Don’t worry. If you’re expecting this to be another New Year’s admonishment about unhealthy eating, excessive drinking, or lack of exercise, it isn’t. It’s about what not to do if you want to get the best life story interview with your client.

Recently there’s been some discussion among my colleagues at the Association of Personal Historians about the way to record life story interviews.  Some personal historians use a digital voice recorder. Others prefer taking notes by hand or typing the interview directly into their laptop.

The latter make it clear they can type as fast as people talk, edit on the fly, maintain eye contact, and save the time and costs of transcribing the interview. For those who take notes by hand, they explain that this helps them keep the story to the essentials.They may record the interview for reference to ensure the accuracy of quotes. All point out that this method of interviewing is what they’re comfortable with and their clients are happy with their work.

But achieving the best interview possible has nothing to do with the time and cost of transcriptions, what process a personal historian is most comfortable with, or editing on the fly. These are all factors that speak to the preferences of the personal historian not the quality of the interview.

5 good reasons to ditch the laptop and handwritten notes.

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1. An integral and invaluable part of any personal history is recording and preserving the spoken word. Hearing  a loved one’s voice is a precious remembrance for bereaved families and future generations. Personal histories involve more than assembling edited transcripts into a story.

2. Laptops and note taking are distracting. I know this from having been interviewed a number of times by journalists. Imagine for a moment that you’re  talking to a columnist. You’re pouring your heart out but she’s writing nothing down. Then you move on to something that seems insignificant and the writer starts scribbling furiously. You wonder why these comments  elicited such a response. It’s unnerving. It’ll be unnerving for your clients too.

3. Multitasking doesn’t work. There is now sufficient research to show that the mind can’t process more than one thing at a time.  People can’t type or take notes and be fully engaged with a client at the same time. Trust me. It can’t be done.

4. Editing decisions are best made after not during an interview. It’s not possible to tell what portions of a narrative need to be dropped until you have a feel for the whole story. An item that seems of little importance at the time of the interview may turn out to be a crucial element in the story.

5. Listening to your interviews improves your skills. There’s tremendous value in recording an interview and being able to play it back. I do it all the time. For one thing, it enables you to see what follow-up questions to ask. But equally important, it gives you an opportunity to assess your strengths and weaknesses as an interviewer.

Conclusion

Not all approaches are equal when it comes to recording personal histories.  Choose a good digital recorder and microphone over a laptop or handwritten notes. Your clients will thank you.

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Photo by DonkeyHotey

Related articles

• Encore! The #1 Secret to a Successful Life Story Interview. (dancurtis.ca)

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Not long ago I discovered this wonderful cartoon and its accompanying text by Hugh MacLeod. I found it inspiring and thought to myself, … Read more.

Happy New Year! And another year of Monday’s Link Roundup with connections to stuff I like and I hope you’ll like too.  My selections are loosely based on items that I think will be of particular interest to those of you professionally involved in personal history, genealogy, and memoir. Enjoy!

• Grierson: A Documentary About the Filmmaker Who Coined “Documentary”.  “Grierson is a 1973 documentary about the father of documentary by Canadian filmmaker Roger Blais, now free online in its entirety courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada. Through archival footage, interviews with people who knew him, and footage of Grierson himself, Blais paints a lively and fascinating portrait of a man who was concerned not only with documentary film as an art form but also as a powerful tool of democracy.”

• VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand Scanner. “The Wand [is]a portable scanner—one of the most portable available. If you need to scan on the go, and don’t want to be weighted down with hardware, that alone makes it worth considering.”

• Top 10 Photoshop Tricks You Can Use Without Buying Photoshop. “You can do just about anything to an image with Photoshop, but if you don’t have the cash to shell out, free program the GIMP—available for Windows, Linux, and OS X—can take you pretty far. Here are our favorite Photoshop how-tos that also work in the GIMP.”

• Errol Morris: Two Essential Truths About Photography. “In this video created by the Guardian, writer and award-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris talks about the nature of truth, art, and propaganda in photography. He draws examples from the photographs of Abu Ghraib and the Crimean War, both cited in his book Believing is Seeing, and he asks the viewer to consider a most fundamental question: how does a photograph relate to the physical world? Unlike a verbal or written statement, a photograph cannot be true or false. It simply is.”

• 12 Tips for the Year of the Memoir! “During breaks in your holiday celebrations, get ready for the Year of the Memoir–2012! Here’s a tip for each month, or you can try one a day for the 12 days of Christmas.”

• The New York Times “The Lives They Lived”. ” The Lives They Lived is not a greatest-hits issue. Instead, we gravitated to those lives with an untold tale. For storytelling expertise, we enlisted Ira Glass and his team from “This American Life” to edit a special section devoted to ordinary people. And through social media, we put out a request to readers for pictures of loved ones. Samples of the hundreds of submissions we received are beautiful evidence that every life is a story worth remembering.”

