Thursday 28 February 2013

Family History Writing Challenge 2013: The End

The month of February was taken up by the Family History Writing Challenge, set by Lynn Palermo, the Armchair Genealogist.  Genealogists - who often concentrate on research to the exclusion of all else - are encouraged to draw their research together and make it into a book.

Last year, when I participated, I learned about honesty when it took nearly the entire month to secure the copyright for the picture I wanted to use as my cover art.

This year, I learned that my chosen subject might be a little daunting for a first-time family history writer.  At least, it felt that way, but it took Lynn to actually spell it out for me to realise why I felt so blocked.  So I changed my focus from a family line which stretched back into the mid-1600s to concentrating on my four grandparents; they might now all be deceased, but all of whom I had known, all of whom I had photos of, and all of whom I had spoken to.

Yet I still found it difficult to sit down and write.  I have managed it beautifully during the months of November for the past few years, when I have taken part in the 50,000 word fiction-writing challenge of NaNoWriMo - but when it came to writing about people who actually existed and events which actually happened, I was stuck from Day One.  I also needed someone else to give me a word-count target rather than me, so that I felt the necessary impetus.

Maybe next year I will actually sit down and write...


No comments:

Post a Comment

Copyright

You may NOT use the contents of this site for commercial purposes without explicit written permission from the author and blog owner. Commercial purposes includes blogs with ads and income generating features, and/or blogs or sites using feed content as a replacement for original content. Full content usage is not permitted.

You Might Also Be Interested In

Total Pageviews