The Life Story Coach

Karin Jones believes sex and intimacy are a big part of our lives, and she challenges personal historians to gently explore this topic with their storytelling clients. Links & Stuff Karin's controversial article appeared in New York Times' "Modern Love" column. "What Sleeping About Married Men Taught Me About Infidelity" Find Karin Jones' bimonthly column, "Savvy Love," at the Erotic Review Magazine, or on her Savvy Love blog at https://www.savvy-love.com/blog. Follow Karin on Twitter: @mskarinjones Curious about Esther Perel? Read about her fascinating story.

Gloria's website: https://www.real-to-reel.org/ Gloria's Equipment List

Gloria's website:https://www.real-to-reel.org/  

Illustrated Heirloom Books, and What Goes into Creating Them In this episode, we're going back to the first part of our conversation with Lisa Kagan. As an artist and writer, Lisa is fascinated by the intersection of visual art and storytelling. She brings all her gifts to bear on the illustrated heirloom books her company produces, allowing the clients a chance to become intimately involved in the creation of the words and images of their life story book. She also talks about: connecting to her community as an artist and creative, and how that has helped her organically grow her business contracting other personal history professionals for editing, book design, production, and more the elements of her initial sales conversations If you missed the first part of our conversation, where Lisa talks about her workshops and retreats, you can find that here. Links & Stuff Family Heirloom Arts Website   Book Designer Emily Garcia   Workshop Offerings   Upcoming September Retreat: Self Portrait of the Inner Landscape, Exploring Personal Mythology Through Writing and Mask Making

Workshops serve clients and creatives, and help to build a personal history business Family Heirloom Arts offers the usual range of services to its personal history clients: interviewing, writing, editing, photo management. But its founder and owner, Lisa Kagan, takes things a step further by inviting clients to create their own personalized artwork to illustrate their books. That's just one of the things that makes Family Heirloom Arts unique. In this interview, we talk about: Lisa's roster of workshops and retreats, and how she leverages established organizations such as the library to market them the difference between outcome-based and process-based workshops and retreats how fans of her workshops sometimes turn into personal history clients a good place to start if you're just getting going with workshops We also talked about Family Heirloom Art's upcoming weekend retreat, Self Portrait of the Inner Landscape: Exploring Personal Mythology Through Writing and Mask Making Links & Stuff Family Heirloom Arts Website   Workshop Offerings   Upcoming September Retreat: Self Portrait of the Inner Landscape, Exploring Personal Mythology Through Writing and Mask Making

Marketing with a local newspaper column and more Lisa Lombard O'Reilly of Your Stories Written joins us for a conversation about personal history. Listen as we discuss: Lisa's experience writing her dad's life story book using Kindle Direct Publishing for cheap proof copies and supplying friends with print-on-demand books Lisa's monthly column on personal history for Coastal View, a local print publication Lisa approached the publisher of Coastal View after attending a workshop given by Annie Payne, a colleague out of Australia. Annie gave expert advice on mastering your community and becoming the go-to personal historian. Lisa also talked about being featured on a blog post by a woman with an historical press. Clairitage Press specializes in local history, with titles written by Karen Dustman. Read the article here or here. If you want more ideas about writing local history, check out Episode 47 with Patricia Hamilton. Links & Stuff Find Lisa Lombari O'Reilly at her website, Your Stories Written

Part 2 of our interview with Lettice Stuart, Portraits in Words Join us for an insightful conversation about the business of personal history and the art of interviewing. In this episode, Lettice discusses: how much she charges for life story projects, and how that number has grown through the years a clever pre-meeting tactic that gets Lettice into the right frame of mind for that always-difficult money conversation with clients [Correction: with this technique, it doesn't have to be diffult!] how, when, and why to bring in outside editing help working with a partner the extreme importance of listening, no matter how you do it best [Knitting optional] Links & Stuff You can find Lettice Stuart at Portraits in Words Other episodes mentioned: 29: Rutger Bruining of Story Terrace 53: Part 1, Christine Norton Helps Life Story Writers Get Up and Running 54: Christine Norton, Part 2

Lettice Stuart was a journalist with stories in the New York Times when she shifted to writing life stories. While her writing credentials helped give her credibility, it was good old-fashioned conversations with people that grew her business. In part one of the interview, we discuss: the importance of talking about your personal history work in any social situation, and why it's easy how and why to contact groups looking for speakers what to include when you give a public presentation We also talk about why family members may not be capable of getting to the same stories that personal historians do. And what a magical moment it is when you see the light go on in the storyteller's eyes: the book is important, the telling of the stories even more so. In our next episode, Part 2 with Lettice Stuart Stay tuned for the second half of our conversation with Lettice, where Lettice shares how much she charges for her life story books, how she prepares for the money conversation with clients, working with outside editors, and more. Links & Stuff You can find Lettice Stuart at Portraits in Words Want to hear more about the art of interviewing? Check out Episode 3: How to conduct a great interview  

For Steve Pender, personal history comes alive in Legacy Video When Steve Pender started his legacy video company years ago, it wasn't to produce videos, but rather to teach DIYers how to make their own. Then technology changed. You still needed the know-how and the artistic flair to produce top-quality videos, but you no longer needed the big commercial studio. That's when Steve pivoted to do what he loved most: create compelling, beautiful legacy videos. Give them options I shape the production to fit the client's wants and needs." Steve uses a winning strategy when he sits down with potential clients for the sales meeting. Instead of shooting out a price right away, he asks lots of questions, then goes back to work up a proposal, complete with costs. He believes in giving the client options: a price for what they said they wanted, and a fallback option that's less expensive. His packages start at $7,500 for a Q&A-style basic video, and increase to $20-25K and up for more deluxe packages. These premium videos include music, archival footage, and more. Listen as Steve talks about: traveling to Italy to shoot as his client visits his ancestral home how Family Legacy Video was featured in the AARP Bulletin Steve's appearance on a local TV show [hint: This was a PR move any of us can use!] how using a freebie as a lead generator can build your email list how the Rotary helped launch his business Links & Stuff Family Legacy Video website  

In six short years, Starts at 60 has grown to a platform with a million and a half visitors per month.  Now Starts at 60 is looking toward markets outside the US, and there's room for us life story professionals to leverage the systems they've already built. The idea I like best is starting monthly coffee groups. Maybe it's because I saw how lonely my dad was after my mom died. Maybe it's because as a waitress in my teens, I saw how the people who lingered over coffee after dinner seemed to be the best conversationalists, the ones I liked to eavesdrop on as I cleared away their plates (and ashtrays; yes, this was a long time ago!). And what better way to get people interested in preserving their life story than getting them talking about it over coffee, in a safe place among new friends? In this episode, we also discuss: the need to find a group of people with similar mindset, especially after a transition like retirement how Baby Boomers, like the rest of us, want a hybrid experience of online and off-line the importance of building and safeguarding trust among clients or in a community how storytellers of all ages are turning to online research when looking for services (Hint: Have your website and Facebook page up to snuff!) why Baby Boomers make great storytellers (let me know what you think about my new slogan: More wrinkles, better stories). and more. Links & Things Visit Starts at 60 Want to get your client a byline and possibly feedback? Contact Starts at 60 about blog submissions. Establish a Starts at 60 coffee group in your area

Running and growing a video life story business This is part 2 of our interview with Mike O'Krent (listen to part 1 here). In this episode, you'll hear Mike talk about public speaking and how it can grow the public's awareness of our services. (Hint: Check out Toastmasters for improving your speaking skill and spreading the word about your services) the power of seeking out influential people and connectors in your community how to ask for referrals and virtual introductions (via email) how being humble can hurt—read Mike's article, "Being Humble is Nothing to Brag About" listening with your whole body (check out this TED Talk with Evelyn Glennie) speaking at family business programs Mike's TEDx Talk It wasn't easy, but Mike made his dream come true: After sending out over 60 pitches, he landed a spot on the TEDx stage in Wilmington. One of the key factors was enlisting the help of Taylor Conroy of The Idea Collective, a company that helps people "land the talk, do the talk, spread the talk."

How volunteering for Steven Spielberg sparked a career saving stories Mike O'Krent was volunteering for an organization in Austin when he learned about Survivors of the Shoah, a foundation created by Steven Spielberg to interview and record the stories of Holocaust survivors. His training in L.A. set him up for successful interviews with survivors in Texas. In an article by Rich Polt (a previous guest on this podcast), Mike says, “These conversations are not going to be easy, nor should they be. In some cases, you'll be asking loved ones to recall events and memories that have long been dormant. That's OK. Don't shy away from asking the hard questions.” Mike's work with the Shoah Foundation helped him discover his passion for interviewing people and helping them save their story. Today, he runs LifeStories Alive, LLC, a video company that documents the stories of individuals, non-profits, and businesses.

Maureen Taylor talks about helping people solve the mysteries of their unidentified photos, a skill we as life story professionals can use to help our clients.  Maureen Taylor's early career as a curator exposed her to lots of photos. But it wasn't until she opened shop as a photo historian that she discovered just how many unidentified photos people have. Frequent questions she hears: Who is in the photo? What is happening in the photo? Where was the photo taken? Rachel Rifkin's photo experiment Rachel Rifkin, a fellow personal historian, posted photos of herself alongside images of her relatives. Donning similar clothing and mimicking the subject in the old photos, she bore a strong resemblance to her relatives—including a bearded man from yesteryear.   Patterns Change perspective to see the unseen in photos. That's where the big reveals come in. Not everyone can see faces; not everyone can see details. Some people suffer from "face-blindness," the inability to differentiate the faces they see. Go here and scroll down to find the quiz, "Are you a super-recognizer?" Maureen does her detective work on my family photos   Links & Stuff Visit Maureen's website View Maureen's photo detective courses

When he first started Acknowledge Media, Rich spent hours teaching himself Adobe Premiere Pro. But while he sees the need to have the skills that are foundational to the projects he creates, he recognizes that his team of videographers (including Jordan Freeman), editors, archival producers, and media directors are better suited to the technical side of things, while he handles the rest of it: new business development, sales, marketing, HR, and, of course, the most important task of all—conducting the interviews. Backed by a solid (and growing) team, Rich makes sure that all the projects are up to his standards, with each undergoing a final pass by him before being delivered to the client. Types of Projects Rich's offerings have grown over the years, and now include three distinct packages: a 3-4 hour narrative, including all footage shot a showcase, including the above 3-4 hours plus a 5-6 minute highlight reel a feature, including both products above, plus a highly edited documentary film with music score, b-roll footage, archival assets, and more. Gear When he began, Rich and his videographer used two DSLR cameras and lav mics on all. Today, they've switched to two high-end video cameras and a boom mic for the storytellers. My biggest surprise? When Rich said that a beginner can get great results with two iPhone cameras. It won't be the same quality as what he produces, but it's the listening and questioning skills you bring to the interview that will define your core value, not the high-tech gadgetry. (Hint: Two cameras, no matter what kind you use, will give you far greater results than just one.) Rich also spoke frankly about his prices: where he started, what he charges now, how those prices will likely rise in the future. The important thing is to make your prices reflect the quality of your work. And then, of course, identify the market willing to pay for that exceptional quality. You can find part one of our interview here.