• How to Increase Your Focus. “I confess to being as prone to the distractions of the Internet as anyone else: I will start reading about something that interests me and disappear down the rabbit hole for hours (even days) at a time. But my ability to focus on a single task has dramatically improved, and that one habit has changed my life.”

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This is my third annual listing of the best personal history blogs of the year.

I’ve been tougher in my selection this year. Blogs that were either “missing in action” or were visually unappealing or had weak content didn’t make the cut.

My criteria for selection is based on the qualities I wrote about in What Everybody Ought to Know About a Successful Blog. Briefly these are:

• Frequent posts.
• Consistency.
• Personal.
• Short and scannable articles.
• Uncluttered.
• Use of graphics, photographs, and video.
  
• Catchy headlines.
• Generous and useful content.

This year there are two newcomers to the list: Beth LaMie’s One Story at a Time and  Sarah White’s True Stories Well Told.

Special mention also goes to three blogs that show what good personal history blogging can be. If you’re not on this year’s list, check these out for inspiration.  The owners know their audience, write great content, post  frequently and consistently, and create a visually appealing format.  Kudos to The Heart and Craft of Life Writing, Women’s Memoirs, and True Stories Well Told.

Without further ado, here are the top eight personal history blogs for 2011, ranked in alphabetical order.  Congratulations to everyone.  Drum role, please!

• The Heart and Craft of Life Writing. Owner Sharon Lippincott describes herself as  “…passionate about all forms of life writing, especially memoir and journaling.”

• Legacy Multimedia blog. Owner Stefani Twyford says that on her blog “you will read about my passion for personal history, filmmaking techniques, genealogy, and related topics. I will veer off onto other topics from time to time but always come back to the things that make my work and my life a joy.”

• Memoir Mentor. Owner Dawn Thurston says, “My blog is an attempt to participate in the larger community of people interested in life story writing of all kinds and perhaps help a few people persevere in writing their stories.”

• The Memoir Writer’s Blog. Owner Denis Ledoux describes his blog as “helping people write family and personal stories…”

• One Story at a Time.  Owner Beth LaMie says, “I hope you find my stories of interest, especially if you want to write some of your own family stories.”

• True Stories Well Told.  Owner Sarah White says, “Here’s where I share the thoughts I might bring up for class discussion. Here’s where I post the writings of my fearless, peerless, workshop participants. Here’s where I share stories from my own life, as well as my pet peeves, pointers, and personal observations. I hope to create the atmosphere you find in my classrooms.”

• Video Biography Central. Owner Jane Lehmann-Shafron describes her blog as a place for “Advice, essays, samples and inspiration for people interested in preserving their personal and family history through video biography, memorial video, life story and genealogy video.”

• Women’s Memoirs. Owners Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnet have put together a wealth of information that includes writing prompts, book reviews, and more. Women’s Memoirs is not strictly speaking a personal history site but there’s a lot of useful material  here for anyone involved in personal histories.

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Photo by Jackie

1. The 50 Best Life Story Questions.
2. 25 No Cost or Low Cost Marketing Ideas for Your Personal History Business.
3. How Much Should You Pay a Personal Historian?
4. 15 Great Memoirs Written by Women.
5. 5 Top Sites for Free Online Videography Training.
6. The Top 3 Prosumer HD Camcorders Under $2,500.
7. How to Boost Your Interviewing Skills.
8. Three Crucial Steps to Starting Your Personal History Business.
9. 5 Print-On-Demand Sites You’ll Want to Consider.
10. 12 Top Rated Family Tree Makers.

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]]> http://dancurtis.ca/2011/12/21/my-top-10-posts-of-2011/feed/ 1 dancurtis top10 http://dancurtis.ca/2011/12/05/mondays-link-roundup-124/ http://dancurtis.ca/2011/12/05/mondays-link-roundup-124/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:03:14 +0000 Dan Curtis http://dancurtis.ca/?p=7854 Continue reading →]]>

In this week’s Monday’s Link Roundup, if you self-publish, don’t miss Book Design for Self-Publishers: Raw Materials.   This is a terrific site for anyone involved in book design.  And if you’re like me and don’t include pricing on your website, you might change your mind after reading Why We Are Afraid to Talk Pricing.

• Telling Life Stories Through Quilts. “Generations of women have been telling stories in fabric — with quilts. Lisa Morehouse paid a visit to one quilting bee in Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley. Many of the group’s members emigrated to work in the local apple orchards and vineyards.”

• End of life: You shared your stories. “As part of the Globe’s in-depth series on End of Life decisions in the 21st century, we asked you to tell your stories around this difficult topic. Readers from across the country joined the conversation.”

• The Life Reports II. “A few weeks ago, I asked people over 70 to send me “Life Reports” — essays about their own lives and what they’d done poorly and well. They make for fascinating and addictive reading, and I’ve tried to extract a few general life lessons.”

• Not Your Grandmother’s Genealogy Hobby. “Wikis, social-networking sites, search engines and online courses are changing genealogy from a loner’s hobby to a social butterfly’s field day. New tools and expansive digital archives, including many with images of original documents, are helping newbies research like pros.”

