HEIR DRESSING: Writing Your Ancestor's Story

You have all these facts about your ancestor and want to share them, but every time you try to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) your mind goes blank. Or what comes out is just dates and places and sounds very dull, even to you. How are you ever going to get your relatives interested?

You don't have to be a Pulitzer Prize winning author to create an interesting family history, and Rondie Yancey will teach you how on May 4th.

There are two ways to tell your ancestors stories–a formal Journal Style approach, or a sociological approach that tells the story with cultural, pictorial and anecdotal additions. We will concentrate on creating a very readable and interesting story that still contains your documented research, but will also give your family and friends a realistic picture of what every-day life was like for the people you are writing about.

Rondie Yancey

Rondie Yancey was born and raised in the Northwest, but settled in Tucson in 1989, and considers Tucson the best place in the world to live.  It was shortly after moving to Tucson that she became interested in genealogy, and began research on one family that she thought might take one or two years to complete….(short pause for laughter to subside).  After all these years, she still thinks genealogy is the most fascinating of subjects, and likes to create small books about  members of her ancestral line for the benefit of family members who don’t have time or inclination to do the research, but who do enjoy reading about their family history.  The one original family line that was the subject of her early research has expanded to include many other lines, so another reason for writing the family stories is to ensure that her research won’t be lost when she shuffles off this mortal coil.

Rondie’s academic background includes Bachelor and Masters degrees from Arizona State University. During her studies for her Masters Degree, she was one of 30 teachers in Arizona to be chosen to attend the Bay Area Writing Project, a program originating at UCLA, with the purpose of sharing best practices for writing teachers.  It was a six-week intensive program that enriched as well as instructed, and changed her view of the writing process forever.

One particular practice, the involvement in “writing groups” has been particularly important to her, and will be discussed during this session.

Join us at 1:00 p.m. on May 4 at the University Medical Center for this fun and exciting event. Pick out someone from your family tree, and bring all you know about them to work with, along with a notebook for writing. Handout will be provided.

Preregistration is required. You can find the registration form here or pick one up at the general meeting this Saturday, February 16. Don't delay–registration deadline is 16 March 2013.