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What should I do with my journals?
Have you ever thought about what will happen to your diaries—who will read them, how you may one day use them? Join me as I consider this profound question.
So many factors come into play when considering whether to save or destroy your personal journals. What’s your thinking?
As an off-and-on journaler since young adulthood, there are two main things that stop me from being consistent with my journaling: finding time, and wondering what on earth I should do with them after they are written.
The first challenge—time—is fairly easily addressable. I have tried gratitude journals or other short memory-keeping prompts that can be completed in just 10 to 15 minutes with great success. I also firmly believe that we make time for what matters to us—so if keeping a diary can make its way atop your priority list, chances are you can squeeze it into even the busiest schedule.
But that second question troubles me more.
The case for destroying my journals upon completion?
A personal journal has value, in my opinion, because it is a place where we can be our unfettered selves—free from the constraints of worrying about what other people will think, or worrying about the quality of that writing. A diary is a place to be vulnerable, even to work out problems through the very act of writing about them.
Are they something I envision other people reading? No.
At times I have formatted my journal as an ongoing correspondence with my deceased mom. It helps orient me, feel like I am speaking to someone rather than sending messages out into the ether, and imagine a compassionate soul receiving my words. Perhaps if she were still alive I could envision her actually reading them. But, well, I wouldn’t want anyone else to read them.
Which poses a dilemma if I ever want to use those diaries as a touchstone for future memoir writing, as so many life writers do (and as I often recommend!). Because if I hold onto them, someone else may find them. If I hold onto them, someone else will certainly discover them when I am gone.
Let me be clear: It’s not like I am writing anything awful in those journals. On the contrary, the types of things I share—the overwrought emotions and unprocessed (often reactionary) thoughts—are likely universal in many ways. But they’re not necessarily how I want to be remembered. It’s why at some point in my 30s I destroyed my diaries from my teen years (I am ashamed now to say how dreadfully embarrassed I felt upon rereading them as an adult—I hadn’t yet learned to be compassionate with my former selves). I am still not even sure if I am happy or regretful of that decision to get rid of those angsty handwritten pages.
In the introduction to A Writer’s Diary, the collected journals of Virginia Woolf, Woolf’s husband writes:
“At the best and even unexpurgated, diaries give a distorted or one-sided portrait of the writer, because, as Virginia Woolf herself remarks somewhere in these diaries, one gets into the habit of recording one particular kind of mood—irritation or misery, say—and of not writing one’s diary when one is feeling the opposite. The portrait is therefore from the start unbalanced…”
…a fairly adequate description of why I don’t intend my diaries to be read by anyone other than me.
When I ponder the question of whether to save or destroy my journals, though, I sometimes come to the conclusion that I should save them, but that I should write with an audience of my child or future descendants in mind. That’s certainly what some famous diarists have done. But, as Joan Didion wrote in the essay “On Keeping a Notebook”:
“…our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable ‘I.’ We are not talking here about the kind of notebook that is patently for public consumption, a structural conceit for binding together a series of graceful pensées; we are talking about something private, about bits of the mind’s string too short to use, an indiscriminate and erratic assemblage with meaning only for its maker.”
Ah, so much fodder for thought, and yet I reach no conclusions—“to save or to destroy my journals” still exists as an unanswered question for me.
Where do you stand on this?
The case for saving our journals
Of the many reasons one might have for keeping a journal, here are a few that, in my opinion, merit their safekeeping:
keeping a journal as an autobiographical record
Whether as a tool for future memoir writing or as a piece of your legacy you pass down to loved ones as is, a journal can be an important piece of your personal history to preserve. Read this post for a specific writing prompt that will yield fodder for your autobiographical writing.
keeping a journal as a personal record
Such personal writing can be a valuable resource for you to look back on later in life. They can help you to remember important events, to track your progress, and to reflect on your thoughts and feelings. Read a thought-provoking exploration of what it means to write memoir as a tool for self-understanding (“like a good therapist”) in this old New York Times article.
keeping a journal as a source of inspiration
Perhaps you plan to use your journal as a source of inspiration for your writing, art, or music. They can also help you to come up with new ideas for projects or to solve creative problems. Read these thoughtful reflections from The Marginalian by Maria Popova on celebrated writers and their ideas about the creative benefits of keeping a diary (there are, unsurprisingly, conflicting notions on whether or not to keep said diaries!).
