The Storyteller Project: Week 3
The Writing You've Already Done
The Writing You’ve Already Done
Suggested Reading: Part 3: You’ve Done the Writing — Chapters 13 and 14
Last week we talked about the difference between history as it's recorded and history as it's lived — asking how a war, a migration, an economic collapse, or a pandemic shaped the everyday lives of our ancestors, not in the history-book sense, but at the household level: the decision made, the letter written, the belief a child carried for the rest of their life. The conversation that followed was rich and honest. Members reflected on the challenge of moving beyond documented facts to capture the inner life of an ancestor when no diary or letter survives to offer a window in. Others shared how social and economic context isn't separate from the personal story — it is the personal story. From a grandfather's lifelong frugality born of wartime scarcity, to a mother's diary grounding a national policy in a single family's experience, to the particular vocabulary on a census record that quietly revealed a family's economic descent — the thread running through all of it was this: the official record tells us what happened; our family stories tell us what it meant.
Wait! What if I haven’t written my stories yet? No worries, we talk about that in an upcoming week.
Creating a Collection
If you write about your family history — blog posts, newsletter issues, Substack articles — Chapter 13 names the difficult truth clearly: the platforms you wrote on were never designed to preserve what you put there. Chapter 14 is about what comes next. Not starting over. Shaping what you have into a collection — a structured, permanent form with a title, an introduction, a table of contents, and the pieces themselves in an order that makes sense to a reader who does not know your family.
This week’s focus is for writers who have a body of work and have not yet given it a durable form.
Prompt:
Go through your published or saved family history writing — your posts, articles, newsletter issues — and sort them into collections. The organizing principle is yours to find: a family line, a place, a time period, a theme that runs through more than one piece. You may find one clear collection, or several. You may find pieces that don’t fit anywhere yet — set those aside.
When the sorting is done, choose one group to focus on. Give it a working title. Not a final title. Just a name that says what it holds.
In the chat, share the theme or title you come up with for your collection. Then share the links for each article in the collection. Adding your links in individual chat messages seems to work best.
How was the process of sorting through your work for you? What do you need support on? What would preserving this collection for future generations mean to your descendants or researchers?
This week I challenge you to add a reply to at least one other message in the chat. This process of engaging with others in this conversation has us lean into back and forth building of ideas and getting feedback. This powerful way to be part of something bigger than yourself makes the path forward more meaningful.
Add your answer to the Chat
Lean into the Chat
Why answering the prompt in the chat is an important part of this process. 🌟Engaging with others in the chat connects you with Coterie members walking the journey with you.
🌟Community helps maintain your momentum. We might be excited to start the process and draw energy from it, but sustaining that energy comes from being a part of something bigger than yourself. You find out quickly that you’re not the only one with challenges, or that you can serve the greater good by being there for someone who needs your help.
🌟Saying it to someone else helps to solidify your understanding.
Get the book:
Stewardship Matters: A Storyteller’s Guide to Preserving Family History.
Get: Ebook PDF (With Paid Subscription to GenStack Coterie).
Get Paperback: Paperback (Buy on Lulu)
Paid subscribers to Genealogy Matters or GenStack Coterie have access to the digital version.
Submit to Genealogy Matters Magazine:
Your family history writing, including articles previously published on Substack or your blog, is eligible for submission to Genealogy Matters Magazine. Review the submission guidelines and submit your piece.
Be part of the Live Conversation at the Coterie Collab
You’ll have the chance to talk through this first step toward preserving your family history in our Coterie Collab coming up on Friday, June 19th. This meeting is for paid Coterie members. If you’d like to join us, we’d love to have you.