Rich Polt started his legacy video company in 2016; three years later, it's growing by leaps and bounds. Rich Polt left a lucrative career as owner of a public relations firm to pursue his passion—helping people record their legacy stories on film. And he did it all without knowing a thing about movie-making. It started with a personal project called Talking GOOD, where Rich interviewed change-makers with the power to inspire others. The epiphany came when Rich went off-script to ask his interviewee a highly personal question, something he didn't normally do. The man cried, and so did Rich. That was all Rich needed to understand the power of sharing stories. Acknowledge Media brings the same high production values of documentary filmmaking to the world of legacy preservation. Listen as we discuss: how Rich gave himself a year of working for free to build up his portfolio some of the mistakes he made as a novice interviewer (hint: get comfortable with your inteviewee's emotions!) the benefits of having regular meetings with his mentor, Mike O'Krent of LifeStories Alive (and soon-to-be guest on this podcast) the three phases of any legacy video project Because Rich had so much great stuff to share, we're breaking this podcast into two parts. In this episode, we get into the specifics of phase one of his projects. Rich gives a breakdown of the 2-3 hour session he spends with the interviewees before the cameras make their appearance. He uses this conversation to create a detailed roadmap for the recorded interview. A few tips: In order to keep the storyteller from launching into an anecdote during this first conversation, Rich asks them to name the stories that come to mind with a headline. He includes it in his notes, a reminder or tag to include that topic in his recorded interview. As part of phase one, he sends the storyteller's adult children a questionnaire, which includes the following questions: What are the stories you want to hear? What are the red flag topics that may be difficult for your parents to talk about? What are the things you've always wanted to ask but never have? Rich then creates a spreadsheet with questions, pouring in the answers to those he already knows, examining the whole to find the narrative shape that will guide him during the recorded interview. Stay tuned for part two of our conversation, where Rich discusses the recording and editing processes.

We continue our conversation with Christine Norton about her Writing Partners, business licensees who operate independently, but who get all the support they need to grow a thriving life story business. Listen as Christine gives a run-down of some of the many, many support systems she provides for her licensees.

Christine Norton is passionate about telling people's stories. And she knew others were, too. But not everyone is comfortable with creating a business from the ground up, and that's where her Forget-Me-Not Life Stories writing partner program comes in. In exchange for a business license fee, her writing partners get everything they need to get their own memoir-writing service companies up and running. Listen as we discuss this and much more, including: the high-end, hand-bound book design, created especially for Forget-Me-Not Life Stories, that allows clients to later add more pages to their books the value of celebrating photos and memorabilia in highly designed life story books her mentoring and coaching program, offered to clients who need some help as they write their own life story how the success of her business licensees equates to her own success what her licensees get as an official Forget-Me-Not Life Stories writing partner   Because Christine had so much great stuff to talk about—and I don't want anyone missing any of it—I split our conversation in two. Check back next week to hear part two of the interview.

End of Life Coach Janet Bieschke on serving the dying Dr. Janet Bieschke has turned her retirement into a double career: She serves the hospice community as both life story gatherer and life coach. In her work with the dying, she makes room for a "sigh of relief"—the chance to share not only stories, but also regrets, forgiveness, and "I love yous."   Janet's website: https://drjanetb.com/

This week, David O'Neil talks to us about how and why we should be developing relationships with financial advisors and wealth managers. Listen as we discuss: Who in the financial industry make good referral partners? Why they value helping their clients pass down wisdom along with their wealth How to follow up after meeting a good referral partner How to use presentations to spread the word about life story work Links & Stuff David's website: https://storytrust.com/ Want more ideas on how to market your life story business? Listen to these previous episodes: 47: Creating (and Selling) a Community History Book, with Patricia Hamilton 18: Teaching Life Story Classes and Opening a Life Story Studio, with Sam Uhl 17: Life Story Memorabilia Boxes and Marketing with Show and Tell Events, with Martie McNabb 12: International Ghostwriter Derek Lewis 6: Marketing Guru Dhyan Atkinson

From Life Stories to Business Histories David O'Neil founded Story Trust in 2007; several years later, he recognized the natural connection between life stories for individuals and stories that recount the history of a business. His most recent book was an outgrowth of an oral history conducted several years ago. With the upcoming centennial anniversary of the family's company, they reached out to him to create a book of memories, recipes, and memorabilia, with an initial a print run of 2,500 copies. Early in the life of his company, David decided on a marketing strategy that revolves around networking. Listen as he discusses how he has turned networking breakfast meetings into referrals to new clients.   Links & Stuff Find David and Story Trust here: https://storytrust.com/ View and excerpt from A Farm Grows in Concord: Celebrating 100 Years of Verrill Farm, the book David created for the family who own the business. David recommends starting your networking efforts with your local Chamber of Commerce. Here are a few other groups mentioned: BNI, Business Network International LeTip International TIGER 21

"It's all about the questions you ask." This is advice given by Beth Kephart to memoir writers, but it's just as applicable for those who ghostwrite memoirs. Listen in as we discuss: How we can use escalating questions to guide our storytellers to deeper and deeper stories How Beth teaches her workshop participants "empathetic imagination" through one-on-one conversations with others The gap between a person's spoken voice and their written voice, and how to study the techniques of dialogue in published memoirs Diction is the atmosphere you create with words." Why scenes and rich details are better than a bald recounting of life's events Why emotionally resonant themes like "Holidays" or "Food" can lead to rich veins of stories Juncture Memoir Writing Retreats Beth also gives us a detailed overview of her intensive 5-day long writing workshops. These aren't your yoga-and-writing-prompts-and wine workshops; at Juncture, participants receive a semester's worth of writing direction, critique, and publication guidance. Want to see for yourself? You can find them here.   Links & Stuff View and subscribe to Beth's newsletter here. Her websites are at junctureworkshops.com and bethkephartbooks.com

Creating (and selling) a community history   In today's episode, Patricia Hamilton, publisher at Park Place Publications, discusses a project near and dear to her heart: a curated community history with contributions from residents of Pacific Grove, California. "It's a community of people." Patricia talked at Rotary Clubs, heritage societies, senior centers, and libraries, putting out the call for submissions to a book that would be about the community, penned by the community members themselves. She received a whopping 400 submissions, all of which became part of her book, Life in Pacific Grove California: Personal Stories by Residents and Visitors to Butterfly Town U.S.A. Listen as she discusses how the idea originated, her creative tactics in drumming up interest and story submissions, and how she sold out of a 500-print run on launch day. [Hint: Endorsements from a state senator and the town's mayor help!]   Scrivener contest winner announced! Thanks to all who participated, and congratulations, our winner, Ranee Boyd Tomlin. Woohoo!!! Ranee is located in Littleton, Colorado. Check out her company at https://www.wordsforstories.com/. Want to use Scrivener for your writing projects? You can find the Mac version here and the Windows version here. See how I use my favorite writing software in episodes 31: Scrivener for Life Story Writing and 41: Editing Life Stories with Scrivener. For more guidance, listen to my interview with Gwen Hernandez, author of Scrivener for Dummies.   Links & Stuff You can reach Patricia at publishingbiz@sbcglobal.net, or visit her website at https://lifeinpacificgrove.com/.

If you're a podcast fan who happens to write memoir—for yourself or for clients—you're probably familiar with the dulcet tones of Ann Kroeker, a writing coach who doles out advice and inspiration on her podcast, "Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach." In today's episode, Ann talks about the role of a writing coach and how she went from "editing with a coach's heart" to "coaching with an editor's eye." Win a free copy of Scrivener Don't forget to enter our contest before February 18 to win a free Mac or PC version of the writing software Scrivener. To enter, submit a written review of the podcast to iTunes, then drop an email to amy@thelifestorycoach with "I reviewed the podcast" in the subject line. That's it! Until next time, go out and save someone's story.

Mike Oke of Bound Biographies doesn't write his clients' life stories; they do. Funny how we think our way of doing something is the standard approach. And then along comes someone like Mike Oke, a 27-year veteran life story writer, who says he can't believe everybody else isn't following the model he practices. After our podcast interview, I can see where he's coming from. Instead of sitting down to record an interview with a client, and then spending hours transcribing, editing, and polishing their prose into a shapely narrative, Mike puts the onus of writing squarely on the shoulders of his client. But the novice writer needn't fear a lack of skill, focus, or editorial savvy, because once every four to six weeks, Mike shows up with a lightly edited version of the client's previous writing assignment, and together they spend the next six hours reading through it and talking about what comes next. With his method, the storyteller is truly the storyteller, both in speaking the tale and in writing it. How it works During the first six-hour meeting, Mike spends time going over the ground rules, establishing the parameters of the collaborative relationship and building rapport. He also usually creates a simple family tree; not to spark a conversation about genealogy, which he believes can be fatal diversion for an aspiring life story writer, but to get a feel for the principal players in the client's life—who were the grandparents and parents, the siblings and aunts and uncles, who had an impact on the client's life? As the clients talks and reminisces, Mike is busy taking copious notes—a practice he continues throughout all subsequent meetings, too. When it comes time to tackle a theme or event or era, Mike can refer to his notes if the client has forgotten to include something in his writing. Once the two get into a rhythm, it looks something like this: Mike shows up to each meeting with a sheaf of typed pages, usually around 20-30 pages, that the client sent after their last meeting. Mike has taken the time to make changes and tweaks to the material, and at the meeting he reads it to the client aloud. This gives the client what every writer needs: the chance to hear his words interpreted by a reader. They take a break for lunch, then carry on for several more hours afterward. A work session runs from 10 am to 4 pm. What the client gets Some projects take 6-12 meetings, some 15 or 20 or more. The client determines how many times they meet, and when the material has grown into a complete book. In addition to the editing Mike performs along the way, the manuscript is given a final proofread by an outside professional, and then it's turned into 10 paperback copies. What Mike gets, or, how payments are structured At the end of each 6-hour meeting, Mike collects a payment of ‎£400 (roughly $525), plus taxes and mileage (for long drives). When the book is completed and in the hand of the client, he collects a £4,000 (about $5,250) product fee. The books run a minimum of 20-25K words but usually come in around 50,000 words, or 200 pages. For clients who want to continue meeting after they've reached this page count, they pay the daily meeting fee along with a £1,000 for each additional 10,000 words. Why it works By taking on a dozen or so clients at a time, Mike is able to spend two days a week sessions with clients, and three days back at the office, editing the writing and running the business. Is it for you? Like I said at the beginning, Mike wonders why all of us life story writers aren't using this model. It's the way he fell into doing life story work nearly three decades ago, and it's the way that feels the most natural and productive to him. More importantly, though, he believes this is the best way to capture the storyteller's voice: by having them tell their own stories.   Links & Stuff Find Mike's company here: http://www.boundbiographies.com/ Win a free copy of Scrivener Don't forget to enter our contest before February 18 to win a free Mac or PC version of the writing software Scrivener. To enter, submit a written review of the podcast to iTunes, then drop an email to amy@thelifestorycoach with "I reviewed the podcast" in the subject line. That's it! Until next time, go out and save someone's story.