Ultimately, the decision of what to do with your journals is up to you. There is no right or wrong answer, and the best option for you will depend on your individual circumstances and preferences. That said, I would absolutely love to hear what you think about this! Please share in the comments—I promise to reply and get a conversation going.
Life Story Links: June 6, 2023
Compelling reads from the past two weeks about uncovering family stories, preserving legacies, writing memoir, and creating meaningful personal history.
“Even the most random memory is retained as a kind of code for emotional information.”
—Pat Schneider
Vintage poster depicting the Old Swedes Church produced by the Work Projects Administration; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.
Family legacies
BOXES OF MEMORIES
“Years from now, I will be sitting by a fire, looking through cherished photos I’ve saved, and fondly recalling unforgettable moments and loved ones from the past.” How one woman sorted 30 albums of print photos—and the relief she finally felt!
REUNION GOODIES
Last week I shared some fun and easy ideas for capturing family stories at your next family reunion gathering, including preservation and sharing tips as well as bonus memory-keeping activities.
UNCOVERING FAMILY STORIES
“It was the scene from that drawing, the one I had been thinking about for what felt like my entire childhood, of that little girl on the deck of a ship staring out over the water, that image of hope.” Kori Suzuki interviews his grandmother to shed light on her personal history as a Japanese American during World War II.
DELVING INTO HIS FAMILY HISTORY
The renowned playwright Tom Stoppard speaks about seeing himself in his play Leopoldstadt, about several generations of a Jewish family living in Vienna.
“MEMOIRS FOR EVERYONE”
“What is our legacy? What do we leave behind after we’re gone?” Jeffrey Brown asks in this PBS News Weekend clip on the increasing accessibility of life story books:
Memoirs, biographies, oral history
WHAT’S THE REAL STORY?
“Given that it is about a real person whose words apparently were never written down, can it be a biography, or does it illustrate a truth about biography, that its subjects can only ever offer the illusion of being known?” A new biography of Cleopatra’s daughter—and a Netflix docuseries about Cleopatra—raise questions.
CENTENARIAN WISDOM
“Charlie made an art of living,” David Von Drehle writes in The Book of Charlie, a personal history he wrote about the 102-year-old neighbor who was an engaging teller of tales—and who lived a lot of life across two centuries.
WRITING WHILE WOMAN
The female writers who are the subjects of chapter-length biographies in her memoir, A Life of One’s Own, “supplied [Joanna] Biggs a measure of clarity in mapping a new life for herself; their voices helped her, as a writer, to find a new voice.”
OBAMA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
“Researchers interviewed 470 Obama administration veterans, critics, activists, and others who were in the thick of major events back then, including Mr. Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, amassing a total of 1,100 hours of recordings. Transcripts of the interviews are being released in batches over the next three years.”
On the craft of life writing
ON THE MEMOIR-IN-PIECES
“Edges and joinery. Right-sized gaps. Isn’t that what lies at the heart of a true memoir-in-pieces?” Beth Kephart on the “meta interplay between the living of a life, on the one hand, and the writing of a life, on the other.”
REVEALING HARD TRUTHS
“At our best, memoirists hope it is silence we are breaking, and not another person. At our worst, we create anyway, knowing it will.” Kelly McMasters on the ethics of family memoir.
The stuff of memories
THE FACEBOOK GENERATION
“In the United States, parental authority supersedes a child’s right to privacy, and socially, we’ve normalized sharing information about and images of children that we never would of adults.” Beyond memory-keeping: How posting our children’s lives on social media impacts them.
HEIRLOOMS’ LONG LOST STORIES
“Every single artifact tells such a different story. I actually favor the letters and the diaries more than any other artifacts because they can tell you things that no record ever could.”
FINISHING YOUR FAMILY ARCHIVE
“When we talk about what to leave behind and what not to leave behind for the next generation, it seems wiser to spend the most time on curating your legacy. Your knick knacks go when you do, but your legacy?” Caroline Guntur on what Swedish death cleaning gets wrong.
PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION
Through her photography, Arin Yoon says she is able “to tap into my own forgotten memories, conjuring the past, creating new memories, all while exploring my connection to the natural landscape, to my children, and to our past and future selves.”
WHEATON, ILLINOIS EXHIBIT HIGHLIGHTS SOLDIERS’ STORIES
“The items in 65 Years represent the mundane and the momentous, from boots, helmets, and cigarette lighters to heroic patches, medals, and flags. They depict the everyday lives of soldiers while commemorating exceptional lives of service and sacrifice for our country.”
Short takes
3 great ways to capture stories at a family reunion
Family reunions are optimal occasions for gathering family history—and if you go in with a plan, you’ll be able to preserve stories AND have a great time!
What other occasion will you have access to so many branches of your family in one place? Family reunions are optimal times for gathering family history—and if you go in with a plan, you’ll be able to preserve stories AND have a great time!
Family reunions are a great way to create a sense of community and belonging, visit with distant relatives, make new friends and connections, and even to pass down family history and traditions. At your next big familial gathering, why not be intentional about collecting family stories with these ideas for making story preservation fun and easy:
Then, enjoy these tips for ensuring your stories are properly preserved (and shared!) PLUS some bonus ideas for even more family reunion family history activities!
1 - Set up a mobile story recording booth.
Okay, not a booth, necessarily, but an area dedicated to recording family members’ stories is fairly easy to create:
Choose somewhere as quiet as possible (a separate room if your reunion is at least partially indoors, or a picnic table set apart from the group under a shady tree, for example, if the reunion is outside).
Set up a recorder of some kind—it can be an audio recording app on your phone (I recommend using two just in case one has technical difficulties) or a camera atop a tripod set to record video (in which case I recommend having a designated person to mind the camera).
Create a sign-up sheet and encourage as many of your family elders, in particular, to pick a time slot and share some stories! You may wish to create this in advance of the reunion, or else invite people to sign up as they arrive.
Provide a list of a few questions or story prompts to give story sharers ideas of what to talk about, or choose a single theme for all storytellers to stick to (think “Growing up as a Smith,” “Childhood memories,” or “Family food memories”).
You may want to have storytellers share their stories with no audience (in other words, speaking directly to the recording device on their own)—a good option if you or another individual doesn’t want to be tied to this activity all day. However, I find that having an engaged listener helps a storyteller tremendously—so consider having pairs of family members enter your “booth” to swap stories with one another. A great option is to have younger family members interview family elders—a grandchild interviewing a grandparent, for instance, or a younger sibling interviewing their older sibling. You want an interesting dynamic, certainly, but most importantly you want to have a genuinely curious listener asking questions and prompting stories from their partner.
Lastly, create a set of directions—something as simple as:
At the beginning of your recording, introduce yourself: Say your name and spell it out completely.
Say who your parents are and the names of your children, if applicable.
Answer one or two of the following questions with a favorite memory or story from your life [then include a brief list of prompts or questions].
2 - Hire a professional personal historian to conduct short interviews with interested family members.
In this case, you may be following a process similar to that outlined above, but with a professional interviewer collecting oral histories. Going this route allows you to both feel assured your family history is getting recorded and also to relax and enjoy your reunion visiting with relatives.
Please reach out if this is something you are interested in—if you are in the greater New York–New Jersey region, I may be able to assist you; and if you are located elsewhere, I can likely refer you to a colleague I trust closer to your home.
3 - Get the family writing in advance with a fun reunion-day twist.
Invite family members to write one story from their life before the reunion but without putting their name on it. To make it easy and fun, give a few specific writing prompts that they can choose from, as well as a suggested word count. For example—
Write 300-750 words about:
A favorite story from your childhood that makes you smile or feel proud
A story about interacting with one of your parents or grandparents where you learned a lesson or understood something anew
A story about a time you felt loved and special
A story about a time you failed at something (it could be as small as doing poorly on a test or as big as losing a job or making a bad decision) and how you dealt with it
Do NOT sign your name or use names of your family members in your story (instead, say “my mother” or “my sister,” etc.).
