Series: How to Begin Recording Your Life Story Part 5, Summary and Bibliography

Welcome to the fifth and final blog post on How to Begin Recording Your Life Story by J.Q. Rose. Today I want to summarize the salient points in this presentation to remind you of how important your life story is. Your experiences should be shared whether they are light-hearted, serious, instructive, or just down-right delightful reading. Click on part to link you back to the complete blog post on that subject.

At the end of this post, I included a Bibliography of books I think that will help you and inspire you to write your story. Readers are writers and these examples are great reading. Please suggest a book on writing or a memoir to add to the list. I'm always looking for new books to share with friends and family, and especially life story writers!

A Summary of the How to Begin Recording Your Life Story Series

Part 1 What is memoir/life story, why record it, spark your memories

~A memoir or life story fleshes out your story revealing your memories, but also emotions

Don't try to tell it all from the very beginning. Write in vignettes or snapshots of your life. 

A memoir can be recorded by writing your life story or by telling your story using an audio file e.g. mP3 or video format.

~A memoir can be recorded by writing your life story or by telling your story using an audio file e.g. mP3 or video format.

Can you guess
what car sported these tail lights?
Image courtesy of Matt Banks
 FreeDigitalPhotos.net

~Your memoir can comfort and assure someone else knowing how you faced and defeated problems in your life, demonstrated grace in situations, and found joy in living an ordinary life.

~Seeing your life through the lens of time, people’s actions, emotions, and words become more clear to you than when you actually lived the moments.

~You will preserve the family history as well as telling the “real” story of historical events and how they affected your ordinary life.

~You will discover revisiting your life is a lot of fun!

~To help you spark memories and track notes on stories you remember, make a Memory Bank.

~Spark your memory by using a time line, life stages, photos, and writing prompts.

Part 2 Opening up your memories and organizing your story

~Use free writing to open up your memories.

~After writing several stories, organize them using themes you will discover in those stories, arrange in chronological order, or relate your present life to past experiences.

Vintage Typewriter
Image courtesy of koratmember
FreeDigitalPhotos.net

~Always include the five w’s in your writing-- who, what, where, when, why, and how.

~Show, don’t tell your stories.

~Use the five senses and your feelings to add interest and to draw the reader into the scene..

Part 3 Editing and publishing

~After writing your story, go back and make it better by tightening up the story and checking for grammar and spelling errors.

~When writing a memoir/life story, the writer must tell the truth at all times. For if the truth is not told, what is the point in writing the story?

~If you decide to publish your memoir, I listed some places for you to submit. Find more by searching online or by visiting your library.

Part 4 Using writing, audio, and video to record your story 

~There’s more than one way to record your story. Writing, making a video, recording an audio file are all ways to tell your story. Choose one or try all of them to see what fits you.

Thanks so much for visiting. Has this series inspired you to begin recording your story? I hope you will take a few ideas with you so some day you will sit down to record your life to share with others.

I am always ready to help you get started. Email me with questions at jqrose02 at gmail dot com or leave a comment below.

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WRITING YOUR LIFE STORY--BIBLIOGRAPHY

HELPFUL BOOKS ON WRITING

Albert, Susan Wittig.  Writing from Life:  Telling Your Soul’s Story

Baldwin, Christina.  Life’s Companion:  Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest

Corey, Judy. Storysharing:  A Bridge Between Generations

Daniel, Lois.  How to Write Your Own Life Story

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Heilbrun, Carolyn.  Writing a Woman’s Life

Strunk, William and E.B.White.  The Elements of Style

Zinsser, William.  Inventing the Truth:  the Art and Craft of Memoir

JOURNALING

Sarton, May.  Journal of a Solitude

MEMOIRS/LIFE STORIES

Baker, Russell. Growing Up

Bush, Barbara.  Barbara Bush:  A Memoir

Buck, Frank All in a Lifetime

Chaplin, Charles. My Autobiography

Dillard, Annie.  An American Childhood

Downing, Christine.  Journeying through Menopause

Frank, Anne.  The Diary of a Young Girl

Gilbert, Elizabeth. eat, pray, love

Goldberg, Natalie.  Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America

Gordon, Ruth. Myself Among Others

Grogan, John.  Marley and Me

Hayes, Helen. On Reflection

Keller, Helen. Story of My Life

King, Coretta Scott.  My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.

Marshall, Catherine. Beyond Ourselves

Moses, Anna Mary. Grandma Moses, My Life’s Story

Norris, Kathleen. Family Gathering

O’Reilly, Bill. A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity

Roosevelt, Eleanor. On My Own

TenBoom, Corey.  The Hiding Place

Weisel, Elie.  Night

Series: How to Begin Recording Your Life Story, Part 4: Using Writing, Video, and Audio

“Too many people overvalue what they are not, and undervalue what they are.”

