Mel Feller Explains How to Tell Personal and Family Stories with Confidence by Mel Feller

Mel Feller Explains How to Tell Personal and Family Stories with Confidence by Mel Feller

Mel Feller asks if you would, you like to make this a year to tell your family stories? Let these simple tips inspire you to put pen to paper. No one is more qualified to tell your family’s story than you are.  Mel Feller believes that family history is very important.  Family history is a great way to really understand your heritage.

Let’s Get Started the Mel Feller Way

Own Your Story

Mel Feller Explains How to Tell Personal and Family Stories with Confidence

You are absolutely the best person in the world to write your story and your family history. You are the only human being ever born to this earth who has your unique perspective and life experiences. You know all the details. You were there. J.K. Rowling could not tell your stories better than you can.

Tell Favorite Stories Aloud

One of the reasons my grandfather’s words came so alive for me is because my family members are all great verbal storytellers. They get together, reminisce, and repeat some of the same stories repeatedly. This practice adds structure to fragmented memories, making it easier to write them down later.

Make a Timeline of Major Life Events

In a notebook or a computer document, write down each year you have been alive. Leave a page or two between each year. Now start adding in all of the big turning points that divide your life into chapters: being born, going to school, moving, changing schools, reaching religious milestones, learning to drive, graduating, getting a job, changing jobs, getting married, having children. Unhappy events like divorces and deaths will make the list too. Jot down names, places, dates. If all you ever complete in your personal history is this list of major life events, that is a lot better than nothing is. If you are inspired to keep going, you will have a great framework for writing a thorough personal history.

Be Specific

Add as many relevant details as you can when sharing a memory. If you make a general statement, think about the evidence you would include if you had to prove you are telling the truth. For example, my cousin Natalie wrote, “I remember Grandpa always took very nice care of things.” If she had stopped there, it still would have been a true statement about Grandpa, but it became much more memorable when she added this detail: “If he used the weed eater, he’d wipe it off and put it back in the box.” Now that tells a story about just how careful and meticulous Grandpa was. Not only did he keep the original box for years and years, he also took the time to wipe off dirty lawn equipment before putting it away. I loved that detail; I can picture him doing exactly that.

Just Start

It does not matter how far behind you feel you are in capturing your personal history. Start somewhere, and start today. Even if you do not have time to delve deeply into the past right now, make a regular habit of capturing and collecting current thoughts and memories. The important thing is to capture them while they are still fresh; you can always organize and rearrange your memories later.

Mel Feller Urges You to Trigger Memories Authentically

Make a List of Stories to Tell

Not sure where to start with your personal or family history? Start by making a list of stories you want to write down eventually. Then elaborate on each of them, one by one. Think about the anecdotes you find yourself telling repeatedly like that disaster you narrowly avoided, that crazy coincidence, that one time you ran into a famous person. If anyone ever says, “Yeah, you told me that one before,” that is a clue the story is important to you. Add it to your list.

Forget About Chronology

I know I told you to make a timeline, but there is no rule that says you have to write your life story in chronological order. You can use the timeline for reference only, and then write your stories in any order you want. After all, you do not remember your life in chronological order. Memories tend to pop up at random, triggered by the strangest things. As you write your stories down, you can add whatever structure to your memories you want. Leave them in random order. Group them by person or place.

Use Memory Triggers

Photos, keepsakes, clothing, and other objects can be wonderful memory triggers. Look through photo albums at relatives’ homes and see what stories come to mind. Then add them to your list of stories to tell. Plan a visit to a neighborhood or city where you once lived. Walk around, notebook in hand, and see what memories surface.

Let Your Thoughts Percolate

It is hard to summon stories on demand; our memories just do not work that way. If you are using writing prompts or trying to answer a list of questions, read them at the beginning of the week. Then set them aside, and go about your life. You will be surprised what you can remember after you let a question marinate in your mind for a few days.