Scrivener tips and tricks from the expert Gwen Hernandez is novelist who learned Scrivener the natural way—by using it. She shared what she knew with the online community, and her reputation as someone who not only used the writing software, but someone who could explain how to use it, took off. The author of Scrivener for Dummies talks to The Life Story Coach about some of the ways we can keep our writing, research, interviews, and everything else organized with what she calls the "project manager for books." Color coding, tags, and meta-data, oh, my. Listen as Gwen gives a rundown on helpful tools like tags, keywords, and other bits of meta-data, and how they can simplify the writing process. Want more Scrivener? Check out my video screencasts of podcast episode 40 and episode 41, where I walk you through my process of writing a life story book with Scrivener. Win a free copy of Scrivener! Want to enter our drawing for a free Scrivener software? Here's what you need to do: Write a review of the podcast on iTunes Send an email with "Reviewed the podcast" as the subject line to amy@thelifestorycoach.com. Your review remains anonymous, and your name goes into a hat for the drawing. Links & Things: Visit Gwen Hernandez at https://gwenhernandez.com/ Want to take one of Gwen's Scrivener classes? Enter the code LifeStory at checkout to receive a 20% discount. See a listing of her classes here.

Going into business for yourself can be scary. There are forms to fill out, licenses to apply for, new checking accounts to set up. And then there's the whole business about contracts, services agreements, insurance—do I need it or not?—along with lots of other things that can send your head into a spin. Even if you're already in business and have been for a while, you might not feel like you have the best grasp on the legal, tax, business entity-ish side of things. (Maybe I'm talking about myself—yes, definitely—but I'm guessing I'm not alone.) That's why I invited Rachel Brenke to talk to us. Not only is she a lawyer, she's also a business consultant specializing in helping people in creative fields (like us!). Listen as we talk about: separating your personal and business "buckets" protecting your business (and yourself) with the proper business entity; contracts, services agreements, and web terms; and insurance. (Who knew there was such a thing as insurance for computers, scanners, printers, etc?) why you should NOT be operating a Sole Proprietorship how contracts can be the bad guy, so you don't have to be four important types of legal documents you might need   Links & Stuff: Rachel Brenke's website Rachel's books Still need to submit your listing to my upcoming directory? It's free and open to anyone working (full-time, part-time, or as a volunteer) in the life story business. Fill out the form here.

Cynthia Kyriazis, productivity coach and bestselling author of "Get Organized, Get Focused, Get Moving," shares her (well-organized) thoughts on doing business better. When I was a kid and my mom needed to send a check to school for some activity (or for my Scholastic Book order, remember those?), she would place the check in an envelope, write my teacher's name across the front, and pin it to my coat. That's right, I was the kid with stuff pinned to her coat. Because if it wasn't attached, I'd lose it, and if it wasn't in plain sight, I'd forget about it. Don't ask how long this went on for. (Way too long.) No wonder it was so fascinating to listen to Cynthia Kyriazis talk about how individuals have different styles and methods for keeping ourselves (and our business) organized. "We can't manage time," Cynthia says. Sounds obvious, but how many of us try to do it all the same? There are better approaches. In this episode, we discuss: how productivity is about being effective and efficient at the right time how procrastination, like any other habit, can be replaced by a better one how clutter (my old friend clutter!) is symptomatic of delayed decision making (read: procrastination) Cynthia's three dead simple questions for strategic planning

This one is a quickie! I give you an overview of how I use Scrivener to wrastle documents into order so that I can find them when I need them. You'll also see how the split Editor pane in Scrivener is a life story gal's best friend. Watch the screencast here. Links & Stuff Want to use Scrivener for your writing projects? You can find the Mac version here and the Windows version here. Want to be listed on the upcoming Life Story Professionals Directory? Help future clients find you! The listing is free. You can get the process started here.

How I Edit Back in 2010, when I first started The Story Scribe, my memoir-writing business, I asked a man to sit down with me and tell me his life story. We met for a total of fifteen interviews over the course of many months. He was happy to just talk, but my goal was to shape his words into a life story book—my first. I wanted the practice. I needed the practice. Or so I thought. Turns out I needed something else even more: the realization that if I didn't get my act together and create a functioning system, I'd never get his book or any other written. Every week, we met at the same (noisy) coffeeshop, and every week I went home feeling worse than the week before. The words were building up, on my recorder, in the transcripts I was doing myself, behind files scattered across the desktop of my Mac. I felt like I was drowning in his words. At some point, I gave up. He didn't mind. The act of telling was what interested him. But I did. I had disappointed myself. I never got the book done, but I did create a system so that would never happen again. If you've got a great system that's working for you, this episode isn't for you. But if you're interested in how one life story writer (errr, that'd be me) gathers together a series of transcripts and turns them into a book, here's a peek. (By the way, if you DO have a great system, please share some tips in the comments. The only reason I can do what I do is because of all the help I've gotten along the way. And I'm sure I'm not alone.) Have a listen. Or, if you'd like to see my computer screen as I walk you through my process, you can watch the video here.

Jenny Doan talks about the correlation between family history and family quilts Jenny Doan and her family started the Missouri Star Quilt Company. A decade later, Jenny's quilting tutorials have been watched by millions, and her love of quilting has spurred people around the globe to create quilts of their own. Along the way, fans have sent stories behind the family heirloom quilts that have been collected into several books. Jenny discusses quilting, the importance of family stories, and how the two are related. Family History Idea, compliments of Jenny's mother: Fill a jar with writing prompts; during family gatherings, pull out a slip and ask your family elder or answer the question yourself. Over time, these brief pieces will add up to a long narrative. Links & Stuff Books mentioned:Stitched Together, Stories for the Quilter's Soul, Volume 1. Click here or here. Stitched Together, Stories for the Quilter's Soul, Volume 2. Click here or here. Stitched Together, Stories for the Quilter's Soul, Volume 3. Click here or here.   Block Magazine More on coffin quilts, along with a beautiful example  by artist Barbara Todd. Jenny on the Road, a list of scheduled visits to towns across the US.

Saving veterans' stories, one patient at a time Dr. Susan Nathan, physician at the Boston VA, and Thor Ringler, therapist and poet in Madison, Wisconsin, talk about their experience with My Life, My Story. The VA program offers veterans the opportunity to record their life story—not only for posterity, but for their medical chart as well. Thor is the overall program director of My Life, My Story and an avid collector of patients' life stories. He was brought on board after two psychiatrists, Dr. Eileen Ahearn and Dr. Dean Krahn, recognized the need to promote greater understanding of the patients among the team of people caring for them. That led to the revolutionary idea of including 1,000 word narratives, told in the patient's voice, in the medical chart. In addition, each patient receives hard copies of the edited story to take home. Links & Stuff Want to volunteer for My Life, My Story? If you're in Boston, contact Dr. Susan Nathan. Anywhere else, email Thor Ringler. Want to learn more about narrative medicine? Check out these books by Dr. Rita Charon: The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness

Voices in Time co-founder Lili Shank on creating life stories on audio Lili Shank is a life story professional who helps people preserve their stories as told by them, in their own voice. Listen as she discusses: the steps for each audio interview how to warm up the guest/storyteller with questions about their parents and grandparents why she gives the guests time to prepare their answers and reflections before asking the bigger, more philosophical questions why people ask for help in saving a voicemail message the power of the voice why a prospective guest's "no" may turn into a "yes" and more.

Donna Strickland Helps Writers Add Mindfulness to Their Workday Donna Strickland knows firsthand how painful writing can be. When she started hating the book she was writing, she knew something had to change. That's when she discovered the principles of mindful writing, a practice she teaches in classes and workshops across the US. Mindfulness is that quality of paying attention to what's happening in the present moment without judgment." In this episode, we discuss: the work of Robert Boice interpersonal mindfulness the transformative power of becoming aware of our body what tight shoulders and hunching over the computer might be telling us why short, focused sessions are better than longer ones, and the lure and danger of hypomania suggestions for a few moves and yoga postures that we can use throughout our workday (Hint: they don't have to be complicated!) Links & Stuff Reach Donna via email Donna's upcoming (November 2018) workshop Donna's book, The Managerial Unconscious in Composition Studies How Writers Journey to Comfort and Fluency, by Robert Boice Mindfulness for Educators Program at Antioch University Ann Bettencourt, who runs the Mindful Relations Laboratory at University of Missouri—Columbia Ken Robinson's TED talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? [Spoiler: Yes!]   And finally, a big thanks to our sponsor, Hoefel Haus Bed, Breakfast & Bike Hostel

Brittany Bare, founder of My Life, My Stories, on running a life story non-profit Like a lot of us, Brittany Bare was inspired by a relationship with a close relative to make the jump into the life story business. Where she's different from most, though, is that she's set up My Life, My Stories as a 501(c)(3)—a non-profit organization. On this episode, she talks about matching volunteers to seniors, serving seniors from under-represented populations (including those who speak a foreign language), and pitching her program to residential facilities and community centers. Interested in becoming a volunteer? Email Brittany or visit her website. Links & Stuff My Life, My Stories website  

Change your Money Conversation Sarah White knows how important it is for us to charge what we're worth; more importantly, she knows how to help us over the obstacles that keep us from doing so. Life story work is "heart-driven" work, and like other service-oriented professions, it attracts people who may not feel comfortable with the money-making side of their business. Because of that, Sarah has taken her training in Guided Autobiography and created a workshop aimed at helping us uncover our "story" about money: the attitudes and assumptions that we absorbed in childhood, the very attitudes and assumptions that may be sabotaging our financial success today. You're not going to bring in caviar if you have a cheese-sandwich attitude toward your value." Listen as we discuss: Upper-limiting and how we get antsy when (financial) success comes knocking Questions to get started on revealing your own unconscious attitudes about money, such as: If you had all the money you need, what would you spend it on? How we all come from at least two different money stories Marketing, Workshops, and Getting Visibility Sarah has been running the First Monday, First Person writing salon for five years. It started as a program hosted by the library, but when participants kept signing up for repeat sessions, Sarah branched out to try a critique-based salon. Other avenues for raising your visibility as "the life story person" in your community: Teach a workshop or class at your local library. Advantages of teaching at the library: The library handles the administrative tasks The library will publicize the event Libraries are natural venues for connecting with people who value words, stories, and writing It can be a lead producer for future clients HINT: Even if your local library offers workshops for free, they may pay the presenters an honorarium. Start a club for enthusiasts of local history, like Sarah's East Side History Club. They convene every month or so to reminisce about topics of local interest, subjects that make people reflect back on their childhood in the community. They even published a book of stories by the members that's now in it's second edition (see below for links to the book).   Links & Stuff: Want to get in touch with Sarah? Find her website here. Check out Sarah's workshop, "Write Your Way to a Better Relationship with Money."    

Mark Bowden knows his stuff. Mark is the author of 13 books, including Black Hawk Down, Hue 1968, and the upcoming The Last Stone (due out in 2019). He's spent his career writing true stories about real people. He has a world of knowledge (literally! he's covered stories all over the globe) to share with us life story writers. Listen to my conversation with Mark as we discuss the craft of researching, reporting, and writing. Click here for more.   

