Publish! Publish! Publish!

By Liz Adair

You can tell by the tenseness around the lips and jaw that the smile is forced. He stands there, your latest offering held between thumb and forefinger with the title, "Johooser Fornbloot's Early Years" rippling in the breeze. Never mind that old Johooser was his third great grandfather, and that the biography (complete with pictures) you have pressed on him cost you $3.00 to print, he doesn't seem to appreciate either the time invested or the layout of money to run off fifty copies on archive-quality paper.

Never mind. Press away. Research, write, publish and distribute! Keep it up, no matter how glazed the eyes of your kin-public. For, though this particular relation might not even read your offering, he probably won't throw it away. Blood and guilt will keep him from doing that. He'll put it in a pile of things that he intends to read, or he'll file it with other family history stuff. Fifty years later, when his black-clad grandson is weepily sorting through his things, your bio of this now-fifth-great-grandfather will surface, and Grandson will shout, "Hey, look at this!"

Like a good wine, your ten page, stapled-in-the-corner, footnoted, annotated biography will have increased in value with each passing year. It will be a treasure to some historian, whether he's researching the Fornbloots, or early settlers of Peetlepaw County, or craziest patent applications in the nineteenth century. You may be long gone, or staring vacantly in some Alzheimer's unit, but your legacy to the world will be enlightening circles you never dreamed of.

So, keep it up! Whether it's your own history or an ancestor's, write it, publish it, and spread it around. Don't let any less-than-enthusiastic receptions deter you. You're not giving it to this generation, anyway. You're giving it to generations yet unborn, and they will bless your name.

New Year's Resolution: Eat That Elephant!

By Liz Adair

This is my Year of the Family History. I have one cubic yard of letters that I have been carrying around for about forty years. Luckily I have moved several times in those forty years, and as the letters surfaced, the sheer bulk reminded me again that I needed to do something with them.

I have every letter I ever wrote my mother and every letter I wrote to my mother-in-law. My goal this year is to transcribe the letters and 'publish' them for the family. First, though, I'll use editorial license and take out all the whining. Then I will burn them all. Well, maybe not, but it will be a great temptation. Who wants to be remembered as a whiner?

I also have letters my mother wrote to me. I have already transcribed and published her letters from Afghanistan (see www.lettersfromafghanistan.com ), but there are lots more. Then, there are the letters from my husband. We wrote for the year I was away at college before he went on his mission, and we corresponded weekly while he was in England as a missionary. Two years ago my daughter and grandson helped me transcribe and publish those letters for the family.

I have been trying to get the oomph to sit down and categorize the letters: From Mother, To Mother, From Grandmother, To Grandmother, From...you get the idea. Then, within that category, they need to be put into chronological order. I get tired just thinking about it. However, today I had an epiphany: I don't need to sort them at all! I shall simply take the first one in the first box and transcribe it, naming the file according to a protocol with date and to/from. Later, when I'm ready to publish, it will be easy to sort either by date or by recipient or writer, and then I can gather whichever ones I want to include in a particular publication into a larger file.

When I finish a letter, I'll put it in a "Transcribed" box and take another one from the waiting cubic yard--it doesn't matter who wrote it or when or to whom it was addressed, since the sorting will be done later. Every day I will back up my work with a copy in some remote location that will survive a fire or flood.

So, I'll eat the elephant a bite at a time. I'll savor a toe here, an ear there; I'll nibble the trunk and then the leg; I'll take a bite out of the rump and chew it with lip-smacking enjoyment because, though it's tough and stringy, I'm getting it down. I won't carry the metaphor any further, because it has to do with regurgitation as I sort and publish, and that's grosser than contemplating what chewing on raw elephant would be like.

But, you get the idea. I'm on it. This is the year of the family history elephant. Dinner, anyone?

Paper Is Forever

By Liz Adair

I don’t trust electronic copies. In the first blush of new computer ownership, I reveled in the ease of keeping copies of letters I wrote to children and family. No need to worry about piles of filing accumulating in a bin when, with a few simple keystrokes, a copy could be etched forever on a five-and-a-half inch floppy disk and kept for posterity. Years later, I realize that my current posterity has never heard of a floppy disk, and the letters are irretrievable, since we haven’t had a computer with a five-and-a-half inch drive for well over a decade, and even if we did, I doubt my current word processing program could read it.

