A Family Memoir

Okay everyone don't pass out, I know it has been quite some time since I have posted anything.

I want to thank everyone for your patience. Starting a new business well, it is literally a full time job when it comes to getting things set up, building your clientele and much more. A very different world. That of course is another tale.

Recently, my parents came to visit me here in the wonderful Hill Country. We talked about fun times that we spent in my grandparents home. One fact that always came up, most of the time, when visiting my grandparents,we spent in the kitchen. This brought me to a great idea, to write a family memoir.

Given the recent popularity of memoirs I thought it would be great if everyone in a family could be involved. Each telling of a memorable time that we spent with my grandparents.

So, this brought up the idea of sharing this new concept with my wonderful friends and family at WOW! Because well, I love you all so much and maybe your family would like to do something like this as well.

I also thought it would be great to share all the steps along the way to writing this book and how I go about gathering up all the information that will go into it.

Well, step one took place this morning, I sat down and wrote a note to my father asking him for some "historical" information on my grandparents. The in-site to the beginning of their lives together.
* How they met.
* Where they met.
* Where they were married.
* How long they lived in their hometown located in Kansas.

This of course will be part of the opening point of our book.

Next I asked my father to help me get the word out to the rest of the family, asking for stories they would like to share, recipes or anything they find interesting or fun for our family book.

On my own, I am already looking up historical information on the town that they did call home, Plainville. I am also beginning some initial thoughts about recipes I liked growing up, favorite moments of my own that I shared in my grandparents home.

Now of course comes a waiting point. I have to see what kind of information comes about. Given my new excitement about this concept, I feel like I am in a hurry to get started on the initial writing and organizing of this book.

The organization of this type of book will be very important. It will need to be easy to read, organized in a way so that anyone can simply flip to the section they are looking for to look up a particular recipe. I have already planned to include the following sections: drinks, appetizers, salads, sauces and dressings, casseroles, meats, desserts. Some of the sections will be broken down a little further to make it even more efficient. For drinks, kid friendly, hot, cold, adult friendly.

Now thinking about this concept there is so much more that can be done with it, different ideas that can be used. How about crafting for those of you who are crafty bugs, you could include fun times with relatives what was created for example maybe a family quilt or how about a special family album since scrap-booking is such a popular craft time.

I think I am now scaring myself with this idea.

So now I leave this to each of you, do you have a memorable family time or place where everyone gathered? Bringing the past into the future for our children and grandchildren can be quite fun and one heck of an adventure. You could think of it as a form of time travel.

Some great reference books to fall back on when you decide to write memoir are the following:

Old Friend from Faraway written by Natalie Goldberg
The Essential Writer's Notebook written by Natalie Goldberg
How to write Memoir written by William Zinnser
Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir written by: Lisa Dale Norton

Believe me their are tons of great guides on Memoir out there, please feel free to share them. It would be great to hear about some of them.

One final thought, so many memoirs are written on the aspect of tragedy that it would be great to see more happy reflections to be found on the market of writing.

I hope that along the way, I can help to inspire each of you in some little way to find the book of your dreams to write.

Happy Writing!
Carrie