The Writer's Diet—a book and companion website—won't spiff up your prose for you, but it will point you toward the flaws that can make writing dull and stodgy. Helen Sword wrote the book and developed the Writer's Diet Test after noting the uneven quality of writing by students and academicians. A professor with a PhD from Princeton in Comparative Literature, she takes aim at zombie nouns, prepositional podge, waste words, and more. This brief writer's guide is a favorite of mine. Listen to this episode to learn about five common trouble spots in writing, how to spot them in your own prose, and what you can do to fix them. Not everyone has a zombie video to their credit! Links and Stuff (scroll down for a transcript of our interview) HelenSword.com The Writer's Diet website Books by Helen Sword: The Writer's Diet Air & Light & Time & Space Stylish Academic Writing   Other books mentioned: Joseph F. Williams' Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace William Zinsser's On Writing Well   Transcript of our interview with Helen Sword Amy:                         00:09         I love reading writing guides and you have such an interesting take on what you've done. But first, could you start by telling the listeners a little bit about your background and why you've decided to make a specialty out of helping people improve their writing? Helen Sword:   00:25         Sure. Well, I started out as a literary scholar. I have a PhD in comparative literature, taught in an English department for long time and still do a little bit. But at some point I moved into working in faculty development, which is more working with academics to try to improve their teaching and that meant that I started reading research also in, in higher education as well as in literary studies. And I think that made me really aware of the different kinds of writing styles that people use in these different academic disciplines. And it made me really start thinking about why white people didn't communicate more clearly. I guess I'm at the same time. I was also, as always teaching students, reading colleagues work, doing my own writing. And so my first book on, on writing the writer's style really kind of came out of that work. Helen Sword:   01:26         I was just trying to figure out how to help people write better sentences, was what it came down to. And one of the things that I observed was that as people spent longer in school, particularly like advanced undergraduates and people just starting Grad school, the writing often got worse rather than better, you know, there's sentences got longer and longer and the words got more and more sort of jargon-y. They're praised for doing that because that is kind of the secret handshake into the discipline in some instances. And so I was just trying to show that you can say the same things often in about 60 percent of the words. I'm not the first person who has done this, but with the writer's style that I developed a particular algorithm to help people see if, as I put it, they're writing is sloppy or fit. Helen Sword:   02:22         Or you could just say kind of soggy, sharp, you know, different ways of different metaphors you could use on that and then really give some quite clear principles, not rules but principles for writing, clearer, sharper, more energetic sentences. And then that work led me to looking more broadly at academic writing, research, writing and all the different disciplines and John was that people write in. So that led to my book Stylish Academic Writing, where I just trying to distill the principles used by the best writers to try to kind of jolly along those who had fallen into the, into this trap of the long winded boggy prose. Show them how to get out of that by telling stories, by having introductions that make people actually want to keep reading, writing stronger sentences, all that sort of thing. And then working on that book meant that I started running lots of writing workshops for academics. Helen Sword:   03:31         So both for faculty but also often graduate students. And then I started hearing about all the human problems involved in writing. You know, the lack of time, lack of confidence, power struggles. Like when you're trying to write a really interesting first person narrative in your thesis, advisor says, no, that's not what we do in this discipline, even though sometimes it is what other people do in the discipline, but the gatekeepers can be really conservative. So that led to my most recent book, which is called Air and Light and Time and Space. How successful academic right now, both of those last two books have the word academic in them, but I really want to emphasize that they're not just for academic writers. I think the kinds of people who listened to your podcast, who are writing histories, family histories, that sort of thing. I'm pretty much all of the same principles apply. Helen Sword:   04:32         People who have moved into historical writing are somewhat less likely to have fallen into these particular traps, but they still can. And, and I think some of the, a lot of the ideas and the information and the research and these books could be really helpful to them as well. So the most recent book is much more about writing habits. How people learn to write in these different genres, how they make time for writing and how they feel about the writing. There's a whole section on the emotions involved in academic writing. So, for that book I established a kind of rubric. Again, like the writer style. You can find it online and I can tell you more about that if you like that. Again, I think this is applicable not just for writers but for people to just about anything, whether it's learning a sport or becoming better at art or music, but I've found that it's not just about behavioral habits. Helen Sword:   05:32         You know, you can read these advice things that tell you should wake up every morning at 5:00 and write for two hours every day and that will make you the perfect prolific writer. Well, if you really hate doing it and you feel incompetent at it, you probably won't keep doing that for very long because there are lots of other things that go into a productive writing practice. So I talk in that book about what I call the writing base, which looks at the behavioral aspects of writing that also the artisanal aspects. So that's the craftsmanship because I see writing as an artist and like activity, but then also the social aspects. So that's getting feedback from others, being part of a community of writers, not just trying to do it all in solitude. And then the fourth aspect of this writing base is the emotional side of writing. Helen Sword:   06:25         And that's what my, what my next book is going to be on. It's called writing with pleasure because what I found was that the most successful writers come to the writing with some kind of deep well of desire and passion and pleasure that gets them through all the frustrations, gets them through the fact that writing can be hard and slow. And yet there's very little written about this. A lot of the productivity literature is much more, you know, crack the whip just right. This is not a real writer or, or if you think that you need to have a nice room with a beautiful view, you know, you're just looking for excuses and you know, when it comes down to it, if you give me a choice between writing in an unheated basement while I'm feeling really stressed and agonized and writing in a nice light filled space when I'm feeling good about myself and good about my writing, I would take the latter. Helen Sword:   07:30         I would recommend it to anybody else. So the book is trying to help writers find that air and light and time and space metaphorically as well as you know, in, in the actual world. So lots and lots of different aspects of writing. Each one seems to lead onto another, but I'll say one more thing and then I'll let you pop in. But that's my topic I'm working on now. Right with pleasure. I think actually feeds right back into all three of those books. I think the craft of writing a really great kick ass sentence is a deeply pleasurable activity or should be. I think that learning to write stylishly, means learning to communicate with your audience in the most effective way and there's a real pleasure that comes from doing that and from having people respond and really get what you're trying to do. And then of course the pleasure is an important part of all the kind of behavioral and habit aspects of writing as well. Right. Well, and I think probably for a lot of people who do live story books, you know, there's, you were talking about the artist side of things and that's pretty much what I want to focus on mostly because we don't have the option of writing or not writing. If you're, if you're not writing then you're not making living doing this. Amy:                         08:56         So you have to have been the chair. Do you have to get the job done? whether it's pleasurable or not that you know, that at least for me it depends on the day. It depends on what section of a book I'm working on and I would absolutely love to have a little bit more insight into what can make that happen, you know, on a more consistent basis where it is a pleasurable exercise. But what I, what I really wanted to talk about was because so many people come into this, people are drawn into this industry for various reasons, but something that I hear all the time from listeners is that they want to come into this industry because they want to listen to people's stories. They want to help them get their stories recorded and help them share them with their families. And so they're not necessarily. Amy:                         09:43         Some people are writers and some people are not, but they're not necessarily focused entirely on, you know, building super strong writing skills. and I think, or the flip side is that maybe they're feeling a little bit weak with their writing skills, but they still know that they want to do this and they still know that they, they can help people. So I think that's why I was so drawn to your first book, The Writer's Diet: A guide to fit prose. Besides all of the good information that you gave, I absolutely love your writing style. I mean it's just very tricky and it can be funny and you use, you know, you talk about helping academics, but you have examples from Shakespeare and you know, classic literature, all kinds of great examples, but the, the promise that you make to your readers in that book, and here I'm going to read it, you say this book will help you energize your writing, boost your verbal fitness and strip unnecessary padding from your prose. Amy:                         10:43         And then you go on and you give very concrete ways of helping writers do that. So that's what I would like to address in greater detail by know, it's not your latest book. I know it's your first one, but I think it's something that can really help life story writers out there just with the Zombie nouns, propositional package. There's some very specific ways that you steer people towards improving their writing. So can you give us just a brief overview of the main topics and then I'd like to talk a little bit in more detail about each of them. Helen Sword:   11:16         Yes, absolutely. And it all comes back to the same stuff. You know, I wandered far away from style as I talk to writers and yet in the end it's all about sentences. And I, I like to think of sentences as being the bricks and mortar of building your, your house, of writing, building, whatever it is that you're producing. You just are not going to do it. If you go out in the backyard and take a few handfuls of mud and sit them in the sun to dry for a bit and then start building your house, you know, it's all going to collapse. I'm sentences are like bricks that need to be shaped and set and fired and really worked. That's how you're going to get that strength. That's a different metaphor from the Diet and fitness metaphor, but I think, I think they're both quite powerful. Helen Sword:   12:09         The Diet and fitness metaphor, what I really had in mind, there was not so much diet as in not eating. I had in mind diet as an eating well, and so the metaphor that I use there is that we all know that in order to be fit, physically fit, you've got to do two things. You've got to eat good food and you've got to exercise and I think sentences are exactly the same. You've got to fill them with good words and then you've got to put them through their paces and that often means working them again and again and again. For me, a sentence is never ever finished. And I think some writers might find that kind of disconcerting. Even a quite skilled writer will still be tinkering up till the last minute. But for me, it's helpful to link that craft back to the pleasure. Helen Sword:   13:07         Again, if you are wrestling with any media, whether it's clay or would you know anybody, any crafts person is, has got to love the medium and not allow themselves to be frustrated by the medium. So, you know, when you talk about getting through those hard days and those days where you just don't want to be doing it, I'm, one of the things I always try to do is to just remind myself why I'm there in the first place, which is a real love for the medium of language and for the communication that it can do, have these ideas or in the cases that you're talking about these, these stories, but every single sentence is a story in microcosm. And so that gets us down to the nitty gritty of how sentences work. I'm in the writer's style. I have five main chapters. One looks at nouns, one looks at verbs, one looks at adjectives and adverbs, one looks at prepositions, and then the last one's kind of grab bag of categories, that I call called the waste words. Helen Sword:   14:12         But it's four words that don't necessarily have anything grammatically in common, but they often tend to end up in sentences together. And when you see a lot of them congregating together, the sentences may end up being a bit long. And then we'll do use. So those are the words, it, this, that and there, and I talked to them about each of those in turn in the book. But really if I had to boil, boil it down to just two things that would be nouns and verbs. And if I had to boil it down to just one principal, it would be the principal of concreteness of concrete language. Nouns can be concrete or abstract. Verbs can be concrete or abstract, even adjectives and prepositions for that matter can be concrete or abstract. So understanding the distinction is just absolutely key to understanding how a sentence works. There's a, I don't know if you've seen the youtube video on the Ted Ed site, but, there's a hilarious video that was made from an article that I wrote about Zombie nouns in the New York Times. And that kind of animates, shows you what they are and how they work. But zombie nouns is just the phrase that I use to describe nominalizations, which is such an unwieldy word that I have trouble even saying it. Amy:                         15:50         So I'm going to jump in there for a second. Nominalization. Did you come up with that word because it's, it's brilliantly funny. I mean, because it is what you are telling people not to do. Helen Sword:   16:04         It is a nominalization, but no, I didn't come up with it. It's a grammatical term. You can find it in the dictionary. I think it was some of the best writing about nominalizations is in Joseph Williams. Really Fabulous. It's classic book: Style: Lessons in clarity and grace, and any of your listeners who don't already know that book should raise that and buy it. It's been around for decades, but it's a, it's really a great book on how sentences work. So in some ways, I'm not saying anything that, that he doesn't say or the William Zinsser doesn't say in, in his book, On Writing Well. Well, but it seems to be a lesson that needs to be repeated over and over again. Partly because so many people have not ever been taught to recognize nominalizations or to understand what they're doing. Amy:                         17:00         So the fact is, I mean you're. You're citing some really good, prestigious. I'm writing books, but the fact is that I'm. I have it in front of me, The Writer's Diet, and I've read William Zinsser. I haven't read the first guy that you were talking about, although I have a note to do so Amy:                         17:15         because you mentioned him in your book, but you've done it in 73 pages and you've done it very, very clearly in, you know, you're talking about using concrete now and said, I'm staying away from abstractions. You, you give app, you give exercises, you give ways of testing, like taking something that a writer is already written and seeing where the tweaks need to happen and I think that's something that's so important for people who maybe are new to the craft of writing and they haven't read tons and tons craft books. This is such a good primer to get started with. So I, I interrupted you there, but if you could tell people what a nominalization is and in my mind I'm going to let you describe what it is, but in my mind sometimes we just like academics try to write smart and I think that's when things like nominalizations creep in and it's, you know, masking maybe some inexperience and if you want to get into the psychology of it, I think it's probably the fear of coming across as not being a good writer. So we tried to spruce things up and that's where we go wrong. Helen Sword:   18:27         Yeah. And sometimes we get a lot of that same kind of language in bureaucratic prose, in all kinds of different places. And sometimes it's just easier. It's easier to come up with a nominalization followed by a weak verb followed by something like is or shows or you know, sort of what I call the usual suspects. rather than to find a verb that really has a lot of energy and uniqueness to it, which really is the key even more than nouns. But what a nominalization is. it's a, an abstract noun by definition. All nominalizations are abstract, it's an abstract noun that has been created from other parts of speech, so usually either a verb or an adjective, occasionally another noun even. So a nominalization itself. It comes from, well, the in French nom is is a name, but it's also a noun, right? So nominal. Helen Sword:   19:37         One meaning of nominal is having to do with nouns, so that's already an adjective, a descriptive word that's been formed from a noun. So the noun or noun becomes the adjective having to do with nouns, nominal. And then you can turn that into a verb to nominalize. So if you take a noun and you turn it into a verb, you have nominalized. It. Nominalization takes the final step of turning it into a noun by adding one of these endings. Like in this case t I o n. So a nominalization is a noun that has been created from other parts of speech and nominalization as a process is a way of describing the process of creating nouns from other parts of speech. So it's quite a. it's, it's a big word that's describing a complex process, but the beauty of it, as you said, is that it's a word that enacts would. Helen Sword:   20:39         It describes a nominalization is a nominalization that has undergone nominalization. So what's wrong with nominalizations? Well, nothing at all. We use them all the time. We need them. We need to abstract language in order to communicate it. That ideas. So