When to Start Writing
Quick reminder: you are going to die.
I forget that fact myself sometimes, thinking I have all the time in the world to do what I want to do. But I don’t. That bleak reminder has a follow-up truth for every genealogist: if we don’t record our work in some presentable format that can be distributed to others, all of our research is moot, nothing more than a temporary pastime.
Some of us depend entirely on websites like Ancestry to record our family trees, sometimes accompanied by a few vital records and censuses. Posting online is surely a form of publication, but the data presented there is more abstract than meaningful family history.
NGS members are generally a bit more sophisticated. We recognize that family trees are a far cry from family history. We recognize the value of adding details, context, and color to give us a sense of who our ancestors actually were. We recognize the need to coalesce disjointed points of data into a cohesive narrative. We recognize the need to actually write.
But have we written? For many of us, the answer is “No—not yet.”
If you’re among the not-yetters, you may be holding off until . . . well, until what? Some of us are simply procrastinating, avoiding what is often the hardest part of writing: starting. If that’s your stumbling block, one way around it is to begin by writing about why you’re procrastinating.
This feels like a giant mountain of a project, and I have no idea how to start. Should it be a giant ahnentafel of hundreds of pages? Or should it be a series of shorter descendancies? If the latter, where do I start and how do I organize that? With the immigrants of each particular line? Or some other delineator? I’ve done enough research on my Gregory family to write about them, but I’ve not done nearly enough research on my Yoachum family to write much of anything.
It might seem silly to write something like this, but it’s more effective than you might think. If you wrote this particular paragraph, here’s what you accomplished in a just a few lines:
- You identified the problem of indecision about how to organize your writing project: as a single ahnentafel or as a series of descendancies.
- You identified the fact that a series of descendancies requires further decision-making about how to organize that series.
- You identified a particular line on which you’ve already conducted a substantial amount of research.
- You identified a particular line on which you need to conduct substantially more research.
In addition to these distinct accomplishments, you also changed your brain. Having put words on a page, you are no longer stumped by the monolithic challenge of starting. You’re beyond that now. Having articulated your challenges and rendered them in black and white, you’ve given your brain specifics to focus on. Your brain is so appreciative, it has already begun to solve the problems you just identified, forming lists of to-dos, and starting to prioritize. Record those things too. Your document is a living, breathing one where you record everything, following the roadmap you find developing in front of you.
Others of us genuinely want to complete more research before we begin writing. How else do we know what we’re writing about? Some of my colleagues suggest a defined list of items that you should have accomplished and put in order before you begin writing. But my view on this purely subjective matter is markedly different: no matter where you are in your research process, no matter how much or how little you know, no matter when you read this, the best time to begin writing is today.
Say, for example, you’re just starting in earnest and know absolutely nothing beyond your parents and grandparents. Start writing about what you know (or think you know). Seek out and cite records that corroborate or correct that material. As you do this, you’ll start identifying gaps in information and inconsistencies or conflicts between records. Find additional records to fill in those gaps and resolve those conflicts. All of that information will tell you something either explicitly or implicitly about your great-grandparents. Now you’re well underway and on a trajectory.
Everything you write tells you something about what you don’t yet know. Clearly identifying what you don’t yet know makes it infinitely easier to develop an effective research plan. Following that effective research plan significantly increases the likelihood of completing your research and producing a final product you’re satisfied with. Publish and distribute that final product, and you’ve accomplished something that anyone should be proud of.
So, what do you really want to do? Are you most interested in the fun of the chase? Or do you specifically want to leave some of your knowledge for surviving family members and/or future researchers after you’re gone? Are you a family historian tasked, as all historians are, with writing and publishing your work? I personally want to focus more consciously on that task.
Ask yourself these questions honestly. Draw your own conclusion. And spend your time accordingly.
Thank you, Aaron. I’m old enough to fret every day about dying soon … and how to find the time now for this work. Yours was a good and gentle nudge.
Arlene Jennings
Bravo, Aaron!
Your “quick reminder” made my day. I will bookmark and go back to this when I am slogging through the weeds of an elusive ancestor. What I have found helpful is keeping a formatted template in my word-processing program with headings, sections, etc. It avoids the dreaded “blank page” syndrome and gives me a starting point to begin writing. Jean Andrews
I retired a week after I turned 65, even though I enjoyed my work and was in good health. My goal was to write my family histories. In the 15 years since I have completed and self-published books on all four of my grandparents’ ancestral lines, including allied families. I’m now working on the second book on my wife’s ancestry. As the ad says, Just do it.
As my family’s “official” historian, I have been given all kinds of memorabilia and photos that my sisters and other relatives have never seen. I am currently creating a family story/history/scrapbook on my computer that can be either printed (probably color copier) or saved as a .pdf file. If you aren’t interested in a published book, maybe this is an option to consider.
Thank you, Aaron!
Dear Mr. Goodwin,
Isn’t it the truth? I have had relatives that I wanted to ask so many questions of pass away before I could do so. Plus, a lot of family tales have been proven incorrect by finally finding factual records. Even though I am considered the “family historian” for my husband’s family, nobody wants to give me vital information. Over the years I have discovered quite a few “skeletons,” which would make writing a book extremely difficult. How does one address family secrets?
Thank you.
It’s a good question, Patricia. I’ll think about addressing this in an upcoming article.
This is a very good article and reminder to Get It Done Now – we are not getting younger and time is slipping by. Two years ago I wrote a history of my maternal grandmother and her life in Chicago along with her aunts and uncles and notable friends in the family – I did it in word and made it into a printed copy for binder that I gave to my siblings. It now needs a rewrite as I have more information and I am trying out a new piece of software – Scrivens – writers use this. I am just learning it but it seems I can focus on sections or chapters and just work on a small portion at a time. This will be useful for my paternal family – it is much larger and lots of connections. I have struggled with this for a while. So now I try to work on family history in some form writing or research at least a little bit a day even if it is just sending emails or focusing on one family member. My goal is to make a printable copy, pdf copies for the book shelf or to send electronically. Also going to resurrect a family history website and start their again. I will post short stories that I find and have it posted to a FaceBook group page. Hopefully this will interest some of the younger crowd.
This article is a good reminder – also remember to archive your work. I put it on an external drive and keep a copy in my safety deposit box that I update every six months or so. Family members are instructed to keep these files forever and hand them down.
Ah, yes, this reminds me of my mother’s favorite sayings,”if not now, when?” and when pressed, later followed by, “tomorrow.” This means never. I’ve done your suggested exercise of writing about why I sometimes can’t write, a stream of consciousness, if you will, and it releases the angst of facing a blank page. I also remind myself that I will probably delete a good portion of the beginning because, as I write, the real beginning will reveal itself way down the page (or two). This also helps relieve the stalemate of staring at a blank page. Another way to start is to write in pieces, then later assemble the pieces together into a whole story. If I discovered a well documented event in an ancestors life, I would write about that event, then save it for the larger story. (I once heard a famous author of fictional works describe this technique; he wrote scenes on seperate pages, taped them across the wall, moved the pieces around until he liked the story order, then wrote the transition scenes to tie them together). Of course we write history, not fiction, but we can fill the inbetween genealogical scenes with historical facts that influenced our ancestors lives and decision making. I once wondered why several related families who lived and farmed near each other all moved away after a short time. Then I discovered the summer they moved away experienced a devestating drought and massive grasshopper invasion forcing everyone to abandon the area. However it works for you, just start! There’s no time better than today.