and healing. Identifying and sharing what is special about your life can have enormous benefits for you as well as your readers. ǻǻ You pay attention to your financial assets; what about your emotional and spiritual assets? When you pass on, you want your loved ones to be able to take best advantage of what you have earned and saved and passed on to them. This is true not just for bank accounts and furniture. What values and experiences can you pass on? Are your other “life assets” in order, so they can be appreciated after you are gone? A recent insurance industry study found that both baby-boomers and the elder generation were uncomfortable discussing the topic of leaving a financial inheritance. But both groups embraced the idea of leaving a legacy, which could include sharing family traditions, history, stories, values, and wishes. They determined that non-financial items like ethics, morals, faith, and philosophy were ten times more important than the financial aspects of inheritance.
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ǻǻ If you died tomorrow, what would your posterity be left with? It’s not just about your will. Would your loved ones inherit piles of dog-eared boxes stashed in the attic, over-filled with unmarked pictures and yellowing letters mixed in with back issues of Sports Illustrated? A computer scattered with thousands of photos with names like “DMC_000009134”? If you haven’t taken the time to go through those files and boxes, your children are even less likely to, and items of great value could end up in the dump. The difference between a lump of coal and a diamond is a bit of compression and some polishing. If you hand down what is most essential, it will be more special. Boxes get tossed; an attractive, engaging book and organized digital material will be cherished and handed down to future generations. If you’re still not convinced (and even if you are), ask yourself this question: What do I wish I knew about my parents/grandparents/ ancestors? The answers will most likely tell you that a) your descendants will be interested in your life, and b) what they might like to know about your life.
If you died tomorrow, what would your posterity be left with?
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What do I wish I knew about my parents/ grandparents/ancestors? The answer to this question might tell you what your descendants would like to know about you.
Okay, I’m convinced. Where do we go from here?
As we said before, our goal is to help you finish a life story project, not just to get one started. Before we show you the program, just a couple of thoughts: What this guide is NOT: ǻǻ A fill-in-the-blank template for all the chronological facts of your life ǻǻ A creative writing course textbook ǻǻ A course on how to market a bestselling memoir (although you could certainly use this method to write one). ǻǻ A rigid, one-size-fits-all structure ǻǻ A difficult, overwhelming course that will take you years to complete What this guide IS: ǻǻ A step-by-step coach that will guide you through the process of creating a life story book at your own pace. ǻǻ A process that will require some commitment and effort on your part (although we make it as painless and fun as possible!). It will be worth it.
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Here is a sneak peek at the steps in the How to Save Your Life process:
Step 1: Define your purpose, audience, and scope. You will determine why you are doing this book, who you are doing it for, and the theme or time period of your book. You will also begin to consider some style options. Step 2: Create a “lifeline.” You will quickly draw a timeline of your life and complete brainstorming exercises to get memories captured and ideas flowing. Step 3: Collect your “personal history assets.” You will collect and roughly sort your photos, documents, and other memorabilia into two categories: one that contains things you might use for this project, and the other with items you may use later. Step 4: Select your stories and make story notes. You will select items from your lifeline that you want to flesh out into stories, and make story notes. Step 5: Write a first draft of each story segment. Or record and transcribe them, if you are using an oral method. Step 6: Find a theme and order for your stories. You’ll find an overall theme for your collection of stories and put them in order. Step 7: Edit and rewrite drafts. Here is your chance to fine-tune, tighten up, add anything you’ve forgotten, and do a final proofread or two.
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Step 8: Select and prepare your pictures. You will decide which photos to use, digitize and organize them, and decide where to place them in your narrative. Step 9: Put it all together. You’ll learn what options are available for designing, printing, and binding your book and properly prepare your files for your chosen printing method. Step 10: Celebrate and enjoy! Celebrate what you have accomplished. After a little break, you can start on your next volume!