To make this writing activity come to life during your family reunion: You, as the organizer of this family story-gathering activity, compile all the stories submitted by family members into a basic book (it can be as simple as a printed Google doc or photocopied pages of their handwritten accounts). Number each contribution clearly. Place this story book in a central location, and invite guests to guess who wrote each entry (you may want to pass out paper and ask them to cast their votes on it; or, if there aren’t too many stories, invite younger members of the family to read them aloud and have everyone yell out their guesses as to who the original author is).
Ensure the stories gathered at your family reunion are preserved.
Whichever approach you take to gathering stories from your extended family, it is critical that you do something to ensure those stories are preserved:
If they were recorded orally, have a plan for transcribing those oral histories (AI transcription services such as Otter.ai have made this easier than ever).
If they were written for the guessing game described above, designate one person to take notes as to the ACTUAL authors of each story, and create a new version of your simple book with all people properly identified in each story.
Make your final project accessible to everyone in the family. These stories are part of their legacy, and may in fact serve as an impetus for future life writing and genealogy research.
Consider adding photos and having your book professionally designed and printed so it becomes a tangible family heirloom that can be passed down to the next generation (and, dare I say, used as a prompt for telling MORE stories at your NEXT family reunion!).
A few more ideas for documenting family history at your family reunion
Ask everyone to share a family recipe (which you can compile into a book or distribute via a shared Google document).
Set up a computer station with the de facto family historian’s Ancestry or Family Search account set up for viewing—and include a pad of paper where extended family members can answer genealogy questions or share memories.
Ask everyone to bring one (or a few) of the oldest family photos in their personal collection to be scanned by a family volunteer—all they need is a smart phone and an app such as Google Photo Scan or Photomyne; just be sure to clearly name the image files with the names of everyone in the photograph and any key details (date, location, etc.). Ideally, all of these photos will be made available to the group via software such as a shared Google Photos album or a service such as Forever or Permanent.org.
Create a shared digital space for everyone to upload photos they took during the reunion (family history in the making!).
Get your free guide of Essential Family History Questions
All the best family history interview questions to capture their (or your!) stories, in a beautiful printable guide
I hope that as you are having fun and strengthening bonds at your next family reunion that you will take some time to proactively record history in the form of memories and stories! Let me know if you have any questions or would like to hire a professional personal historian to guide the story sharing.
Life Story Links: May 23, 2023
This week’s curated roundup is all about memoir, memories, and myth—from how to write (and where to end) your memoir to which new autobiographical work to read.
“To speak incessantly about the wounds or triumphs of I and My Family can get pretty tiresome; the trick is to project one’s experience on the page in such an enhanced, objectified way that it acquires, or merges with, a larger significance.”
—Phillip Lopate
Vintage poster depicting an illustration by Arlington Gregg produced by the Work Projects Administration circa late 1930s; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.
Memories, memoir & myth
ON WRITING THE SELF
“If you write a memoir that ends where you thought it would, you’re probably doing something wrong,” Abigail Thomas says in this Q&A about her latest memoir, Still Life at Eighty.
DIPPING INTO THE PAST
Of her early work as a biographer, Anne Berest says, “Listening to the answers [of the people I was interviewing], I learned that every life is a novel for those who are curious enough to look into it.”
SECOND GENERATION SURVIVORS
Jill Sarkozi, a fellow member of The Biographers Guild of Greater New York, wrote this insightful, actionable post about how to preserve your parent’s story if they are a Holocaust survivor.
BUT WAS IT TRUE?
“When I started to rework these [family] stories in my writing, I called what I was doing fiction, but I wasn’t actively trying to make anything up, I was trying to uncover what the humor had kept hidden.” Luis Jaramillo on the unlikely discovery of an old family recipe.
STARS—THEY’RE JUST LIKE US!
“Creating a personal myth allows celebrities to create just that—a myth.” Landon Y. Jones traces the evolution of celebrity memoirs, from Charles Lindbergh to Will Smith.
PUTTING HERSELF IN PERSPECTIVE
“I’m old enough to feel deeply just how universal vulnerabilities tend to be—and to trust that my editors will save me from myself by cutting confessions that venture too far.” Susan Dominus on using first-person narration in her reporting.
