Entries tagged as ‘questions to ask’
September 29, 2009 · 2 Comments
I was looking at an earlier article I wrote, Six Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Personal Historian, and realized that I’d missed three important questions.
- What is your specialty? Be leery of anyone who answers, “Oh, I like to work on everything – books, video, audio – you name it!” It’s true that there are personal historians who are multi-talented and produce more than one type of product. But even if that is the case, I’d ask what the personal historian enjoys working on the most. Chances are that she will have a preference and if her preference doesn’t match yours, then I’d want to see some concrete examples of her work. Bottom line – if you want a book produced, it makes sense to hire someone who has a track record making books. Similarly, if you want a DVD, hire a personal historian whose specialty is video.
- How long have you been a personal historian? There isn’t a magical number of years of experience that turns someone into a seasoned personal historian. But I’d prefer to hire someone who had been working professionally for at least a couple of years. The longer a personal historian has been working, the more experience he will have and the more samples of his work he will also have for your perusal. On the other hand if a personal historian is just starting out, you might be able to work out a discount depending on what he’s charging.
- What attracted you to this work? There isn’t any right answer to this question. What you want to be wary of is a reply that sounds too pat, contrived, or rehearsed. Listen for an answer that suggests that this work resonates deeply with this person. For instance, she may have a compelling story to tell about the path that led her to become a personal historian.
Photo by Massimiliano Giani
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Categories: Marketing · Personal historian · Questions · Tips
Tagged: hiring a personal historian, life story, questions to ask, Tips
Thanks to Web Worker Daily for suggesting this topic. If you’re a freelancer like me, you always want new clients. Without clients things can begin to look a little bleak. When you first start out, any client seems better than none. But you learn, as I did, that this isn’t always the case. Here are seven questions you need to ask yourself before taking on a new personal history client.
- Do I have the time? Look carefully at what’s on your plate right now. This should include not only current projects but also ongoing business tasks such as networking, promotion, and bookkeeping. Don’t forget to factor in personal chores such as shopping, caregiving, and cleaning. No one wants to say no to potential work but you also want to do the best for your client while at the same time not becoming over- extended.
- Is this a client I like? One of the pleasures of being a personal historian is that we get to work with some incredibly interesting people. If you find that your potential client exhibits behavior and expresses beliefs that are antithetical to yours, you should seriously question continuing with that client. Remember, you’ll be spending many hours together and you don’t want to be continually agitated by someone you basically don’t like.
- Am I a good fit for this client? Each of us tends to specialize. In my case it’s video life stories although I have done some books. If your potential client is looking for a life story in a format in which you haven’t much experience, then consider referring that client to someone who does have the expertise. You’ll gain the respect of your client for being forthright. If you still want to take on this client, do you have access to people who could help you in those areas where you’re less proficient?
- Does this client have the support of other family members? Families can be messy – not at all like those Norman Rockwell paintings. You don’t want inadvertently to get yourself into some long-standing family squabble. Ask if your client has discussed this undertaking with other family members. Are they supportive? Are there concerns? If there hasn’t been any discussion, then have your client bring together all the parties concerned so that you can talk to the group about what’s involved and answer questions.
- Am I treated as a professional? Remember you are a professional. If you’re like me, you’ve had decades of experience in a field related to personal history, have a university degree or two, and have a portfolio of personal history projects. So watch out for potential clients who fail to return calls, keep changing appointment times, forget meetings, try to “nickel and dime” you to death, and imply that their “cousin Bob” could do the work for half the price. None of this is in keeping with treating you as a professional. No one would treat a lawyer, accountant, or doctor that way. You shouldn’t put up with this kind of behavior either.
- Is this potential client the one who will be paying me? From my experience, it’s not uncommon for the person requesting my service not to be the same person paying for it. For example, a daughter may inquire about doing a personal history for her mother but it is the parent who will be paying for the work. From the beginning it’s important to establish who is paying for your service. You want to have all the principal players in the same room so that you can explain the process directly and address any concerns that may arise. Failure to do this can mean misinterpreted information is relayed and additional meetings may be needed to clarify matters. This is not a productive use of your time.
- Will working with this client stretch me professionally? I don’t know about you, but I thrive on challenges. If I had to do the same thing day-in and day-out I’d be bored. Now it’s a truism that clients pay you for what you know not what you need to know. It may sound as if I’m contradicting Question Three above. However, if you tell your client you’d enjoy taking on the challenge of expanding your skills, you might gain their support. You can sweeten the deal by offering your service at a lower than normal fee to compensate for your learning.
What tips do you have for screening potential clients?
Photo by Marco Bellucci
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Categories: Personal historian · Tips
Tagged: clients, Personal historian, questions to ask, screening clients, Tips
I’ve always found it relatively easy to interview someone who is outgoing and an extrovert. The challenge is interviewing someone who is more withdrawn and tends to respond with one word or one sentence answers. It’s like pulling teeth to get their story. If it’s an older person who is also hard of hearing and has poor vision, it can make the interview that much more difficult.