the word education is a nominalization. Does that mean that we shouldn't use it? Of course not. It's very useful to be able to talk about education, but a writer who is using the word education in every sentence, sometimes more than once. I might want to think about the verb that it came from educate, which has a kind of energy to it that education doesn't have education or any abstract noun is something that we can conceptualize. We can talk about it right at that edge, but we cannot visualize it. We cannot touch it and that's the problem really with abstract nouns in general, but nominalizations just seem to be a version of them that were especially drawn towards an English for whatever reason and that are easily minimized by if you become aware that you used in a lot of nominalizations, you can just look at them and say, okay, what if I take half of these and release? Helen Sword:   22:06         So word that's hiding inside there? So what a past. The Times I say education, I try to talk about educating and educate and maybe that will actually get me thinking about where it's like teaching and learning so that I have a bit more variety in my vocabulary, you know, so it's just a way of doing that. But the greater issue of abstract versus concrete nouns is just so important to think about because I've read academic articles where people use six, seven, eight, nine abstract nouns in a sentence. Sometimes just in the title, you know, a reflection on the normalization of the this, the, that you know, and it's just this big string of these saints. Lots of examples in the book of real world writing that does these things and not just from the academic sphere. So, the, the problem with that kind of writing is that the reader can visualize anything and so they just get lost. Helen Sword:   23:13         So in the zombie nouns video, I take a sentence that has a bunch of nominalizations in it and I cut it down to just one, so because it's an active sentence in which the one abstract term is really foregrounded and you can see what it means and you can see why it's being used instead of being in there with, with all these others. So just think it's such. I mean it seems like this kind of dry concept, why should I have to learn this? But it's like learning how to hit your nail with your hammer. If you haven't learned some of these really basic things about how a sentence works, you're going to be building them the much more hit and miss way. So my, my kind of rule of thumb is to make sure even when I'm doing or I would say especially when I'm writing about quite abstract things to make sure that in every paragraph, if not in every single sentence, I've got some concrete nouns and congregate nouns are things that exist in the world that you can visualize, that you can perceive with the senses. So you know, in family writing, historical writing, you've got an advantage that you're writing about real people in the world and yet it can be really easy to start talking about them in more abstract ways by letting these zombie nouns creep in there. Amy:                         24:48         Exactly. And that's always a danger with zombie nouns and with other ways of having the, the prose go a little bit lifeless because generally we're going out, we're interviewing the storyteller and then we are reshaping the storytellers words to put down onto the page or you know, maybe doing some editing for videos or are probably less so with audio. But definitely for the written format. We're taking a transcript and those words have a way of getting stuck in your head. And sometimes you, it's hard to see beyond the way that they have expressed something and you and I both know the way we express things in speech is not how we want to be reading things on the paper and, and so the challenge is probably a little bit different from an academic trying to write in a lively manner, but it's still a challenge because, because we're trying to reshape what somebody else has said and so if, especially if you haven't really studied the craft of writing so much to be able to hear something like nominalizations, you're going to be much more aware of what you're seeing on the paper. And especially for nominalizations because they have a few different word endings, right? I mean the words that end in men and yeah. So M, e n, t a, T I o n or ion, right. So, so those are visual clues that we can see on the paper and that we can, that can alert us like, hey, maybe we need to Helen Sword:   26:22         better website the writers start Amy:                         26:25         I have. And that's something that. Yes, I know. Let's, let's, let's talk about one or two of the other things and then I definitely want to talk about the website because it's such a good tool for us so listeners are just going to have to wait and wait until the end and then we're going to talk about it, but. So I'm jumping around in the book a little bit, but one thing we all, you know, we have definitely heard to use strong verbs and a concrete nouns, but something that you brought up that I had never really heard of before is that there's different qualities to different prepositions and you also give a few rules and I'm sure that these rules are meant to be broken if the need arises. But. So I'm, I'm reading from your book again, avoid using more than three prepositional phrases in a row. That's something that as readers we can all understand. We can all intuit when somebodies piling on prepositional phrase after propositional phrase and we'll probably lose interest, but it might not necessarily be something that we consciously understand and can apply to our own writing. So I, I so appreciate that. You just Amy:                         27:34         putting a, putting a number on it, and then the other thing that you say is do not allow a noun and its accompanying verb to become separated by more than about 12 words. That's brilliant. You're telling us 12, you know, it's not, it's not the kind of advice that I've seen before and it's just, it's so exciting to be able to have something that you can just in a very practical way apply to your own writing. So and. But the thing that I started talking about was you, you, you mentioned that some propositions are just a little zippier than others. Can you talk about that? Helen Sword:   28:09         So I have some examples in the book of people who use a lot of prepositions in a sentence because they're physically taking us someplace. So if you're describing somebody who walks through the garden into the shed, behind the lawn mower, into the pool of darkness, you know, you're, you're breaking the three preposition. I don't call it a rule, but a rule of thumb. It's kind of like good one to stick to unless you have a really good, clearly defined stylistic reasons for doing otherwise, but if you are somebody who's trying to kind of pull out the suspense of that movement through the space back behind around, then you're using those prepositions really, really well and really effectively, but often we're using them just to hook a bunch of, in many cases, abstract nouns together, a demonstration of the efficacy of the practice of, you know, these sorts of things where it's, Amy:                         29:22         oh, that rolls right off your tongue. Helen Sword:   29:24         I actually think it's easier to write this kind of soggy buggy prose than it is to write tight sippy pro. Some people are fortunate and they just seem to have been born with that gene or they've been trained into it. But I find, I once a paper in which I was kind of parodying prose that broke all of these rules and I found it dead easy. It was way, way easier than trying to find the concrete language and what I call the fresh unusual for. So prepositions, there's, I would say for most writers, prepositions are not a big issue and yet what I do with all in all five categories as I do put numbers on things and I basically say if you're going over this percentage of prepositions in your prose, you might want to think about that. You probably want to make sure you have a good reason for doing that. Helen Sword:   30:26         And if you do, you know, if you're able to articulate well, I'm using all those propositions because I'm walking us through landscape. Getting us to a particular place and the prepositions helped me draw the suspense. Then great. Ignore the principles. But if you're just piling them on because somehow you haven't figured out how to get to the end of your sentence. That's one where you need to go back or it would be a good idea to go back and have a look and think about the work that each of those prepositions is doing. And as with I think any part of speech varieties part of it as well. So you can. You can start to see if you use the same five or six prepositions over and over again. If you are, then that writing will be much more monotonous than if you're. If you're using quite varied ones that really are taking us spatially or prepositions are connecting words and if you're using prepositions consciously and imaginatively, then there's gonna be some variety and some interest in the way that you're doing it. So I would put. I would put thinking about prepositions as being, you know, kind of at the nerdy and the specialist end of, of thinking about how to craft a strong sentence. Amy:                         31:43         I think you just called me. It's funny because this has become a favorite book. This, the writers your yearbook because of the content and because of your writing style. Another one that I have sitting on my desk right now, his sister Bernadette sparking dog, which is all about diagramming sentences. Something I love, but it's also, you know, it's, it's using grammar to serve, to serve a bigger purpose which is writing sentences that convey meaning in a, in a pleasurable way to read. Okay. So we're getting a little bit close to the end. So I do. I, I wanted to go through more of your, your rules of thumb, but I think people are just going to have to go out and buy the book themselves because I do want to give you the chance to talk about the website and that website. Helen Sword:   32:35         The very beginning when I started working on the rider stud, I thought, well, if I'm using kind of going to the gym analogy and let's say you're going to the gym because you want to start a personal training routine to get stronger and fitter. Your personal trainer is going to get out the calipers to measure the fat on your arm and they're going to make you. Do you know the treadmill tests? They're going to put you through your paces and they're going to say, here are some things where you really could could improve or where we'd like to see the numbers change and that will indicate your fitness stuff. So I just thought, I wonder if it's. Is it possible to do that with some of these grammatical and syntactical principles? In a way that's not saying you must do this, and I think this is really important, the writer's style test you, you copy in between 100 and a thousand words and you click this button. Helen Sword:   33:38         This is at writersdiet.com. You click the run the test button and then you get this diagnosis of whether your sample. I won't say your writing and it's certainly not you. It's just the sample that you've put in whether it is so I say flabby or fit. Now I'm working on a version of this right now that is actually going to be a plugin that you can run in Microsoft word on your own machine or in the cloud. That will allow you to look at an entire document of whatever length and not just something up to a thousand words. It's turning out to be quite complicated to program, but we will get there eventually and as part of that, I'm going to have some customization options. So anybody who doesn't like the words flabby and fit can rename it to red and green. You know, or whatever they want to apples and oranges, but they at the idea of it all, it's showing you when it puts you over from lean and fit into needs, toning or flabby or the most dire emergency category is heart attack. Helen Sword:   34:51         All it's saying is that you've got a lot of words in that category, a high percentage higher than we would expect somebody writing vigorous prose to have and you really should go and have a look and think about why. Again, if you're doing it consciously for repetition or because you need to use a certain word over and over or for a stylistic effect, then you ignore the results and you'd go on with what you're doing. But for most people it shows them things that they aren't aware of. So with the nominalizations for example, if you get a reading of a heart attack, I think it's showing you that six percent or more of the words your sample are nominalizations and it's just saying, you know, that's kind of dangerous zone. You may be losing your breeders because if you have that much, that many zombie nouns, you probably have a whole bunch of other abstract nouns that aren't even getting you know that the that the algorithm won't find because it's only looking for certain word endings. Helen Sword:   35:57         And if you have all that abstract language, you probably don't have very much concrete language. So the way it's working is it's an algorithm. It's doing is counting you, put in your words, it spits out a result and we all love algorithm thinking because you know you push a button and you get an answer, but what it's trying to teach you is what I would call her ristick thinking, which is thinking in terms of principles rather than rules. So that's where you can see the principle is that if you have too many prepositions, your sentences are probably quite long and stringing together a whole lot of nouns and you may be losing your reader. But the heuristic is saying, oh, but if I understand how prepositions work and what the different effects are, then I can make my own choices based on what the algorithm is telling me. Helen Sword:   36:50         It's just giving me a very simple diagnosis and now I take that diagnosis and I, the human being with a brain, you know, look at, look at my writing with new eyes and, and think about how to improve it. So, you know, I do get comments every now and then from people. I'm usually undergraduates, often undergraduates for whom English is not their first language. Saying this tool doesn't fix my writing. It doesn't tell me what's wrong. It tells me all these that I have to get rid of all these words. Well, it's not telling you that at all. It's just saying you've got a lot of words in this particular category. So the nouns category, all it's looking at our nominalizations. So that is nouns with anyone of seven word endings and both the book and the website will tell you what they are, but we'll tell you how to identify them yourself. Helen Sword:   37:49         And you can even do the whole thing with just the book by counting and color coding. It tells you how to do that in the back. So it's giving you a formula but it's not meant to be a formula that any thinking person is going to, you know, Kowtow to and, and follow without thinking about it. Quite the opposite. But it's data that can shed a light on problems that you might not be seeing yourself. So like you said, it's not, it's a diagnostic tool and you can do what you want with the results, but it can definitely show us where we are falling down when we don't realize it. And I think that's the beauty of it because it, it can really, it can eliminate some things that you didn't understand about your own writing. I follow those principles myself very rigorously, but I can also tell when I'm moving away from them and it's often when I'm doing a certain kind of academic writing. Helen Sword:   38:47         Like writing an abstract often is quite abstract and I'll, I can, I can start to feel that I don't have great verbs in there. And then I've got an awful lot of these, the zombie nouns, you know, more than I would like to. And if I start to feel that I can almost always put that segment through the test and Yep, sure enough it will have gone over over the line. Now having said that, it doesn't tell you whether your writing is good or bad. it doesn't even tell you whether it's interesting or boring. It's just looking for characteristics of sentences. Set tend to be types of words that tend to be associated with a certain kind of foggy longwinded prose. That's all it's doing. But that turns out to be quite a helpful thing to have a mechanism to do. Because what I used to do before I developed it is I would hand back students' papers or sometimes colleagues draft articles or whatever and I'd say go through circle all of the forms of the word to be. Helen Sword:   40:02         So that's: is, was, were, all of those verb forms and get rid of half of them, which was a pretty, a pretty random, you know, pretty scatter shot sort of thing. Whereas now with this particular algorithm, you can, you know, I basically said generally if I read something where it's up to three percent of these, be verbs, it's fine, and generally if it gets to more than that, either the language is quite passive. You're using passive for constructions which always then brings in a be verb. You know, the research was performed, mistakes were made. So if you're doing the passive then you've often got rid of the agent, the person or thing doing the action, or it may just be that you're writing a lot of kind of lazy sentences. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, you know, it's this kind of monotonous use of one verb over and over again, and it's just so common in all levels of writing that that seemed an interesting and important thing to flag. Now, what it won't tell you is how to replace or how to rewrite those sentences using more energetic verbs. The book will help with that because it gives you some exercises and lots and lots of examples, but it will not do it for you. Amy:                         41:35         Well, you're writing in this book is a great example of the things that you're trying to teach us in the book itself. So thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. Can you tell us again the name of your latest book and where the listeners can reach you? Helen Sword:   41:51         The latest one published last year is Air and Light and Time and Space. And if you go to The Writer's Diet website, so writersdiet.com down at the bottom, you can subscribe to my newsletter now having said that, I write to the newsletter about once a year, so it's not a very active one, but I do use it to inform people of new developments. Also at the bottom of the page, you will see a link to the writing base, which is where you can go and, do a little self diagnostic tests looking at your behavioral, artisanal, social and emotional habits and how they all intersect. And you'll also find links from The Writer's Diet site to my kind of main website, which is helensword.com. And there you can find links to all of all of my books on writing as well as various other things and things like the zombie nouns video, which is pretty much my favorite thing ever. Being able to take a piece of writing and then having somebody animated and add sound effects to see it. And I think I think practices what it preaches because it's taking this quite abstract. Know what is a nominalization, what's wrong with nominalizations? And it's, it's actually putting a story on it, the story about the zombie nouns that go and cannibalize other parts of speech and wreak havoc in our sentences.  