                                                                                                             --Malcom S. Forbes

Welcome to Part 4 in the series, How to Begin Recording Your Life Story. After last week's post my friend and fellow author, Helena Fairfax, left this comment--

Hi JQ,
I subscribe to a British magazine for women writers called Mslexia. You might be interested to know they're holding free workshops to help you write your own memoirs They also have a competition on at the moment for memoir writers. I thought it would be of interest. 

Thank you, Helena, for introducing this magazine for women writers to the readers and me and for the heads-up on the memoir writing workshop.  The post on writing memoirs was very informative and made good points for memoirists to keep in mind as they begin their writing. Lots of inspiring blog posts and writerly information to be found here.

I love being connected on the Internet where readers and writers help each other just like this.

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Using a headset

Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The title of this series is How to Begin Recording Your Life Story. Recorded is intentionally used in the title because there are many ways to tell your story and keep it as a record for your family and friends. Usually we talk about writing, and I must admit, I am more inclined to give folks tips on writing out their life experiences because I am a writer. 

Instead of blocking your path by insisting on writing, I want you to be aware there are other ways to share your stories. And I must point out that you are the only one who can tell your story. You are the keeper of your life story. You are the only one who can tell the truth about your life choices or not having choices and the experiences that colored your life. 

You may want to have a writer interview you and let her put together your story on paper for you or record your accounts on video or audio.

Dealing with the technology may be too difficult for you and overwhelming. If you wish to do it  yourself, ask someone in your life like the kids, yeah those young whipper-snappers, who know all about the programs available. 

Deciding to take the DIY approach, I've been exploring methods to accomplish this. There definitely is a learning curve on all this technology, so if you want to try learning about making a video or audio file, Youtube is your best friend. You can find out about everything on Youtube!! Your next place to discover how-to information is to "google" the information. Go to google.com or your favorite search engine. In the search bar, place "audio file" or "make a movie" or similar key search words. Don't use the quotation marks around your search words.

I have listed the places I explored:

• Windows Live Movie Maker--to find out if you have this program, click the colorful round circle (start button) at the bottom left side of your computer screen. Then type in movie maker and it will come up. Click on it, but when you see the screen don't run. Just hop over to Youtube and learn how to use it!! I would love to see a video filled with old photos of your family. Perhaps you have a photo of your grandmother you could use, her house, her wedding photo, add some photos from freedigitalphotos.net of things she was interested in like horses, sewing, playing the piano, etc. You can type your story on each slide and select free music from Kevin McLeod's infotech.com to play in the background. You may prefer to record an audio to accompany each slide. Remember to talk about your grandmother, how she is related to you, share some anecdotes about her, and your feelings about her. Then you can upload the finished movie to Youtube to share with everyone or just family members.
• Microsoft Power Point--I am ashamed to admit I don't know how to use Power Point very well. This program uses slides and audio can be added to them to make a wonderful presentation. I vow to learn more about it. I'll post it on my blog once I get a decent video made.
• Video camera--You can have someone video you or set up the video camera so you can talk about your family. You could make a dish your mother was famous for preparing for a family dinner or teach viewers how to crochet a favorite item she used to give as gifts. And again, don't get caught up in the activity only, talk about your mother, your feelings about her, and your relationship to her.
• Audacity.com--is a powerful program to record audio files. I played around with this to make an audio file which can be exported as an mp3 file and used as a podcast. I really, really wanted to have the file here on my blog to share with you, but, even after googling and watching Youtube videos on how to embed the file into Blogger accounts, I wasn't successful.

I was able to add it to my J.Q. Rose author website. If you recall, I suggested in an earlier post to write a letter to your ten year old self, so I recorded my letter to Janet Lee at Ten. If you're curious and wish to listen to it, scroll down the page and you will see the player right next to the badge for How to Begin Recording Your Life Story. 

Big thank you to my daughter, Lee Ann, for helping me figure out the microphone and answering a lot of questions about the program. (She did voice overs and was a DJ so she had experience with microphones and making audio files.) Let me know if the player worked for you and if volume and clarity are good too. Watch out! If you like the recording, there may be more along the way!!Next week, we'll wrap up the series. I would appreciate any suggestions you might have for adding more information or clearing up any questions about life story writing. Thanks so much for stopping in.

“You must have control of the authorship of your own destiny. The pen that writes your life story must be held in your own hand.” ---Irene C. Kassorla