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Overcoming Obstacles As the famous baby-doctor, Dr. Spock, said to new mothers, “You know more than you think you do.” Here are some of the common obstacles we have seen that keep people from completing a life story project. ǻǻ I'm completely overwhelmed. I have too much stuff and I don't know where to start!
Time is a created thing. To say "I don't have time" is to say "I don't want to." Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu
This is by far the most popular refrain we hear. "Overwhelm" can kill any project before it even gets started, which is why we developed this method to help you take it at your own pace, one step at a time, on a manageable-sized project. You will also learn that starting "at the beginning" of a memoir can be the kiss of death—and that going after the "low hanging fruit" can be much more efficient and enjoyable. We encourage many people to start with a smaller, more focused book with a particular theme or time period rather than trying to complete a comprehensive, complete autobiography your first time out. ǻǻ I don’t have time. It is entirely possible to go through this program to create a short book in about 24 hours. Not necessarily 24 consecutive hours, but spread out over time (kind of like Kiefer Sutherland.) It is more than possible to go through the process of creating a life story book in as little as 15 minutes a day. ǻǻ I’m not a good writer. You don’t have to be a trained writer to tell an engaging story. If you are hesitant about writing it yourself, we offer you options to record your history orally to create the narrative of your book.
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ǻǻ My life isn’t interesting enough. Nobody will care/want to read my story. Over the years we’ve been doing this, we’ve taught many classes and seminars about our methods to people of all walks of life. If there’s one thing we hope our students will take with them, it’s this: everyone has a valuable story to tell. You may never know how your words or experiences can touch another’s life, now or in the future. As one of our students put it, “I can’t wait to get started. I’ve learned that I’m interesting, too!” ǻǻ I need to wait until I have a month’s vacation/I retire/I win the lottery to write my history.
I’VE LEARNED
THAT I AM
INTERESTING.
We have created this program to be self-paced. You don’t need to have large chunks of time or money to finish a life story project; consistent effort in small bursts can accomplish more than you would think possible. ǻǻ I should wait until I’m older. My life’s not done yet. As we explained earlier, a life story published in a series of small volumes or chapter books is an extremely effective way to tell your stories now, while they are still fresh, and add to them later. There are a hundred reasons NOT to wait to record your stories, and they can all be boiled down into two words: stuff happens. Illness can strike, memory can fade. Perhaps someone in your life, for whatever reason, needs to hear your story now—not after you’re gone.
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ǻǻ My memory’s not that good. We provide you with some tested methods to jumpstart your brain’s battery and get those memories flowing. Many of us often can’t remember what we ate for breakfast, but it’s amazing what we can recall about that bully in the second grade! You may be surprised by how much you do remember when prompted under the right conditions. ǻǻ I have written my story and I am trying to add pictures into a word processing document, but the pictures keep moving around or getting lost. This is a common problem; we give you some options in Step 9. ǻǻ I have written something, but I don’t know what to do with it now. More people get stuck at this point than any other time in the process. Don’t let your stories die alone on a yellow legal pad (or get buried alive in your My Documents folder)! We will give you the ideas, options, and instructions you need to complete your project and give it life.
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Know your enemy. What are your obstacles? Jot them down, along with some ideas about how to get around them.
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Wh y are books still important?
