April A to Z Challenge - Family History For the Future

Recording all of our research and sharing it with our family now and in the future is an ongoing challenge for most genealogists and family historians. Especially if eyes glaze over when you start talking about Great Aunt Edna, whom you find fascinating, but they really don't.


One way I am tackling that is by blogging my research. But I'm blogging it in a rather sporadic way. Pauline Cass, from CassMob, a fellow Trove Tuesday blogger, wrote a guest post last year on Wrote By Rote on Recording Family History for Future Generations where she explained that she had used online self-publishing house Blurb's From Blog to Book feature to create a lasting print (and digital) keepsake. I think this is a great idea, and perhaps I should just order one a year as an archive for my blog, rather than waiting until my research is "perfect".

I think that may be one of my biggest problems, forever waiting until my research and writing is "perfect" before publishing it. I am getting less worried about this the more I blog, so perhaps I'll take the leap and self-publish some of my research soon.

But where do I start? Do I pick one family line, and write everything I know about them? Do I pick a few characters that I love and write about them? Do I start with me, and write a biography?

There are plenty of books out there to advise us on this process, or a wonderful FREE and instant resource is The Armchair Genealogist: Research and Write Your Family History. Lynn Palarmo has been extremely generous with her time and experience on her blog, encouraging and inspiring family historians to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and just write - two specific resources I find myself going back to time and time again (although not implementing yet) are her sections: Writing Your Family History and The Family History Blog to Book Project.

So, let's get out there and make sure our family history is there for the future! Let me know how you are doing it. We can share our ideas and encourage one another to keep working towards publishing our research - perfect or not.

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