FEATURE: Genealogy can help you become a better writer
SPOTLIGHT: EditPros and clients in the news
NET NOTES: Captivating web sites
Passion breeds proficiency. The kid next door struggling to learn the clarinet discovered that fact when he set aside the John Phillip Sousa songbook mandated by his music teacher and tried his hand at some hot Dizzy Gillespie charts. Gillespie's jazz licks moved him emotionally, and as he played with feeling, his skill level soared.
Many people likewise strive to improve their writing. But much of the writing in the workplace is prosaic. Interoffice directives don't inspire literary creativity. If you'd like to refine your composition skills, remember that passion also breeds proficiency in writing.
To stretch the bounds of your capabilities of expression, choose a subject that you find fascinating, one about which you wish to learn more. You may find that the best subject for exploration is staring back at you in the mirror.
No one else has experienced everything you have, journeyed to all the places you've visited, made all the choices you've made. But beyond that, the person you have become is the result of the influence of numerous relatives, acquaintances and role models whose lives are intertwined with yours. The directions of their lives, in turn, resulted from choices that their forebears made long ago. There is no better way to honor them than to write your memoirs and describe the ways in which their lives helped shape yours. Your children, your siblings and other relatives will treasure such a family history.
The best place to begin is right at home, sifting through old photographs and papers such as school records, birth certificates, medical and immunization records to help you document dates and places. You may be surprised at the connections and new understandings you'll draw from dusty old papers that you haven't examined in years.
Once you've created a historical framework and exhausted all of the research materials in your own home, turn to relatives for more information. If your parents or guardians are still living, you're very fortunate. To help stimulate their recollections, go through their old photo albums with them, asking them to identify people, dates and locations, and to describe their settings and significance. And ask them to tell you about their lives, starting with their childhood years. Consider using a tape recorder to preserve their stories in their own words and voices.
Invite them to describe their homes and neighborhoods, their bedroom, their schools, the chores they did and the games they played with their friends, their first jobs, their hobbies, their early interests, the places in which they lived, their career paths, how they met their spouses, and other aspects of their lives that they and you feel comfortable discussing. Also speak with aunts, uncles and other close relatives.
Then ask each of those relatives to help put you in touch with other, more distant relatives—second and third cousins, relatives of in-laws and others about whom you've only heard but have never met. Call them, explain that you're researching the history of the family, and ask for their assistance. They, in turn, can help you contact other family members. Those relatives may also be willing to make copies of old family photos and documents, such as immigration papers, for you.
Once you've spoken to a reasonable number of relatives, you may wish to attempt the most challenging—and potentially most rewarding—phase of your research: gathering information about deceased relatives. Birth, school, marriage and death records are maintained by various municipal, county, state and federal agencies. Much of the information is a matter of public record and can be obtained at no charge or at nominal cost. Other information is made available only to closest relatives, and in some cases, only with due cause—for example, relatives seeking the death records of close ancestors to trace genetic disorders for medical purposes.
As you begin your detective work, you'll find that the Internet is also an excellent resource for genealogical research. The Web sites of city, county and state government agencies can tell you how to obtain records. Go to http://lcweb.loc.gov/global/state/stategov.html for the U.S. Library of Congress index of government Web sites.
If you're unsure when or where a long-lost relative died, try the "Social Security Death Index." Morbid as that sounds, the index lists the dates of the births and deaths of deceased individuals, as well as the town or city in which they first registered and last drew Social Security benefits. Although the Social Security Administration itself does not make the index public, it's accessible through http://www.ancestry.com/ssdi/ or http://www.familysearch.org/ and numerous other unofficial sites on the Internet. (Additional genealogy sites are listed below in the "Net Notes" section.)
Some sites contain indexes of selected cemetery records. American citizens whose foreign-born ancestors immigrated into the United States through Ellis Island in New York should be sure to visit http://www.ellisislandrecords.org/ (the American Family Immigration History Center) for steamship records of arrivals at the immigration station.
With this newfound perspective about your family, you're ready to begin writing. Try to capture the pride and respect that you feel for your ancestors in their triumphs over hardships—their escape from poverty or persecution, their courage in leaving all that was familiar behind them in search of new opportunities, their struggles to adapt to a new land and eke out a living, and the political and social changes they endured, including Prohibition, the Great Depression, wars, drought, racial and ethnic intolerance. Pay homage to their perseverance and success in carving out an existence for themselves and for you.