ON BEDS AND MEMORIES
Tamzin Merivale recounts all the beds she can remember—including “the bed where [she] woke to the sound of a church choir in Slovenia, holding beauty and mourning together in [her] heart”—and in doing so, traces a life’s trajectory.
INHERITANCE & INTERGENERATIONAL HEALING
How memoirist Dionne Ford (read a review of her memoir here) found healing in the story of her enslaved ancestors and created “space to name and celebrate and mourn members of [her] family”:
REMEMBERING HIS MOTHER
In the new memoir Irma, Terry McDonnell “writes that what passes between a mother and a son is not defined by her love in the moment, but later by the echoes of her motherhood.”
THE FRAGILITY OF OUR DIGITAL “ARCHIVES”
On May 16, Google announced that starting in December 2023, it would delete personal accounts that haven’t been active in over two years. Photos, emails, and docs attached to inactive accounts will all be eradicated as part of the policy.
...and a few more links
New Yorker uses documentary photography to capture family life during the pandemic
nine people share the best life advice they ever got from their mom
Beth Kephart on designing the cover of her upcoming memoir, My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera
an excerpt from A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir & Manifesto on Reimagining by Rachel E. Cargle
on succumbing to “ghostitis, that common illness of ghostwriters”
Short takes
Wish you were here, Mom
When Mother’s Day is hard due to feelings of loss, allowing ourselves to linger in our memories may help (and, yes, hurt). A tribute made in grief, and love.
When Mother’s Day approaches on the calendar, I get a little anxious. No, I’m not worried my husband and son will attempt to make me breakfast in bed (though I wouldn’t complain if they did); rather, I worry how I will balance the grief that simmers just under the surface at all times at having lost my own mother with the unadulterated joy and pride I feel in being a mother myself.
I know I am not alone in feeling my grief bubble to the surface on days such as this. At an event a couple of years ago I heard Henry Louis Gates, Jr., describe his grief at losing his mother as “still as raw and as fresh, almost, as it was when it happened”—in 1987. “If I let myself go there,” he said, “I can start crying in about two seconds. It’s like a stream flowing under this carpet—it’s right there, and I can tap into that grief at any moment.”
Ah, yes. Me, too.
When remembering lost loved ones hurts
I used to love browsing the Mother’s Day cards in the drug store, finding one (or two or three) that captured my heart for my mom—now, however, that aisle is a trigger for a feeling of aloneness. That hollow sense that descended upon me immediately after my mother died returns, and I momentarily feel like my skin is made of eggshell.
I don’t allow myself to linger in those moments (self protection, no doubt), but I have learned that if I allow them to prompt me to visit with my memories for a while, I am the better for it.
When friends or family lose someone they love, I always urge them, at some point, to let their memories provide comfort. To relish the stories they hear from others who knew their loved one. To keep their loved one’s spirit alive. On occasions such as Mother’s Day, I must remind myself anew of this advice.
A few years ago, on what would have been my mother’s 70th birthday, I shared an unusually long update on Facebook about what I was feeling. The responses both public and private from my circle of friends were overwhelmingly supportive, as close to a warm hug as I could get from social media.
Because a number of people expressed gratitude for my words that day—for recognizing my prolonged grief as their own, for glimpsing something universal in my very individual experience—I decided to share the post in this broader setting.
For all of us who have a conflicted relationship with Mother’s Day, know this:
Our mothers live on in our memories, as joyful and as painful as that may be.
Facebook reflections
From my March 16, 2017, Facebook post:
Today my mom would have been 70. It’s hard for me to fathom. And yet how easy it would be to let myself go there—to imagine that she’s been with us these past eight years, grandmother-ing [my son], supporting and guiding and loving me on weekend overnights and hours-long phone calls, making [my husband] chocolate cream pie.
I don’t let my mind go there, ever. I don’t usually imagine her in my kitchen browning oxtails for barley soup. Or sitting on the floor near our fireplace Christmas morning, relishing in her grandson’s joy over opening his piles of presents. I never think of her sipping tea in her bathrobe at my kitchen table, in my home she never ultimately saw. I especially never allow myself to feel her arms tightening around me in a meaningful hug.
