My Favorite Story Products (with storytelling resources, too!)

There’s an old African saying that when a person dies it’s as if an entire library burned to the ground.  I actually think about that a lot when I encourage people to tell their stories and the stories of their loved ones.  Nobody thinks his or her story is all that important or special–but if you don’t take the time to tell it, you’re lost to the world {within a couple of generations}.  Your “library” of knowledge, experience, love, and lessons has essentially burned to the ground.

Sometimes when we talk about recording a life, writing a story, I think it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or think that you can’t write a life story if you’re not “a writer.”  It’s just not true.  If you need help kicking that idea out of your head, jump back to {Mythbusting: Memory-Keeping Myth #4} to find out why “I can’t write” is a myth–and learn two ways to overcome it.

"Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way."  ~Ray Bradbury

So let me give you some resources for writing a story--yours or a loved one's--and then I'll show you my favorite products to bring them to life.

These {Interview Questions to Help You Write a Life Story} I collected have quite a few questions (from three sources) so you can pick and choose the questions you like. I think they are great to use as-is, but they might spark ideas for other questions and topics you'd like to cover.

Here's another great resource.  Over the past several months, I’ve been enjoying articles by Rhonda Lauritzen and Rachel Trotter about life stories and family stories at their blog at {evalogue.life}.  Late last year, they published My Life Story:  Thoughtful questions to tell your story or interview someone you love.  It’s a lovely little booklet with about 70 or 80 thought-provoking questions to help you write your story or the story of a loved one.  

Rhonda asked me to review it for amazon.com (and as thanks sent me this little printed copy shown here, along with a nice thank you note, shown behind).  The My Life Story booklet is available on Kindle for a few dollars, or you can get a physical copy for a few more, both {here (on amazon.com)}.

Another great resource is printable Story Maps (PDF documents) from Heritage Makers.  They are available in the following topics, and I'm including links to each one individually:

• {a life story}
• {a grandparent story}
• {a parent story}
• {a love story}
• and even {a baby story} (could be used for an adoption story, etc.)

As promised, I’ll share with you my favorite products for publishing your story.  Writing it down somewhere is great, but if you’d like to preserve it in a sturdier way, publishing it in a book is ideal.  

(Plus, a book is more likely to be seen than a computer document, and you don't have to worry about computer crashes or unreadable files that way.)

an 8x8 life storybook

My go-to products are heirloom-quality!  The books can really become unique treasures if you want to add digital art, background pages, etc.  I made {my mom’s life storybook} this way after she passed, and it is an absolute gem. 

Click here to get started creating a storybook.

UPDATE 2021:  To make creating your books as simple as possible, I recommend the Design & Print platform at Forever.  The beautiful pre-designed templates are free to use, and you can choose from a variety of page options that fit your needs, from half text-half photos, photos-only, or text-only pages.  This short overview of using a template with Design & Print will give you an overview so you can see how easy it is.

For more flexibility and full creativity, Forever's Artisan digital scrapbooking software is fabulous.  Here's more information on Artisan:

Note that Artisan is almost always on sale.  Click the "deals" tab here to see the current sale.

If you're looking for very simple book publishing with minimal photos, I know several people who have used and liked {BYU Print & Mail}.  I think this is a great option if you don’t have photos to include in your life storybook (although I honestly hope you do because they really bring a life story to life, so to speak).  My sister used them to publish a couple of books (a family history and a novel) that didn’t have photos, and we were very happy with the result. She had one printed with a soft cover, another with a hard cover.  They were both really nice!

Whose life story needs to be told first?  A parent’s?  A grandparent’s?  Your own?  Start with {who lives in your memory}.  The hard truth is:  we never really know how much time we have with those we love.  Make sure their stories are preserved and not lost.  This is a gift like no other.

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This post was originally published at www.livegrowgive.org on February 9, 2018, by Jennifer Wise.  Find more #familyhistoryfriday posts by clicking the hashtag below next to Labels.