And then begin to tell your own story, recalling key events and describing your feelings. Share your childhood memories and misadventures, recall your first job and your first love, reveal what you dare to about the fears, disappointments, surprises, and moments of joy and sadness that helped shape your personality and helped determine the choices you've made.
As you're writing, keep a dictionary and a thesaurus within reach and refer to them often. Take time to search for emotive words with just the right shade of meaning to convey your thoughts and help your readers envision the memories that have remained with you all of these years. You'll discover that the deeper you delve, the more you'll be able to remember. As you write, you'll stimulate your recollections of people, events and places that you forgot years ago. Dim memories will once again glow warmly as you articulate what you're seeing in your mind's eye.
Make the effort to paint a vivid description on paper. Don't simply say you enjoyed summer as a child. Help the reader visualize your memories, like this:
"Once I completed the school year in East Los Angeles on June 13, we returned to New York, and during the summer of 1957 my parents rented an old wooden row house at 92 West End Avenue in Manhattan Beach. We spent the muggy summer swatting mosquitoes because the owner of the building grew grapevines in the rear of his yard, which he incessantly watered. My Dad spent his days searching for employment.
"Most houses in that area of Brooklyn lacked air conditioning, so during the still simmering, humid summer evenings, people sat on their porches or brought their metal lawn chairs or folding canvas beach chairs out to the sidewalk to talk while the neighborhood kids chased fireflies or played hide-and-go-seek. Kids would flush out of their hiding places and race up the street, however, in response to the clang-clang-clang sound signaling the arrival of the Good Humor or Bungalow Bar ice cream truck. The Good humor trucks had a cab without a roof. The freezer sections of the Bungalow Bar trucks had a peaked roof, making them resemble a little bungalow. The right side of the truck was illuminated by an overhanging incandescent light fixture, and the kids all watched in anticipation as the ice cream man grabbed the latch of the heavy freezer door, which opened with a deep 'ker-thunk' sound, releasing waves of chilled vapors into the heavy night air.
"My Dad and I would often go to the beach during those bright summer days, choosing a spot on the sand between the two rock jetties at the end of West End Avenue. We'd sometimes climb out on the rocks, or scramble over the jumbled concrete remains of the Esplanade, a once-proud seashore walkway that had been cracked and smashed into large slabs left jutting at crazy angles by the relentless pounding of the waves. Crabs, mussels, barnacles and other forms of sea life thrived in tidal pools formed by crevasses between the angular boulders.
"Unfortunately, my Dad's ongoing search for employment was fruitless. By the end of the summer of '57 we returned via Route 66 to California—our seventh automobile journey across the United States in 14 months."
The process of creating a family history will sharpen your research, interviewing and organizing skills, and it will give you an opportunity to thoughtfully assess your own life as well as those around you. A family history is a long-term project, so don't expect to finish anytime soon. But when you're done, you will have strengthened your writing skills significantly, and you'll leave a wonderfully entertaining and informative record about the members of your family for your descendents.
We're celebrating eight years in business
This month marks the eighth anniversary of the establishment of EditPros. Marti Smiley Childs and Jeff March founded the business partnership as a home-based firm in July 1993 after working together for the previous eight years on the staff of the University of California, Davis.
EditPros initially operated in the laundry room of Marti's home before its relocation in January 1998 to an office building in downtown Davis, where it remains.
In addition to the business writing and editing services they have always offered, Childs and March have now begun conducting employee training "Brush-up" seminars in business writing, grammar and editing. Please visit http://www.editpros.com/brushups.html for more information.
Genealogy Home Page
http://www.genhomepage.com/
This site contains categorized listings of links to genealogical resources, including genealogy guides, libraries, societies and information about where to obtain vital records information.
GovSpot
http://www.govspot.com/
Find informational articles as well as direct links to federal, state and local government agencies on this site, which is part of the StartSpot Networks of Evanston, IL.
RootsWeb
http://www.rootsweb.com/
This site, which claims to be the Web's oldest and largest free genealogy site, is loaded with links to genealogy search engines and databases, as well as other genealogy resources.
Cyndi's List
http://www.cyndislist.com/
This celebrated resource contains tutorials for beginning genealogists and links to more than 99,000 genealogy Web sites.
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