• Why We Are Afraid to Talk Pricing. “Think about the last time you went to a website for a product or service that you couldn’t buy outright online. Did it list prices? Or did the site encourage you to call for more information? How many times do you walk away from a purchase simply because you couldn’t get enough information on pricing to make an informed decision?”

• Book Design for Self-Publishers: Raw Materials. “When you sit down to design a book, there are organizational tasks you have to address right at the beginning. Getting your raw materials organized and making sure your workflow will produce an efficient publishing process are important enough to spend some quality time on. Let’s take them one at a time.”

• Family Tree Magazine Podcast Episode Notes. “Tips on how to get relatives to discuss family history, a discussion of the Historic American Cookbook Project, and news on the Genealogists for Families project at Kiva.com. Plus: Learn more about creating a family history book from Family Tree University’s Nancy Hendrickson.”

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Image via Wikipedia

I read an essay, Lessons Beyond Words by Darren Yourk, on the Globe and Mail website.  It’s subtitled, While thrashing me at Scrabble, Grandma did more than expand my vocabulary. She shared our family’s story. Yourk’s piece is both humorous and touching. Here’s an excerpt… Read more.

That’s the question I was asked one day by a personal history client.   I muttered something about being too busy and feebly joked about not being able to afford it. As a professional personal historian, it wasn’t my best moment. Why should anyone hire me if I didn’t believe enough in life stories to do my own?

I think as professionals we need to “walk-the-talk”. Would you hire an interior decorator who was uninterested in his own home’s appearance? What about the professional organizer who tells you she never has time to organize her own office? The chances are you’d probably have second thoughts about hiring them.

If we haven’t had our life story told, we can’t  talk about the experience in a personal and authentic manner.  Imagine, on the other hand, what a powerful selling point to be able to enthusiastically share with a potential client the rewards of having had your own life story documented.

I have a modest proposal. If you’re a professional personal historian and haven’t  had your life story told, here’s what to do:

• Hire a personal historian to do your life story if you can afford the time and the money.
• If your finances are low, find a fellow personal historian who’s starting out and needs some experience and product to show. Consider a barter arrangement. For your assistance through the process that person produces a life story for you.
• If you’re new to the business and can’t afford to hire a personal historian, do your own writing with the help of books such as How to Write Your Own Life Story, Legacy : A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Personal History, or Living Legacies: How to Write, Illustrate and Share Your Life Stories

I wonder how many other professional personal historians out there have never had their life stories told? Am I the only one?

Photo by Amarand Agasi

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A weakness common to novice interviewers  is their inability to take charge of an interview.  Interviews frequently look  like a runaway train with the interviewer gamely hanging on to the proverbial  little red caboose.

Taking charge doesn’t mean forcing or dictating the direction of the interview. It’s more like riding a horse. Anyone familiar with riding knows that it requires confidence and a gentle hold on the reins. The same  approach applies to interviewing.

Here are four ways to keep control of your interview:

1. From the outset be clear what you want from the interview.

If you’re clear before you start on the topic that you want to explore and its parameters then it makes it easier  to stay on track.

For example, if you know you want to capture a client’s childhood stories about summer holidays, then start your interview by saying something like, “Tom, today I’d like you to think back to your childhood and your summer holidays. What’s a particularly strong memory of the games you played?”

2. Use short, focused questions.

The more precise your questions the more specific the answers from your interviewees.  For example, a good question would be “What was your Mother’s special gift or talent?” A poor question would be “Tell me about your family.”

Questions that aren’t specific make interviewees anxious because they don’t know what you’re searching for.  If you continue to follow-up with vague, unfocused questions, their trust will erode and so will the interview.

3. Gently interrupt.

It’s difficult, I know. It seems somehow impolite. But you’d be surprised how many people really don’t mind being interrupted in an interview. In fact they appreciate that you’re paying attention and bringing them back on topic.

To  interrupt  politely wait for your interviewee to pause before stepping in.  For example, “Margaret, this is a fascinating story about your aunt. Later we’ll be taking more time  to talk about your extended family. But I’d like to come back to the earlier question I asked about your mother?”

It’s important to acknowledge the interviewees’ remarks, assure them that the topic will be covered, and then gently nudge them back on track.

4. Go where there’s passion.

Sometimes it’s best to throw your plans out the window. An apparent innocent question on your part might trigger  a strong emotional response in your interviewees that has no apparent connection to your question.  If this happens,  take the time to explore the story behind the emotion.

Clearly your interviewees wants to talk about this now. If you put them off by forcing them back on topic, you can lose a really important story.

Conclusion

If you’re just starting out as a professional personal historian, I hope these suggestions will be helpful. Use them as guidelines not as hard and fast rules. Interviewing is more an art than a science.  With experience comes an intuitive sense of how to guide an interview and get the best possible story.

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Photo by Mazeau