Family History Month Wrap-up

Busserach, Switzerland

I am wrapping up Family History Month and the month of October by taking all the notes from my recent Family Tree Tours trip to Germany and Switzerland and putting them into Scrivener. If you are unfamiliar with this writing program, I posted about it a while back. While I tried to stay organized on the trip, sometimes I made notes in a small notebook because I didn't have my iPad readily available, but there are also notes on the iPad. In addition I emailed home almost daily, and I tried to post frequently on my other blog. So I want to pull all of those things together and have them in one place. It is easy to copy and paste the documents into Scrivener, and then I can go back and remove any duplicate information and clean things up. Once I have done that my plan is to go back and do a little research on the towns and the historical buildings I visited so that I can add a little more "meat" to the story of my trip.

photo book cover

I have almost completed the photo book I am preparing about the trip, as that will be a nice way to give my family and friends an overview of the experience. I know for a fact that none of them want to see and look at all 2,000+ photos that I took! But for myself, I want something that will be more comprehensive. What the end result of that will look like, I am not sure at this point. Once I determine how long it is, I will figure out if it just remains in Scrivener or sees the light of day as an e-book or print book.

Day 21 of the Family History Writing Challenge

It is hard to believe that we only have one week left in this challenge. I have had such a good experience this time. I have been sticking to my system of accomplishing my daily writing before I get out of bed in the morning. The iPad has really been a Godsend for me, in more ways than one. I write whatever comes to mind, and then every few days I email the latest stories to myself so that I can get them on my laptop. There may be a better way to do this, but so far this has worked for me. Once I download the stories onto my laptop, I then copy and paste them into Scrivener, the writing software that I downloaded. Again, there may be a more efficient way to do this, but I haven't found it yet.

I downloaded the trial version of the software just to make sure that it is something I think I would use before purchasing it. One thing I appreciate is that instead of the trial being over in 30 days, it counts the number of days you actually open the software. So I didn't lose any days by being out of town last weekend. I think I will end up buying the program. It is basically a management system allowing the writer to organize notes, concepts, research and whole documents for easy access and reference. You can import other documents, PDFs, photos and even video. They offer some good tutorial videos, but so far I have only watched the introductory one. I am sure there are many more things I could be doing with the program. But for right now I want to focus my time on the writing aspect so I can keep up with the challenge. Then I will set aside a day to watch the tutorials to see all that the software has to offer.

Day 7 of the Family History Writing Challenge

rainbow this morning

We are now one week into the Family History Writing Challenge, and things are going well for me. My system so far has been to grab the iPad before I even get out of bed in the morning and complete my daily writing. I have lots of stories floating in my head, so coming up with something to write about has not been an issue so far. Last year for the challenge I wrote about my mom's family, going back to the first Crusham that I had found so far in Ireland. During that challenge I felt as if there was so much I didn't know about the country, the economy, and travel back then. I have continued to do research on the family and the times they lived in, but didn't want to pick back up with that family for this challenge.

One of the women in the writing challenge forum was sort of in the same position as me, so she is writing her story but intermingling it with stories of her ancestors. I am intrigued with this idea, and may try to tie my two together in the end. We'll see. We did not live in the same city as my ancestors while I was growing up, so I don't have a lot of extended family memories to draw upon. My sister could probably help me out with that since she was in Cincinnati until she was 11 years old. She also has a fantastic memory. We are hoping to make a trip to Cincinnati soon, so perhaps I will pick her brain about that during the drive.

Since I have been writing on the iPad I have done nothing with the program Scrivener that I downloaded last week, other than the fact that I watched a video tutorial. I should be able to take all the stories on the iPad and put them into the program on my Mac. So they say. We'll see if I can make that happen!

Family History Writing Challenge

one of my journals

For the second year in a row I am participating in the Family History Writing Challenge. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to do it since I have not done anything with the writing I completed last February. But then a post in the daily motivational newsletter from The Armchair Genealogist caught my eye. "It's not just about your ancestors. It's also about you!" I could approach this year's challenge from my perspective - my stories and my memories. I have been writing some of them down recently anyway, so the challenge can help me keep on track.

This is day two of the challenge, so I better get cracking! I am going to download the trial version of a  writing program called Scrivener, as it has been recommended by many of my writing friends as a useful aid for organizing and writing long text documents. I will post a review of my thoughts on the program in the near future.