Kia ora and welcome to those of you who are new to my (mostly) weekly blogs about memoir writing! I also send these out via my newsletter, which you’re welcome to join here.
I write to you from Tākaka, after a day of packing to head north to Wellington where I’ll be singing music at ‘t bay Cafe’ and offering a free workshop called ‘Beginner’s Guide to Writing Your Memoir’ (posters for both below).
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. Note this is an update of this blog that I wrote a year ago.
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 have awesome scanners).
I’ve helped people include all manner of things in their books, alongside the text of their stories. 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, but now that I think about it, her life wasn’t. Thankfully this lovely lady is still with us today. Anyway, back to her book – 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 – Last year I finished a book includes a sweet little poem that someone wrote about the star of the story. It’s funny and refers to an event our poet was involved in. We scanned that poem in right at the end of the book.
- 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.
Here’s a video I made about that book:
- Newspaper clippings – I wrote one book that was almost entirely based around newspaper clippings. Jack Inglis has been very busy making things happen in Motueka 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.
Here’s a video of that book:
You might want to sprinkle some of these into your own stories, alongside your photos.
I hope this is helpful? Let me know what you’re working on?
Write on,
Charlotte x
PS if you’ve been thinking of joining my course Write Your Memoir you have one week to make the most of my 30% off special. Just use the word NOVEMBER in your coupon code. You can pay all at once, or in monthly instalments.
PPS here are some events I’m leading in Wellington this weekend. If you’re in that neighbourhood I’d love to see you there.
Charlotte Squire 