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. Groucho Marx
Don’t get us wrong; we love our e-readers and our smartphones and our tablets. We even love to read on them, especially stuff that doesn’t really matter what format it’s in, like novels or magazine articles. We love blogs and Google and cloud storage. (Twitter, not so much.) So why are we so firmly glued to the idea of putting your life’s best pictures and stories in a real-life, wood-pulp, lowtech, actual printed book? Because we firmly believe that printed books are here to stay. Here’s why: ǻǻ A book requires no power source. ǻǻ It will not become obsolete or require upgrading to a different format in order to be read on state-of-the-moment equipment. ǻǻ You can casually pick it up, leaf through it, skim it, flip its pages, read just the captions, or read it backwards if you desire. ǻǻ A book, if cared for properly, will be easier to find and read fifty or more years from now than, say, a blog post from the year 2013. ǻǻ When your future great-great-grandchild wants to do a school report about your life, where is he going to go to find out about you? To your Facebook account? Perhaps, but we wouldn’t want to count on it. We just don't know what kind of technology will be available in the future. Perhaps there will be one universal, easily accessible digital library where anyone can go to find anything about
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their ancestors or historical figures. Every day someone invents a new way to upload, store, and share photos and personal stories online. We are not by any means trying to discourage the use of these services. But if you create a digital database and a physical book, then all your bases will be covered. By all means, if it’s important to you, create an e-book or digital format of your book in addition to a printed book. There are many reasons why you might want to also create a digital edition of your book: it’s inexpensive and easy to share digital files. (If you are selling your book to the public, you will most certainly need an e-book edition.) We have begun, in the last couple of years, to create e-book editions of our clients’ books upon request, and we think it’s a great idea. When producing your book, consider including audio or video clips of yourself on DVD or CD with the book. (Discs for storage are fast becoming outmoded; when hard storage changes or goes away altogether, the media should be uploaded to the cloud or transferred to the next technology.) That way, your great-grandchildren will know not only what you did, but what you looked and sounded like in your prime.
The Wall Street Journal reported recently (2013) that 90% of readers of e-books continue to buy and read physical volumes.
But please, we beg you, don’t trust everything only to cyberspace. It’s a fickle mistress. We have seen some great examples of people combining mixed media technology with real books: a children's book that includes a link to a YouTube video with a sing-along; a book that contains a web address that the reader can visit for more information about the topic, etc. These are terrific connections and we applaud them. There are many places online you can go to share your stories, and we encourage you to do so. The concepts in this book will help you organize your stories and pictures for upload to a website or blog. Just remember that if a website goes away or the URL is changed, or in 100 years when the Internet is replaced altogether by newer technology, your book will still "work" properly.
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"But I have a blog," you say, "why do I need a book?" Blogging or other social media sharing can be a terrific way for many people to tell their stories, and we are highly in favor of that particular way of storytelling: you can reach a wide audience, immediately; you can capture your stories as they happen, and collect them over a period of years. If you have a personal blog, consider editing your blog posts into a physical book as well. (Volumes, perhaps annual editions, are a perfect way to preserve blogs forever.) Servers can crash. Today’s rock-solid digital behemoth could disappear overnight due to legal wrangling or government shutdown due to copyright violations (just ask those who had their personal files stored on Megaupload; their digital property was tied up in court for years before being unceremoniously deleted from the servers). We can’t imagine anything more heartbreaking than to lose a lifetime’s worth of pictures and stories in one power outage, server crash, or company gone bust. So consider a printed book as just another backup. One interesting result of the e-book revolution: printed books are getting more beautiful. Far more attention is being paid these days to exquisite cover design and typography and creative packaging, not just for oversize coffee-table books but for novels and biographies. The printed book has been elevated to an art form. We think this is a most positive trend. But it has also raised the bar of expectations. In order to capture the attention of your readers (even if—especially if—they are your grandchildren), you will want to make sure that your book can “compete.” It needn’t be fancy or expensive, but it should be attractive and engaging. (Since you want it to last, it should also be professionally printed using archival methods.) Now that we've gotten that off our chests, let's get started!
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STEP
PURPOSE, AUDIENCE, AND SCOPE Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up. A. A. Milne
What am I doing here?
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In Step One, you will determine why you are making a life story book, who you are doing it for, and the theme or time period of your book. You will also begin to consider some style options.
Just the fact that you plunked down some hard-earned cash for this guidebook means that you have a desire to preserve your stories. But have you really thought about why? What do you hope to accomplish? And who is going to read it, anyway? What will your book be like? Should it be short and sweet, or Tolstoy-length? Do you want to make the reader laugh, or cry—or both?
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