So how do you interview a challenging subject? Here’s what I’ve learned over the years.
- Select a favorite spot. Make certain that your interview takes place in a room where your subject is comfortable. If she has a favorite chair or spot in the house, use that location for the interview.
- Engage in some idle “chit-chat”. Before sitting down to the interview, talk about the weather, sports, their art work – anything that allows your subject to feel more relaxed with you.
- Remain calm. If your subject senses you’re anxious about not getting much from the interview, she’s likely to become even less responsive.
- Leave some space. After your subject has responded to your question with a brief word or two, don’t leap in with another probing question in an attempt to get more out of him. Count to ten. Sometimes just leaving space makes people want to fill it in. If you’re lucky, your subject will start to add some more detail.
- Create a picture for your subject. Don’t ask, “What was your childhood home like?” Start by saying something like, “I want you to paint a picture of your childhood home for me. So we’re standing outside the front of your home and walking up to the front door. We open it and go inside. Tell me, what do we see as we go inside?” After some description of the entrance go on with, “That’s wonderful. Now let’s explore further. As we’re going down the hall what do we see?”
- Be specific. Avoid very general questions like, “What was your childhood like?” Chances are the response will be, “Oh, it was okay.” You want to get details. Ask something like, “I want you to think back to those memories of childhood when you were with your father. It might have been at play or at the supper table. Think back and select a moment that is vivid for you.[pause] Okay? Now describe for me where you were and what was happening.”
- Use open-ended questions. Open questions begin with who, what, where and when. For example, let’s say your subject replies, “It was a good marriage.” to your question of, “What was your married life like?” You can go further by asking, “How was it good?” This requires your subject to provide some specifics.
- For those who are hard of hearing, speak clearly and slowly. You need to make sure your questions are actually being heard. It seems obvious to say “speak loudly” but I find interviewers tend to go quiet on questions that are of an intimate or sensitive nature. You don’t need to shout but you do need to project your voice – like a stage actor.
I hope these tips will be of help with your next challenging interview subject. If you have some additional tips that work for you, please let me know by dropping a note in my comment box below. I always welcome comments.
Photo by Andy Hurvitz
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Categories: How to · Interviewing · Life stories · Personal historian · Questions · Tips
Tagged: challenging interview, How to, Interviewing, life story, questions to ask, Tips
This past week my colleagues in the Association of Personal Historians have been having an interesting conversation. It’s about making your writing more engaging by showing your readers not telling them. To explain, here’s an example taken from my own life:
Telling: ” In September 1966 I left for a two year assignment as a volunteer in Ghana.”
Showing: “I still remember that ‘muggy’ September night at Mirabelle airport in Montreal. It was 1966 and I was hours away from leaving Canada for the first time in my life. I couldn’t sit still. As I paced about the departure lounge, I felt a mixture of excitement and apprehension. For the next two years I would be a volunteer teacher in an isolated rural secondary school in Ghana, West Africa. My youthful bravado said I could handle it. My more rational mind questioned my confidence.”
The telling example is a simple statement of fact. It lacks any emotional content. It’s flat and not engaging. By contrast, the showing example is rich with detail. We know it was humid and hot in Montreal. And we know something of what I was feeling and what was on my mind. By showing readers what was happening rather than telling them, we draw them into the story.
If you’re interviewing someone for their life story, the same rules apply. Bring out the emotion, flavor and detail of their story. If someone says, “I was married in 1939″ enrich this statement by using some follow-up questions like these: What second thoughts did you have about your marriage? Describe the preparations that went into your wedding. What emotions were running through you on your wedding day? What stands out for you? Describe for me the place where you were married. What kind of weather did you have? What funny incident happened on your wedding day? Describe for me your wedding celebration. How did local or world events play into your wedding plans?
Here are some additional resources to help you with your memoir writing:
- Writing the Memoir by Judith Barrington. The Library Journal says, “Her practical guide leads both experienced and novice writers through the writing process from idea to publication, addressing such technical problems as theme selection, voice, tone, form, plot, scene, and character development, as well as how to stimulate creative thinking and build necessary discipline.”
- The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative by Vivian Gornick. Publishers Weekly says, “Gornick’s book discusses ways of making nonfiction writing highly personal without being pathetically self-absorbed. In admirably plain and direct style, she discusses writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde, Joan Didion and a man she calls the “Jewish Joan Didion,” Seymour Krim…All the texts do nevertheless support her statement that essays can “be read the way poems and novels are read, inside the same kind of context, the one that enlarges the relationship between life and literature.”
