What does one
get for the father that has everything?
I’m serious, he really has everything.
Looking for a 57/83 inch drill bit?
Yep, he’s got it. How about a
nice copy of the June, 1985 edition of National Geographic. Yeppers!
A left-handed socket wrench only
for fixing blenders. Oh, yes…that
too.
So, getting something at Christmas
or birthdays for a man in his 80s that is a card-carrying member of the ‘Hoarders
Gold Club’ has been a challenge. I want
to honor my father, but not empower the man to add to his stash. My mother has threatened arson more than
once.
It occurred to me that people in my father’s
age bracket are focused on legacy building; financial legacy, Church service
legacy, and of course, personal history legacy.
And it was in this last category that I chose to focus my efforts. I’m so glad that I did because what came out
of the experience of recording, transcribing and writing what would someday be
a nice softcover family ‘must read’ (along with the blues associated with some
things not going so smoothly) have been priceless for me as well as my family.
Along the way, I’ve learned a few
lessons that I would like to share about writing a person’s biography. It does not matter if the person you are
writing about is a relative or just an acquaintance, the methods are still the
same:
1.
Before you do anything, find
your objective center. To retell the
life, the whole life, of an individual accurately and fairly, you must approach
the project as if it were a paid job assignment. Kicking back and sharing a few laughs and
memories is nice, but it lacks strategy and organization. If you are interviewing and writing about a
close family member and you think you might become overly emotional (sadness,
gratitude, anger, joy, etc.) then make a list of those topics that need to be
dealt with separate from the biography process.
2.
Create your universe. In other words, take the time to outline the
direction that the interview will take.
Try to strike a balance of chronological continuity without getting
bogged down in the details too soon. You
can always add sub-topical areas as desired after the initial interview.
3.
When you and the subject are
ready, arrange a meeting time. Set
a limit of an hour for the first meeting, followed by more at later times. This will allow you to demonstrate to your
subject that you are interviewing them with a clear plan and that it won’t be
an endless meeting. Most adults, even
relatives, have a limited attention span.
4.
During the interview, tell the
person what topic you are about to question them about. Then, ask open-ended questions. Make sure the recording device you are
using is unobtrusive; it can stress the subject when they see it in front of
them. Do NOT take notes; the
subject will feel obliged to let you catch up on your scribblings, which will
often break their train of thought.
5.
After transcribing the recordings,
edit the first script for writing conventions and send a copy to the
subject. It may seem odd to edit so
soon, but you don’t want the subject to fret about these annoyances.
6.
Do a quick genealogy of family
and friends. Get the contact information
of these individuals. Create a document
in which your subject gives authorization for any relative or friend to share
personal information with you, the interviewer.
Sometimes, relatives and friends are reluctant to be candid unless they
have the subject’s blessing to do so.
7.
Once a complete interview has
been conducted and transcribed, read over the script several times. Glaring questions or topic areas that need
deeper exploration should be identified.
Send these questions to the subject prior to the ‘details interview’,
along with a current copy of the script.
This will give the subject time to do a nice memory jog on what they've already said and hopefully spark deeper memories that could prove invaluable to
the overall biography. Then, make
another interview appointment, but do not set a time limit. At this meeting, it’s time to ask the hard
questions and press the subject a bit. It’s at this point that my questions would be
more like: ‘How did that make you feel?’ or ‘What do you wish you had done
differently in that awkward situation?’ Remember, if you still have unanswered
questions when reading the biography, then so will everyone else that reads
it. You want to close as many open-ends
as possible.
8.
Edit several times and get a ‘buddy
reader’ to give it a once over.
9.
Believe it or not, now comes the
hardest part of the whole biography process:
Obtaining photographs. Sometimes,
getting people to find pics of their early life can be a difficult
challenge. You might want to prompt what
kind of pictures you are wanting so the person doesn't get bogged down going
through endless boxes or albums and trying to decide which pictures they think
you might want. Of course, their opinion
plays an important part.
10.
Assemble and self-publish. There are numerous self-publishing
websites to choose from: Lulu
is very popular, as is Create
Space and Completely
Novel.
This 10-step process may seem
tedious, but it works. If you write a
biography using these steps (or your own amalgamation) you’ll actually find
yourself having fun and getting the creative release we authors are all hooked
on.
Back to my father’s biography. I've really enjoyed the process, bumps in the
road notwithstanding. My father rolled
out a story one day that nobody in the family had ever heard. Apparently, he and a teenage buddy hopped a
train from Arizona to Los Angeles so that they could ‘go to the beach’. They nearly died of dehydration as they
crossed the brutal desert and didn't count on the truancy officer (For the more
youthful MMW among us, a truancy officer was a type of law enforcement officer
that patrolled the neighborhoods during the school day looking for kids who
were ditching school.) arresting them.
So apparently, the beloved patriarch of our family was a youthful
jailbird.
The hardest part of this process was
the accumulation of photographs. There
have been numerous hurdles: The house fire of 1948 destroyed a lot of them; the
box that has some pics is out in the hot shed;
or worse, ‘I don’t know where some of the photographs are’. It’s made me get creative and ‘think outside the
box’ in order to get what I believe will help make a great biography to honor a
great man.