I do have a letter, though, written by my great, great grandfather in 1856. I have a fistful of letters written by and to my grandmother, who died in 1965. And, I have every letter I ever wrote my mother, including one from Girl Scout Camp in 1954, but all before the advent of the computer.

I love computers and the ease of storing files electronically, but my mantra has become Make a Hard Copy! Paper is low tech, but that is its virtue. It will last. And last. And last. Especially now that most good quality bond paper for photocopying or printing from a computer is acid free.

So, I urge all to hit that print button, be it for an email written or received or a piece of research found. Take the time to make a copy and a little more time to file it. Ten or fifteen years hence, you’ll be glad you did.

Fruit Jars Under the Windmill

By Liz Adair

One of the earliest family stories I remember hearing as a child, sitting on the swept-earthen dooryard of my grandmother's house, listening to the grownups rocking and reminiscing in the balmy air of a New Mexican summer evening, was how a team that my grandfather was breaking to harness bolted. He had them hitched to a buckboard, and as he tried to gain control, he stood in the wagon and hauled back on the reins.

This was about 1920; my mother was four years old, the last of nine children raised on a starve-out homestead. In the front yard was a derelict windmill fan, and under its spreading blades my grandmother stored all her fruit jars. As the runaway team cut through the yard, my Uncle Curtis scooped up my mother and carried her to the safety of the doorway of the house. Just as they reached the doorway, they turned in time to see the horses leap over the fan, dragging the wagon behind, with Granddad still on his feet, cursing and sawing on the reins.

The scene must have been etched in more than one memory, because whenever the family gathered, someone would tell the story. It was eerie, forty years later, to drive out to the old homesite and find the rusted windmill fan with broken, blue-glass shards underneath, a testament to the story's veracity.

I used this story as I wrote The Honest in Heart. Here's the passage:

Emory took his cigarette papers out of his pocket, selected one and slowly made a crease in it. Without taking his eyes from the job at hand, he asked, “Do you remember that flashy chestnut that appeared one day at our place out at Cutter?”

“The one we called Dutchess? Sure, I remember. She wasn’t a mustang, that was for sure!”

“Nope. She was one of them five-hunnerd-dollar horses with a pedigree long as old Ollie’s face come payday. The old Gent took his time about finding who she belonged to. I don’t know, but I think he’d like to’ve had a foal out of her before he went lookin’ for the owner.” Emory licked the paper and twisted the end of his cigarette. He put it in his mouth and turned sideways to get a match out of his pocket. “Do you remember the day he decided to break Dutchess to harness?” Lighting the cigarette, he pitched the flaming match out the window and looked inquisitively at Heck.

“Sure I remember! He had her doubled with old Headlight. I was the one that got Lucy out of the way when they bolted.”

“I can still see Papa standin’ up on the wagon box, whippin’ those horses and cussin’ a bluestreak, with Dutchess all white-eyed, and Headlight—danged if I don’t think he was enjoyin’ it! They went right over that old windmill fan that was lyin’ on the ground. It’s a wonder one of ‘em—horse or man—didn’t get killed.”

“Yep, and Mama had her empty fruit jars stored under that windmill. Broke pretty near every one.”

They both sat still, remembering, seeing again their father standing in the wagon as it pitched and reeled and finally flew through the air as the horses, galloping, pulled it over the huge silver blades.

Welcome to Family Writers!

Thank you for visiting us here at our new Family Writers blog, brought to you by two women who love to write and who love family. Now, in addition to powerful presentations, novels and non-fiction writing, Liz Adair and Cecily Markland bring you this blog. Here we will share ideas for adding color and exciting details to your personal and family history and for using real-life events, characters and settings in your fiction writing. Most of all, we will use this blog to create a family of writers who are committed to preserving family values and tradition through the written word.
Feel free to join in. Share your comments, post your questions, and tell us about the experiences you have had in combining family history and writing.