- Memoir Mentor is a terrific website for aspiring memoir writers. Dawn Thurston offers generous tips on improving your writing. She has also written a book with Morris Thurston entitled, Breath Life Into Your Life Story, which you can order here. “Written for both novices and experienced writers, this book presents techniques used by novelists to immerse readers into their fictional world—techniques like “showing” rather than just “telling”; creating interesting, believable characters and settings; writing at the gut level; alternating scene and narrative; beginning with a bang; generating tension, and more.”
Photo by Daniel Horacio Agostini
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Categories: How to · Interviewing · Life stories · Memoirs · Questions · Tips · Writing
Tagged: how to show not tell, Interviewing, life story, questions to ask, Tips, Writing
In a previous post I talked about the importance of protecting your family media treasures. I stressed the need to transfer your films and video tape to a digital format. You can do this yourself if you have the equipment but if you don’t, there are numerous service providers who can help you.
The problem arises when you try to decide how to choose the right company. Should you go with a local company or a large national chain? Does a more expensive service necessarily mean a better final product? Here are the 7 key questions you need to ask a transfer service before agreeing to leave your video tapes and films with them.
- What video and film formats do you accept? The more professional the company the more likely they’ll be able to handle a wide range of formats including the following: VHS, S-VHS, VHS-C, Video8, Hi8, Digital8, MiniDV and Betamax in either NTSC (North American standard) or PAL. The most common film formats are 8mm, Super8 or 16mm.
- How will my original tapes be returned to me? It’s scary shipping off your treasures. The last thing you want is for them to be lost in the postal system. Use a reputable courier service to deliver your videos to the transfer facility. And ensure that they will return your videos by courier as well.
- How many hours of video can I get on one DVD? The DVD movies that you rent are made by an expensive process that involves preparing a glass master and pressing multiple DVD copies. You can read more about the process here. A less costly process, which uses a laser to burn information on a DVD-R disk is what consumer transfer facilities use. To maintain a high quality image you shouldn’t put more than 90 to 120 minutes on one DVD-R. Avoid any company that tells you that they can put more than that on a DVD-R disk.
- Will my video look better when it’s transferred to DVD? The answer is no. Some larger facilities may be able to slightly enhance the original quality of the video. But if the image on your video is badly faded there is no way to bring it back to life. Don’t believe a company that tells you they can perform miracles.
- Do you use professional video processing equipment? If the answer is yes, the company should explain that they use a time base corrector, a detailer and processing amplifier. This equipment will produce a better quality DVD than can be made on your home computer or at a “Mom and Pop” operation.
- Do you have testimonials from satisfied customers? Satisfied, happy customers are a good indicator of a well run company. I always look for testimonials.
- How long have you been in business? I would tend to use a service that had been around for a few years and established a good reputation.
Photo by David Cardoso
Categories: How to · Preservation · Resources · Tips
Tagged: DVD, How to, questions to ask, Tips, transfer, video
Recently I wrote a post about the advantages of using the services of a personal historian. Today I’d like to focus on six questions you need to ask before hiring a personal historian. There are no professional bodies that certify or oversee personal historians. Anyone can hang up a shingle and call themselves a personal historian. So it’s buyer beware.
- Does the personal historian belong to any professional associations? Belonging to an association such as the Association of Personal Historians, the Oral History Association or the National Storytelling Association is important. It means the personal historian takes his work seriously as a professional. Associations provide their members with opportunities to learn more and improve their skills.
- Does the personal historian have samples of her work? Even if a personal historian is just starting out, she needs to be able to show you a book or video that she has completed. You want to be able to assess the quality of her work.
- Is the personal historian open to having you talk to previous clients about their experience? It’s useful to get previous client’s evaluations. While it’s not foolproof, it does allow you to have a better feeling for the person you may hire.
- Does the personal historian operate in a professional manner? Does she show up for appointments on time? Does he have a contract that spells out precisely what each stage of the production will entail and how fees are to be calculated? Does she answer all your queries in a prompt, courteous and clear manner. Does he refrain from pressure tactics?
- Do you feel comfortable around this person? Whether you’re hiring a personal historian for yourself or another family member you want to feel at ease. It will not be an enjoyable experience if you end up spending many hours with someone who bothers you.
- Before becoming a personal historian, what was the person’s previous work experience? Personal historians come from all kinds of work backgrounds. But it’s fair to say that many come with experience in the humanities. It’s not uncommon to find former journalists, filmmakers, editors, librarians, and teachers now working as personal historians. There are exceptions to every rule but you’ll likely find a more skilled personal historian coming from the ranks of those who’ve “apprenticed” in the arts. Someone with little life experience whose previous employment hasn’t lent itself to crafting skills in interviewing, writing and editing may not yet be ready to take on a professional assignment as a personal historian.
Photo by Gareth Simpson
Categories: Personal historian · Tips
Tagged: hiring, How to, Personal historian, qualifications, questions to ask, Tips