My mind never goes there because my heart couldn’t take it. It would be overbearing, distracting.
There are moments that come unbidden, though, thoughts that my mind could not squash because they are made exclusively of feelings, that simply hollow me out some days: When instincts alone move my hand to hover over the phone to connect with her. When I realize anew she is gone (I had not forgotten, exactly, just not remembered, right then, that the worst had happened).
I would have guessed eight years ago that those times would have come when something sad or even a tiny bit bad had happened—when I needed her. But I would have been wrong.
Every time I have been so in the moment that I have *not remembered* that she is gone—every time—has been when I wanted to share my joy with her.
Those who knew her will recognize that, while she was one of the most supportive, least judgmental, and most generous souls to have crossed their paths (oh, the stories I could tell!), she was also gracious and grateful beyond measure—and sharing joy with her always multiplied one’s own joy.
I lost my mom when my only son was just three months old, and it was an unexpected blow to bear. And yet it happened in the midst of the most substantial, indescribable joy I had ever experienced: motherhood. I have been blessed with many great things in the years since, and I am forever grateful (a lesson learned well from her). If only I could share those joys with her. If only I could express my love for her, impossibly amplified since becoming a mom myself. If only I could imagine her as my friend walking this earthly path with me, still.
I don’t let my mind go there, not most days. But today, on what would have been her 70th birthday, I will. I am going to imagine, for just today, what it would have been like. xoxo
And on Mother’s Day, if you, too, have lost your mom, may you join me in “going there”—ruminating on our moms’ lives and love, visiting with their memory and spirit…
Related Reading
Holiday Grief: We may yearn for a lost loved one even more during the holidays, but know that shared memories are a balm to the soul, and that grief is another form of love.
Allison Gilbert shares a multitude of specific ways to keep lost loved ones’ memories alive—to actively remember them—in her book, Passed and Present.
Notes from a Funeral: Reflections from a funeral on remembrance and grief: sharing memories about lost loved ones to heal—and why we don't honor our families through story sharing now.
See how the first legacy book I ever created honored my mother—and eventually inspired Modern Heirloom Books.
NOTE:
The introduction to this post has been updated for timeliness on May 12, 2023. (Original post from May 9, 2017, included details about workshops and talks that have since passed.)
Life Story Links: May 9, 2023
The allure of journals as a place to experiment; interviews with memoirists Maggie Smith and Ava Chin; the oral stories and digital scraps that make a legacy.
“It is a captivation like no other—to hear about the adventures of those that have come before, those whose legacies are entwined with ours.”
—Joy Callaway
Vintage poster produced by the Work Projects Administration; image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Digital Collection. The posters were designed to publicize exhibits, community activities, theatrical productions, and health and educational programs in seventeen states and the District of Columbia between 1936 to 1943.
Writing our lives
“A NORMAL, TERRIFYING CHILDHOOD”
“I spent many nights in Cuba sitting on the porch with my family, listening to their stories, and likely learning from the way they told them. This book feels very much like the storytelling I experienced as a child.”
WORDS AND PICTURES
I write a lot about the big-picture aspects of preserving our personal histories, but last week I offered up some nitty-gritty advice about how to write the best captions for your memoir or life story book.
MINING THE DETAILS OF OUR LIVES
“So, which elements are more true, the ones penciled on notebook pages as a teen, or the ones whose impact set a course for my life, even if recalled inaccurately?” Amy White writes in this thoughtful piece about ways of remembering.
WORK, DIVORCE, WOMANHOOD
“I was angry at myself, and more than a little ashamed, that I allowed this to happen, and that I had unwittingly modeled to my children what women’s work was…. Caregiving.” Read an excerpt from Maggie Smith’s memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, and read an interview with the author here.
FROM THE BACK CATALOG
Gregory Cowles is drawn to journals “for their conscious dance between private and public, for the freedom they grant writers to experiment with style and with self, and not least for their inherently fragmentary nature, each entry a new beginning.”
Honoring the past, one story at a time
HISTORIC SILHOUETTE PORTRAITS
“We just realized that [the digitized archive] will be of real interest to people who are descendants or who have relatives represented in this album, who have no other image of a great-great-grandfather, great-great-grandmother.”