How I Use Scrivener for Life Story Writing: a few helpful tips I made the change from Mac Pages to Scrivener over the past year or two, and now Scrivener is my go-to for creating all my life story books. I'm constantly learning new things it can do, but here are the essentials that make it an indispensable part of my workflow. 1) Split-screen editor. The Editor is where you do your writing, the main window where your draft appears. And since we as life story writers are basing the narrative on what our storyteller has shared with us, it's a huge help to view the raw material (transcript, old letters, etc) side-by-side with the draft. 2) The Binder. This is where you see all of your documents and folders, where you create new ones, and where you go to move sections of the book in a snap. You can use it as an ersatz-outline, dragging and dropping elements until you find the perfect structure. 3) Labels. On its own, the binder is a powerful visual tool; add colored labels, and you'll never get lost in your writing again. Listen to the podcast to see how I use just a couple of labels to signal what's been finished and what still needs work. Want to check out Scrivener for yourself? Click to check out Scrivener for Mac Or here for Scrivener for Windows Need some visuals to go with the podcast? Take a look at my sample project at http://thelifestorycoach.com/31-scrivener-for…fe-story-writing/.

Before we jump into today's interview... I want to give a quick shout-out to my former coaching student, JoEllen Anklam of Story Canoe. A professional voice actor, JoEllen takes events from her storyteller's life to create an old-style radio show. Check out the sample that kept me on the edge of my seat here.  Now, on to the show... Dawn Roode of Modern Heirloom Books creates visually stunning life story books In this episode, Dawn talks to us about transitioning from the magazine world, where she worked on publications such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and Parenting, to creating a life story business. Listen as we discuss: how a creating a tribute book after the sudden loss of her mother spurred Dawn into founding Modern Heirloom Books the difficulties of selling how life's milestones—a wedding, a funeral—are the times when people most want to take stock of their lives, and recognize the value of saving their stories The longer you speak, the deeper the narrative becomes." (By the way, the above is an example of a pull-quote, something we also discuss in the interview.) Modern Heirloom Books' "Dear Daughter" Signature Product The wedding industry is huge. So from a business standpoint, it made sense for Dawn to create a line of beautiful books for brides. Parents hire her to record stories about their daughter's life and surprise her with the book on her wedding day [Hint: It's best to do it before she's ready to walk down the aisle; inevitably, the bride reacts with tears of joy!] This is also a way to build the opportunity for future life story projects within the family. Life Story Links, a Roundup of All Things Life Story Every two weeks, Dawn does a great service to the life story professional community by publishing her Life Story Links. The round-up gathers together all the blogs, videos, tweets, and posts that pertain to life stories, biography, and personal history. If you've posted something online that you'd like to appear on the Life Story Links round-up, submit it to Dawn here. And if you don't have anything to post, check it out anyway. You're sure to get some great ideas from other life story writers, genealogists, photo organizers, and more. Thanks for listening. Now go out and save someone's story. Links and Stuff: Modern Heirloom Books Submit your post to Dawn's blog round-up Story Canoe; the sample that kept me on the edge of my seat is here.

Rutger Bruining of Story Terrace talks life stories Rutger Bruining thought about recording his grandparents' life stories—life in the Resistance during WWII, 20 years in the Caribbean—but he never got around to it. The regret he experienced at having missed the opportunity spurred him to start Story Terrace, a company that produces life story books.   "A biographer for every person." Rutger's breakthrough came when he realized he could tap into the freelance market to match up writers with customers. When someone orders a book package, Story Terrace assigns them a writer within their area, allowing most interviews to be conducted in person. If Story Terrace doesn't have a writer nearby, they go looking for one [Hint: This is why you should have an updated LinkedIn profile!]. To date, they have 200 freelance life story writers in the US, and many more in the UK and the Netherlands. Also covered in our interview: using family members as guinea pigs when starting a new life story business how Angel investors helped him get his fledgling business off the ground the guidebook of high-level tips Story Terrace provides to its freelance writers creating a structure or outline of the book before the writing is started using technology and an online platform to help customers upload photos and captions, and—in the future—to make edits to the drafts systematically surveying customers after they've gone through the process Story Terrace's Virtual Reality pilot program (compare this to the work Hilarie Robison is doing with embedded links to videos in her life story books at Legacy Tale) Links and stuff: Story Terrace Want to learn more about becoming a freelance life story writer for Story Terrace? Check out their application process.   If you enjoy the interview, please help others find us by leaving a review on iTunes.   Now go out and saved someone's story.