Gather Memories from Other People

Consult siblings, cousins, children, and other relatives to help round out your memories of a person or event. I am so grateful that many of my family members have written things down about my father and grandfather. Now we have a well-rounded picture of this man we all loved, from those who knew him as a young father and those who knew him as an aging grandfather, from those who saw him daily and those who visited a few times a year.

Keep It Simple

Use Your Handwriting

I already know what some of you are going to say. “But I have ugly handwriting. I hate my handwriting. Typing is so much easier.” Let me just ask you this: Have you ever encountered a recipe written in your grandmother’s hand and thought anything other than, “Wow, I miss her.” Your handwriting is unique to you. Your family will want to have some of your words written in your own hand. They will not judge you for sloppy or imperfect handwriting. They will treasure it as a piece of you.

Write the Way You Speak

Forget about formality and the rules of writing. Just do your best to allow your authentic voice to shine through the verbiage. The more your written words reflect the way you speak, the better. It can take years for even professional writers to find their own “voice” and feel truly at home with their style, so do not worry if you feel awkward with writing at first. If you still feel stuck, pretend you are telling the story aloud to a friend. Actually say each sentence aloud, and then write down what you said. It is that simple.

Don’t Stress about Grammar and Spelling

There is a saying I want you to repeat to yourself repeatedly: Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. What does that mean? Perfection is not the goal. If that is what you are aiming for, you will not get anything done at all. An imperfect life story that is written down is infinitely more valuable than a perfect story that is never told. So do not worry if you struggled diagramming sentences in school and cannot distinguish a subject from a predicate. If you know how to speak in coherent sentences, you will be able to write a coherent history, too.

Write in List Form

Lists are a great way to break up your prose, making it both easier to write and more fun to read. The options are endless. Here is a brief list of things you could make lists about in your journal:

Cities you have lived in

Schools you attended

Songs that remind you of high school

Favorite books or movies

Quotes or sayings your grandfather always said

Traits you inherited from your grandma

Recipes that remind you of home

Personal injuries and hospitalizations

Childhood mischief that you got away with

Pets your family owned

Make It Last

Make It a Regular Practice

The more you exercise your writing muscles, the easier and more naturally, your words will flow. Set aside a block of time once a week for journal writing, as the #52stories project encourages you to do. If that sounds overwhelming, write every other week or once a month instead. You could also pick one month a year (maybe your birthday month) where you write briefly every day—either about your current life or about your past or your family history. Do what you have to do to remove barriers and make journaling fit your lifestyle, even if that means carrying a small journal in your purse or writing your entire journal in a Notes file on your smartphone.

Keep Multiple Journals

Long-form, paragraph-style writing is just one-way to capture memories about your life. I have a journal like that, but I have other kinds of journals, too. I have a file on my smartphone where I capture spiritual insights and a-ha moments. I have miniature notebooks where I capture funny things my kids say. Several times in my life, I have used a blank wall calendar as a journal, writing one tiny memory a day inside those little squares.

Curate Your Own Writing

Everything you write about yourself counts, so collect it all together. If you give a presentation at work and you share a personal anecdote, pull that out of the presentation and save it in your personal history. If you share a personal experience in a Sunday school lesson, save it. If you speak at a family funeral, definitely save that. Comb through social media for stories you have already shared and save them in a more archival format.

Make Some of Your Stories Permanent

Some of the writing you do will be just for you and that is okay. However, some of your writing will really matter to someone else, like your account of the birth of your child, or your recollections of a beloved grandparent. Save your most important memories in the Family Search app, where all of the data is archived and backed up to the cloud. If it is a story about your grandfather, save it to his profile. If it is about your life, save it to your own profile. All stories remain private while the person is still living, but they will eventually be visible to the entire extended family.

It is Up to You

Do not let your self-doubts get in the way of preserving the important stories of your life. Do not let your insecurities keep you from helping your children and their children see your parents and grandparents the way that you saw them. There is no better time to start preserving your most important family stories. There is no better person to do it than you are.