FRAGILE YET ENDURING
“I really do believe that archives and collections are always telling us new stories,” a professor said of the exhibition Toni Morrison: Sites of Memory, at Princeton University through June 4, 2023.
POIGNANT GLIMPSES INTO THEIR LIVES
In this affecting piece NYT readers share “the digital scraps they found after a loved one passed away,” from a to-do list note (“remind Linda that I love her”) to a photo of the back of one dad’s head…each moving in its own way.
Form and function
BEFITTING THE OCCASION
Six staff at Shepherds, Sangorski & Sutcliffe, one of the oldest bookbinders in England, spent over 300 hours binding and finishing four bibles for His Majesty King Charles III’s Coronation.
AN EXPLORATION OF FORM
“How, I ask myself, do writers generate ghost narratives—a turn we didn’t see coming, an unexpected destination?” Leslie Jill Patterson explores the flash nonfiction ending that appears from nowhere.
THOUGHTS ON GHOSTWRITING
“That’s the mystic paradox of ghostwriting: You’re inherent and nowhere; vital and invisible. To borrow an image from William Gass, you’re the air in someone else’s trumpet.” J. R. Moehringer on collaborating on Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare.
...and a few more links
Short takes
The best photo captions do these things
Photos that have no captions will leave readers of your heirloom book guessing. Make sure to write captions that either tell a story or provide vital details.
Every photo caption in your life story book should either tell a story or provide vital information.
Whether you are designing a family photo book with highlights from the past year or creating a long family history book with plenty of narrative text alongside a few select images, writing good captions is a key to success.
Why do I even need captions?, you may ask—especially when you already know who is pictured and you immediately recognize the scene. Who wants to state the obvious?
Well, consider this: You (and even your immediate family) are not the only ones who may be looking at this book. What if your cousins or a friend pages through it? What if—and hopefully this is the case—your kids’ kids one day read it?
And think about the effect of time: Just because you currently remember that Tom’s birthday party was held at the bowling alley two towns over, will you really remember that detail a few years from now (I can say with certainly I would not!).
Don’t worry, though, as I’ve got a little cheat sheet for you. Every caption should do one of these two things:
Every family photo caption should…
Tell a story…
Sure, you may have told a long story in the main text portion of your book that relates to a given photo, but you want to deliver value to the reader who is combing through the pages quickly, too. Admit it—sometimes you just want to page through a book and read the graphic type and look at some pictures! I guarantee your descendants will one day do this, too. So either add a new detail in the caption (how wonderful it is to get even more context or emotional punch through a caption!) or concisely reiterate what the photo is showing.
Sharing interesting info alongside the photos in your book entices new readers to go further and read the whole story. Strong captions also provide touchstones for someone who has already read the entire book, but wants to revisit the stories to reminisce and sit with their memories for a while.
…or give vital information
Indicate who is pictured in a photo with clear directionals—for example, “clockwise from top left” or “from left.”
Family photo books don’t need full names for immediate family members, but do consider using first and last names for your children’s classmates or your work colleagues, for example.
In more in-depth storytelling books such as a memoir, a legacy book, or a family history book, do use surnames to identify people the first time they are shown. And occasionally be specific about relationships, particularly as you get further back on your ancestral lines (“my paternal grandmother, Betty…”, for example, orients the reader so they don’t have to flip back to your text or a family tree to avoid confusion).
Include dates and locations for milestone events such as a bar mitzvah, a wedding, or a ship passage across the ocean. If you know an approximate date, you can say something like, “circa 1912” or “early spring, 2020.”
Ask yourself: If I encountered this photograph in a book, what would I want to know about it? That simple strategy will help guide your caption writing.
Photos that don’t need captions:
secondary shots from the same scene or location, when details are enumerated in a nearby caption
mood shots, such as the spring flowers blooming in your yard or the sunset on your camping trip
photos used graphically on section openers, as long as they appear again in the main text
images that are self-explanatory (so if it’s a location shot and there is a sign saying where it is, for instance)
Life Story Links: April 25, 2023
This week’s curated roundup for family historians and memory-keepers includes life writing lessons, memoir reviews, and thoughts on generational storytelling.