John Jantsch shares marketing advice for life story professionals Turns out, marketing a life story business isn't so different from marketing any other kind of business. John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing explains some basic principles that will help you connect to potential clients. Among topics we discuss are: The importance of identifying the client's problem and how you're going to help solve it Systemitizing your marketing efforts [Hint: A robust marketing plan isn't just for big companies!] Helping people understand WHY they want the project we're offering them Breaking through a storyteller's resistance to having a book done about their life The conversation can deepen the relationship between aging parents and their children." Nuts and bolts of online marketing We may spend most of our time talking face-to-face—or over the phone—to prospective clients, but that doesn't mean we can neglect our online presence. John shares some steps that we should incorporate into our overall marketing strategy, actions specific to local businesses wanting to get the word out to their community (that's us!). People don't really want to know how to do something. They just want to know that you know how." Google's Small Business Universe Okay, technically that's a Duct Tape Marketing term, but it makes sense. The vast majority of people looking online for personal historians and life story professionals will be typing their search into Google. And Google wants to help us help them. John mentions a few (free!) tools that can help land us that coveted "above-the-fold" spot on the search results page, including: Google My Business Google Maps If you enjoy the interview, please help others find us by leaving a review on iTunes.   Now go out and saved someone's story.   Links and stuff: Duct Tape Marketing Google My Business

Life stories aren't just for people In part 2 (listen to part 1 here) of our interview with Janet Kirkman, we hear her talk about the refined world of show dogs and why this can be a good niche market for life stories. [Hint: stories that focus on the dogs.] And then there are the "just regular" dogs, the pets we love to pieces, who can also be the focus of a life story. Janet points out that a typical lifespan for a dog is 10-plus years. If you're a dog owner yourself, or have been in the past, think back to one of your pets and consider what was going on in your life at the time. What life changes did you experience throughout that decade? Even if you're not doing a pet story per se, you can use a pet as a way to focus on a period in your storyteller's life. Use your own experience to generate open-ended, thought-provoking questions. A good example (I think? I haven't read it) is Marley and Me. A better example (because I have read it) is Travels with Charley in Search of America, by John Steinbeck. I love this book. Steinbeck and his French poodle climb into his pickup and drive across the US, a discovery journey that tells us just as much about the author as it does about America. And Charley. Cherished possessions have stories of their own Janet has worked with clients to tell the story of their family home and the meaningful possessions within it, such as an armoire that escaped the Nazis (when some of the family did not). Again, the objects are a way to focus in on a person's life and their roots. Oops, part 2. Again, sorry for the quality of the recording. I hope it's not too bothersome. I was willing to risk it in order to share Janet's great experience as a life story writer with you.   If you like show, please help others find us by leaving a review on iTunes. Now go and save someone's (or something's) story.

Today's episode is part 1 or our interview with Janet Kirkman, a 15-year veteran or life story writing. She talks to us about writing life stories, clients who self-publish, teaching memoir classes based on Guided Autobiography, and how she learned to create legacy letters with Barry Baines.   Oops. We had some technical difficulties with the sound and lost the first part of the conversation. The TIME Magazine article Janet refers to was part of a publicity campaign spearheaded by fellow life story writer Lettice Stuart, a founding member of the now-defunct Association of Personal Historians. According to Pat McNees on her amazing writersandeditors.com site, "It was Lettice who pushed reporters to write articles about APH, and whose friend at the Wall Street Journal wrote the first major media article about APH. Then several national publications got on the bandwagon and published stories – Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, the LA Times, Time Magazine, and many more." The interview with Janet was packed with so much good information (and inspiration!) that I split it into two parts. Stay tuned for part 2! (Click here if you want a heads-up as soon as it goes live.) Links and stuff: To reach Janet, email her at janetkirkman1600@gmail.com   I hope you enjoy this episode. If so, please leave us a review on iTunes. It's the best way to spread the word about the life story business! Thank you. Now go out and save someone's story.

Who takes responsibility of documenting a family's memories? After becoming a mom, Hilary Robison also took on the mantle of "keeper of family memories." Her experience led her and her husband to found Legacy Tale, where they help clients "learn how intentional living, memory-making, and technology come together to build stronger families and make life more enjoyable." Living life intentionally In this episode, we discuss how we can be oblivious to experiences while we're in the midst of them. By being intentional in our choices, we have a better chance of creating experiences (and the memories that follow) that strengthen our relationships and make us more resilient as a family. Treasuring the experiences as they happen Hilarie's advice includes creating a roadmap or strategic family, with input from parents and kids. Ask: Who do we want to be? What's our vision for our family? How do we achieve that? What kind of experiences do we want to have? e.g. places we want to travel Why? Because experiences shape who we become. Hilarie didn't want to look back and say, “Where did the time go? What did I do with that time?” Other topics include: planning a family planning retreat tips on creating your own family history Google Photos, a free app at photos.google.com on partnering with her husband in the Legacy Tale business [hint: Hilarie's husband can build your life story business website and help market your business!] Legacy Tale's interactive books, with links connect to audio and video content creating a business that's scaleable digital projects—coaching and help for diy'ers on how to write and publish your personal history and more Legacy Tale's courses and products, including a self-guided online course and membership on how to write your life story Links and things: You can find Hilarie at LegacyTale.com. Click here to receive 20% off products at Legacy Tale, a special gift to The Life Story Coach Podcast listeners. Thanks, Hilarie! Please help others find us by leaving a review on iTunes. Download a transcript of the interview here.  

Bookkeeping woes? Keep it simple. Candus Kampfer wanted to make a difference. When her hair stylist cried with relief after Candus showed her how to pull her accounting reports, Candus knew she wanted to help others. She began making short, focused video tutorials about Quickbooks in 2014, and her following grew. Candus big message: keep it simple. It doesn't need to be overcomplicated. But remember that bookkeeping is a vital part of your business. It's not just for doing taxes! Track the numbers throughout the year. Numbers are a black and white way to view your business. How to get started? Start by opening a business bank account; don't co-mingle your personal and business expenses! Keep records on paper: Use columns to designate expense categories, e.g fuel, office supplies, meals and entertainment [Hint: keep the categories fairly broad]. Or use an Excel spreadsheet to track your numbers   There are three types of reports you should be pulling: 1) Profit and Loss the top--your income, what you're being paid from your clients, based on categories of products or services below--all of your business expenses bottom line: did you make a profit or take a loss for the time frame chosen Questions to consider when looking at the P&L report: Have you been making an income in the areas you expected to? Are you making  more income in one area over another (e.g. producing books vs. producing audios)? Keep track of your expenses; where is your money going, and how does the outgo compare to the income? Compare a date range to a previous date range, e.g. this month vs last month. 2) The balance sheet All assets, all liabilities, all equity, and your net worth (Hint: The net should match the number on your P&L if you chose the same end date). The balance sheet is a snapshot of your business at a particular moment. 3) Sales by Item Summary (this report is specific to Quickbooks) For creating invoices within Quickbooks, use "items"; items are more detailed than the categories on your P&L. These items give details on the services and products you provide. It will show you the income you're generating on this specific services and products, and their percentage of the overall income. Knowing this allows you to proactively guide the business in the direction you want it to go. For example, you may see you need to do some marketing to grow a particular area. How to determine profitability in a service-based business Add a value to your time tracking Set up a non0payroll item with your service item and cost   I use Toggl for time tracking. For most of us, the free version is fine—it's what I used for years. I only upgraded to the paid version when I wanted to start drilling down into the statistics of how I was spending my time. To get your effective hourly rate, you have to track all business-related hours worked, not just billable time. Quickbooks: for each customer, you can enter billable AND non-billable time. When you go into Profit & Loss by job and by customer, it tracks the costs for you without counting it as income.   The entrepreneur's struggle: understanding the value of your work What would I like to earn? How much time do I have to work per month? Being confident with your billing comes over time. Kind, loving praise from clients helps!   Discomfort with invoicing (whether it's on your end or your client's) can be alleviated by stating things clearly in writing. Trust your gut feeling on whether it's a good match between you and a potential client.   Routine bookkeeping tasks Download or manually enter your bank transactions Enter expenses Track your income Reconcile bank and credit card accounts If using desktop version, back up your Quickbooks to an external drive (or any accounting software) [Hint: Do not use Dropbox to back up Quickbooks] Pulling reports P&L, pull it every month and compare YTD or month-to-month; are you where you want to be? Balance sheet, pull every quarter or so to make sure everytyhing looks Sales by item summary, pull every month. This gives a breakdown of your income and where it's coming from   Links Candus has a free minicourse on how to get started with Quickbooks in under an hour (canduskampfer.com/minicourse). Confidence with Quickbooks Course Quickbooks Simplified Community What I use to back up my data: Crashplan for Small Business Toshiba external hard drives for Mac (with Time Machine) (here's a model that works with PCs)   Whenever you're learning something new, be patient and kind with yourself. It can be overwhelming!   If you're interested in helping your clients learn about their genetic genealogy, keep an eye open for a special sale on the 23andme kits. They may be offered at a reduced price during Amazon's Prime Day. It starts at midnight on July 16, 2018 and runs for just 36 hours.   Please consider leaving a review (or just a rating) on iTunes. Thanks for helping to spread the word! Now go out and save someone's story.

