Kia ora, hello!
Charlotte here, tuning in from Tākaka, New Zealand, where dark and broody clouds have been hovering in the mountains, threatening to arrive all day.
Today I want to tell you about the cool things you can include in your memoir, life story or history. The rule is: if you can scan it, you can include it.
So to take it back to the basics, you need to use a scanner or camera to create a digitised version of anything you want to include in your story. You might own a scanner, often they come with printers. Or you might know where to scan things eg your local printers, or library (they often have awesome scanners).
I’ve helped people include all manner of things in their books, alongside the text of their stories and any images they want to include. Here are five examples:
- Recipes – one client asked me to write her life story for her family as she had terminal cancer. Her story was quite short. It included some photos that we scanned in, plus the handwritten recipe for a sweet slice she often made for her whole family, that they utterly adored. I love that her food can live on through her book.
- Poems – I’m finishing a book right now that includes a sweet little poem that someone wrote about the star of our story. It’s funny and refers to an event our poet was involved in.
- Sketches – One client I worked with had saved some pencil drawings that a Russian artist did of him when he was a baby on a sling on his mother’s back. At the time my client and his mother were both prisoners of war, so it was extra poignant that he still had those sketches and they could be included in his book.
- Diary entries – I helped an Italian grandfather write an entire book based around some old war diaries he found in a box of things his father left to him. We could barely read the handwriting in some diary entries, so we included the pages we could read, plus typed them too. The scrawl of the handwriting brought something special to that book.
- Newspaper clippings – I’m finishing a book right now that is almost entirely based around newspaper clippings. My client has been very busy making things happen for his community throughout much of his life, and the local media wrote hundreds of articles about him. For each article I’m referencing the date, author and name of the newspaper, or including as much of that information as I can.
You might want to sprinkle some of these into your own stories. Do any of these examples spark some ideas for you?
Write on,
Charlotte Squire
PS Before you print your book, you need to edit it and that can sometimes take even longer than writing your book! This month I’m offering a special to those who join my online course Write Your Memoir. Join up before next Wednesday, November 30 and you’ll get a free bonus editing service from my team valued at over $400. Write Your Memoir is a road map for anyone writing their story that I’ve packed 20+ years of knowledge into. It costs far less than working one on one with me and I offer a payment plan. Sign up or find out more here: www.charlottesquire.co.nz
Charlotte Squire 