Thursday, February 6, 2014

When is Enough Enough?

Anyone who is writing a family history, memoir or biography has to address the question of when enough is enough. It is so easy to say that you are just going to look at one more source, or research one more thing for your story. At some point you have to draw a line in the imaginary sand and say enough already. It is hard to do though. I will be double checking a source for the story of John Murdoch, and all of a sudden a new article catches my attention. And off I go on another tangent. So I have had to become more disciplined at this stage of the process. I make a list of tasks that I want to complete each day, and I try to stick to the list. If something new crops up while going through my tasks, then I write the idea down on a Possibilities list. Once the first draft of the story is complete, I can decide if I want to come back and add any of the Possibilities items. Otherwise I will be spending all of my time researching and not writing. I have drawn the line in the sand.


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