Set your clients expectations before you give them the first draft If you're a writer, you know rough drafts are just that: rough. They're not meant to be polished and perfect. They're going to have mistakes. But your clients most likely aren't writers, and they're not going to know that. And when you hand them one thing and they're expecting another, it has the potential to cause a problem. It's our job as the professional guiding the process to set the stage. We don't want the client thinking the rough draft is the final book, minus the official cover. I'm going to talk about the specific steps I take to manage clients' expectations, but first I want to talk about the kinds of mistakes we have in those early drafts:   Mistakes in the writing There are mistakes in things like punctuation and grammar, transitions, even chunks of material that may need to be shifted to a different section. And that's all okay, because now is not the time to be delivering a smooth, tightly-written draft. Editing happens later in the process, after the draft is written to completion. For one thing, if you're still doing interviews, you'll be getting new information about a subject or time period you've already covered in the draft. Nobody tells their story during the interviews in a completely chronological fashion—and that's why they're hiring us, to put the bits where they belong, so they don't have to worry about how they're telling the story, they can just go along with the flow of it. It doesn't have to come out in any given order. But when you're on interview five and they go more in depth into a story that they told you back in interview two, you're going to go back and work that into the draft. If the writing is already tight and smooth and flawless, then it's going to take you that much more time to sort of disassemble it, work the new material in, then polish it up again, with the proper transitions etc. So in the end, you'll spend time un-doing and re-doing the work that you shouldn't have done yet in the first place. These are the mistakes that will probably bother us as writers the most. But unless your client is a retired English teacher, they're not going to be paying nearly as much attention to the prose as they are the content.   Mistakes in the content This brings me to the second big category: mistakes in names, places, dates, details of their life story. They know things that you're just getting acquainted with, so you don't have the “reading glasses” so to speak, to see them. You can create all the timelines and place lines and gather all the data in a super organized system, but mistakes will still crop up. Now, sometimes that's because we misread something, or just got confused about something, but sometimes it's because the storyteller has contradicted themself , or you find something in a source document that contradicts what they've said. I'm working with a client right now who didn't find some new materials written by older members of his family until well into the process, and there was a bunch of stuff he told me that turns out to be flat out wrong. I never picked up that he was just speculating when he was talking about the earlier generations and he never told me he was doing it. And it's all okay now, because he was ecstatic to find these memoirs written by the people about their own experiences. So mistakes will happen. And that's perfectly acceptable—as long as you prepare your storyteller. How do you set the storyteller's expectations? Talk to them. For all mistakes that originate with the client, it's really important to let them know that it's natural and it happens to everyone. The one thing we want to avoid like the plague is to have them start self-censoring. We don't want them getting hung up on whether their grandma was born in 1903 or 1906—those things can be verified, or just left out. And if they contradict themselves, even if the draft comes back and they tell us we got something wrong, well, the customer is always right. We make the correction and move on. Setting a storyteller's expectations 1) Start with a conversation Have a conversation BEFORE you hand them the draft. Tell them clearly and directly that they should expect mistakes, and talk about the two categories of mistakes. Make sure they know that editing for things like grammar and punctuation doesn't make sense until the end, AFTER all of the material is included. Tell them there will be mistakes in names, places, dates and details, because they know their story better than you do; and part of their OBJECTIVE in reading the draft is to make those corrections to it, right there on the paper. The draft is also their chance to see if they want to go back to a story that's already been written up and expand on it, or see where there's holes, things they haven't yet talked about but want to 2) Include it on the draft! We've talked about the importance of redundancy before—well, here's another place that I use it. For each draft I give to a client, I have a cover sheet with the client's name, the date of the draft, my logo and contact info, etc and also the words “DRAFT-IN-PROGRESS” On the next page, right there in the draft itself, I include a note with some boilerplate text about how they should expect to see mistakes, what kind, and what to do about them—taking pen to paper, dog-earing so I don't miss any (they never remember to do that!), etc. I include it in the running header. I say something like “Working draft—uncorrected." It's like a watermark, not only as a reminder to the storyteller, but also for any family member who make pick up the early draft. Because I may not have had the opportunity to have a conversation with them to manage THEIR expectations, and I don't want them thinking, "What is this? It's full of mistakes!" Last thing: if there is contradictory info in the interviews, I use an inline annotation set off with square brackets and put in a different color text (taking into account my client's eyesight; colors are sometimes harder to see than black on white). To recap: early drafts will have mistakes, in the writing and in the content it's your job to set your client's expectations about what they'll see in a draft do it early and do it often—have a conversation with them, and have it in writing on the draft itself Want a checklist cheatsheet to remind you of the steps to take before giving a client an early draft? I hope this has helped. If you have any questions or better yet, if you have a different way of dealing with this, share them in the comments. And if you've enjoyed the show, leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening. Now go out and save someone's story.

Want to earn an online certificate in Reminiscence and Life Story Work? Then this episode is for you. Today we talk to Esther Gieschen at University of Wisconsin, Superior about the academic field of reminiscence and life review and what we as practitioners of life story work can learn from it. Topics discussed: the role of reminiscence and life story work as narrative therapy how the academic field can serve as a foundation of knowledge for practitioners out in the field, whether that's life story professionals running a business or volunteers serving their community (e.g. one student applied what she learned in the program to a group reminiscence project with cancer patients) Barbara Haight, who conducted tests to create her structured life review the benefits of integrating memories from the past and how it can enrich someone's present and future Erik Erikson's stages of life development Cheryl Svensson and Guided Autobiography (listen to Sam Uhl about her experience as a student in Cheryl's GAB class) the value of sharing common memories how each person processes and retrieves memories differently, so even when we are experiencing something together, our memories of that shared experience will vary. Faith Gibson and her book, Reminiscence and Life Story Work: A Practice Guide how group reminiscence sessions can act to heal conflict within a community; the example of a woman from the UK who used a group session to have recent immigrants sit down with long-term residents, some of whom had been immigrants themselves 70 years earlier. The conversation helped them see how much they had in common. [As an interesting aside, I follow the work of Laird Schaub, a consultant who helps intentional communities (think communes) resolve the conflicts that inevitably arise in their communities. He writes about it here.] the storytelling certificate program through the Kansas City-area Mid-Continent Library System (incidentally, also the home to the Midwest Genealogy Center, the largest free-standing public genealogy facility in the US and a favorite destination for family historians) James Walsh, professor at University of Colorado and his talk on reminiscence theater The 2018 Annual Reminiscence Conference: the who, what, where, and why The conference takes place November 12-13, 2018, at the Hilton Boston Back Bay, in Boston, MA, with pre- and post-conference workshops on hospice/end-of-life reminiscence and on cultural perspectives. The keynote this year is Jefferson Singer on “The Varieties of Remembered Experience."   Want to sign up for the certificate program? Click here to get on the waiting list for 2019. Not sure you're ready to take the plunge? Esther advises that you look at the course reading list. Click here to pre-order the new book, International Perspectives on Reminiscence, Life Review and Life Story Work (due out November, 2018) Want to join the Reminiscence and Life Review registry? It's open to academics, researchers, and business owners. Find out more here.   If you enjoyed this episode, click here to leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for helping us spread the word! Now go out and save someone's story.

Erika Ettin gives people A Little Nudge up in the dating world What does online dating have to do with life stories? A lot. If you've ever looked at a dating site, you've seen a user profile, that miniature snapshot, in words and pictures, of a person in search of a partner. And just like with life stories, some people need help writing them. Erika recognized this need years ago when friends started asking for her help with their own profiles. She got so good at it that she left her job in the finance industry and created A Little Nudge, a service that caters to singles ready to jump into the online dating pool but not sure they know how to swim. Erika assists her clients through profile writing, picture selection, coaching, and date planning. In this episode, we talk about what it looks like to write a client's dating profile and even the messages they send to potential dates. Listen as we discuss: Erika's biggest demographic— Women over 50 (a typically common demographic, incidentally, for life story clients) turning what you love to do into a viable business the process of creating a client's online dating profile the narrow line between coaching and therapy serving a population of people who are single, but don't want to be managing clients' expectations the gratification of working with someone fresh out of a long-term relationship who is just getting to know herself again   A few questions life story writers can borrow from Erika I'm always looking for interesting, conversation-stimulating questions to ask my storytellers. Here are a few that will elicit more playful responses: What's something about you that your friends would make fun of? Do you have any stupid human tricks (i.e. something you wouldn't put on a resume!)? Tell on yourself! What's a funny or awkward story about you that makes you shake your head and say, "Yep, that's me!"   What it takes to be a good dating profile writer-for-hire You have to be an excellent writer. You have to be intuitive about people. You have to be a good businessperson and salesperson.   Links, contacts, and stuff: A Little Nudge Erika's book, Love at First Site The New York Times article featuring Erika and her business Listen to Erika's podcast, So, We Met Online... Like this episode? Help others find it by leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening! Now go out and save someone's story (or help them find a partner!)

Welcome to episode 1 of the Nitty-Gritty This is the first episode of a new occasional series within the Life Story Coach podcast. In the Nitty-Gritty, we'll talk about the practical aspects of our work. Today, we're going look at file naming conventions. Yep, it's dry and boring. But you won't think it's boring if things go haywire with your files because you never bothered to adopt a naming convention. Why do we need a file naming convention? So that we can put our hands on our files quickly and easily, and so they don't go missing. Or if they do, we know how they're named so we can go look for them. Let your naming convention evolve; then make sure to stick with it consistently! HINT: Start your client folders with a # (this will bump them to the top of your folder list in Dropbox's finder window) Standard folders within each client's folder: interviews and transcripts drafts delivered scans (including a separate folder for online scans) research Want to see what my naming convention looks like? Download the PDF here.   Links and tools mentioned: Pat McNees' Writers and Editors Rev.com Dropbox Adobe Bridge (available by subscription only; try looking for an older version to buy)   Like what you heard? Help spread the word by leaving a review on iTunes.

Peta Roberts, a life story professional who does it all. In this episode, Peta tells us about how documenting her own family's history led her to a career in personal history, and how a newspaper advertisement jump-started her business. A climb in the Andes with an Argentinian ski guide led Peta to an enormous oral history project. Pure serendipity, mixed with a healthy dose curiosity, led to the creation and publication of a genealogical index. Peta worked with The old Welsch families living in the Chubut province of Argentina (which answers the question, why do they speak Welsh in South America?) From this project came collaboration with historian Michele Langfield to document all of the Welsh Patagonians who had come to Australia. None of them were related to Peta's family, but the work fueled her interest in helping others preserve their life stories. Peta describes family history as a three-legged stool One leg is the genealogy: names, dates, places. Another is genetic DNA testing, which can link us to people we never knew we were related to (for more on this topic, listen to our talk with scientist Mike Tones). And the third leg of the stool? Family stories. For the Welsh Patagonian Australian oral history project, Peta created a relationship map to show how the families knew each other, married into each other's families, and came to Australia together on the same ship. Can you use a relationship map to illustrate connections in your client's story?" Funding sources: in this case, it came from academia. The book is available on Amazon. Personal historian means different things to different people Peta placed an ad in a local newspaper and clients called with various needs. She adapted to meet the needs of the people who wanted her help. recording interviews and creating a book from the transcripts working with a client's letters digitizing, organizing and preserving photographs How do you build the skills you need for different projects? by doing by consulting experts (e.g. in Peta's case, she reached out to a paper conservationist about preserving old, frail photos) Why it's a mistake to use the "hunter gatherer" technique for orgainizing photos. Pet describes her systematic yet flexible approach. [Listen to Martie McNabb of Memories Out of the Box talk about finding the stories behind the photos, documents and mementos] Sometimes it comes down to being brave, establishing a clear understanding of what the client wants, and then deliver. What is the client's pain point? Search Amazon for models of what you want to create--in Peta's case, it was publishing a book of letters in the native handwriting  (not transcriptions). Marketing How Peta structured her winning newspaper advertisement: “Want to give the perfect gift? Get personal. Tell them your life history. Record your audio, video, or write your life story in a book.” We talk about what makes a good ad, and what doesn't. What is an ethical will? Usually in letter form, it's a way for a client to pass on their experiences, values, and the stories of how they overcame struggles. Smaller than life story projects. Trust documents are bare bones, but an ethical will says who I am. It's what you want your loved ones to know and understand.”  —Susan Turnbull of Personal Legacy Advisors, as quoted in a New York Times article Peta's strategy: Peta wrote to attorneys to explain how she could help their clients; one of the attorneys brought Peta in to give a talk to his clients. (In an earlier episode, Dhyan Atkinson talked about using referral partners to compound your marketing efforts.) Storyical, Peta Robert's podcast Peta's podcast introduces the public to personal historians and life story professionals. She interviews a variety of people, including personal history writers and their clients. Two recent linked episodes feature Songfinch, a company that produces customized songs with lyrics based on the stories of a person's life. Links: Find Storyical on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Spotify. Find Peta Roberts at lifestoryprofessionals.com.   If you enjoyed this episode, please help spread the word about the Life Story Coach podcast by leaving us a review on iTunes. Now go out and save someone's story.