“When interviewing your elders, you’re the anthropologist who wants to understand the world from someone else’s point of view, and the key is getting details about ordinary life.”
—Elizabeth Keating, Ph.D.
Vintage Japanese print of Gotenyama cherry blossoms by Hiroshige Andō, circa 1846, courtesy of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Lessons in craft
KEEN SENSES
Last week I wrote about how smells (such as of Mom’s perfume or Grandpa’s grease-stained clothes) and sounds—especially music—can trigger long-buried memories helpful for writing memoir.
CLASS IS IN SESSION
This lesson from Storytelling School with The Moth focuses on the importance of conflict in storytelling, with a video story from Tig Notaro, suggested activities for your own compelling storytelling, as well as creative prompts.
ALL THE INGREDIENTS YOU NEED
Before you begin editing and designing your family cookbook, here are a few specific things you can do to elevate it from run-of-the-mill recipe guide to an essential family tool and heirloom.
DESIGN FORWARD
This limited-edition printed showpiece is an example of a unique way to treat family history (in this case, the entire British royal family!) through a graphic approach.
MEMOIRIST ABIGAIL THOMAS IN CONVERSATION
Memoir doesn’t consist of stacks of neat unalterable facts. Writing memoir is a fluid, messy process—there are rough patches, maybe a tsunami or two, and what you are writing might take you somewhere you hadn’t imagined.”
Writing our lives
DIARY AS MAP OF CREATIVE WORK
John Steinbeck had two requests for his diary: “that it wouldn’t be made public in his lifetime, and that it should be made available to his two sons so they could ‘look behind the myth and hearsay and flattery and slander a disappeared man becomes and to know to some extent what manner of man their father was.’”
THE SPIRIT OF AN ERA
“Unlike the inward-focused journal intime (a personal diary) the journal extime is outwardly focused, captures something of the times, of life as it is lived collectively, but of course, it also inevitably paints a portrait of the person who’s writing down the details of that outside world.” Annie Ernaux’s translator on the memoirist’s latest book.
LIVING & AGING JOYFULLY
“I could just hear his voice ringing through every page,” Rob Schwartz says of the manuscript he discovered years after his his father’s death, which he has now edited and released as The Wisdom of Morrie:
ONE FAMILY, THREE GENERATIONS
“Father and daughter never establish much of a connection, but the author begins to pull other threads of her family’s past and present. A lot of material comes loose” in the memoir Mott Street by Ava Chin.
The undeniable power of story
HIS HISTORY IN HIS WORDS
“Most of the time [my daughter] Debbie tells my story, because I have certain points where I start to cry, and I can’t go on,” Gerald Szames said. He finally told his own survival story 80 years after the Holocaust.
GENERATION STORYTELLING
In this recent podcast episode (listen below), StoryKeep’s Jamie Yuenger discusses the growing trend among multi-generational family offices and businesses to document their history professionally amidst a shifting media landscape:
PROBING KOREA’S HISTORY & ANCESTORS’ STORIES
“In memorializing, remembering, and holding onto pieces of stories which belong to parents and grandparents only a couple decades before, [Kyung-sook] Shin finds unity in the ‘things that went missing between her and her parents.’”
HEALING THROUGH NARRATIVE
“Storytelling can be a powerful skill to develop to help others understand their own narrative but also for you to better understand yourself.”
Always learning…
FREE PRESERVATION LECTURES
During Preservation Week, libraries across the U.S. hold events that highlight what we can do, individually and together, to care for our personal collections and to support broader public preservation efforts. This page from the Library of Congress compiles presentations from previous years in one place.
PASSWORDS, PHOTOS & MORE
From naming legacy contacts for online accounts (including those housing your precious photos) to safeguarding social media history, how to secure your digital life before you die.
...and a few more links
Steven Spielberg and Paul Thomas Anderson discuss film preservation as “the protection of memories.”
The U.K.’s Police Gazette: What it is and how to search it online
“The Making, Keeping, and Losing of Memory”: Ferrier Prize Lecture 2023 given by Professor Richard Morris
Broadway legend Chita Rivera dances through her life in a new memoir
Short takes