I would like to write a book

[lene1949]

Originally Posted by weedfreak

Another suggestion might be to get hold of a genealogy program, I use Gramps (it is free and good) and at the same time as you are filling in the family history narrative you can fill in as much as you know of the family roots. The information you put into the genealogy program is invaluable to future generations and it does help to trigger more facts.

Most genealogy software also includes some method of creating a family history book, which might give you some starting points for your own book. Be aware that genealogical research is more addictive than reading!

I have traced different family lines back to 1520 in England, 1050 in Norman France, 1600's East Prussia and made contact with many previously unknown living cousins worldwide.

My X-husband is already doing the family history 'thingo'

I just want to write about what happened before and after we came to Australia...

[Katti's Cat]

Go for it - you can do it.

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by Dave d

Seems to be a lot of queenslanders on here
I didn't know you guys could read

I was educated down south

Originally Posted by Katti's Cat

We can - but that's because we are Germans that have raised the Qld IQ by considerable amount

Funnily enough, I was having a verbal fencing match with a new acquaintance months ago - I was telling him about how I got into IT when I moved up here and he asked, "do you feel guilty about taking a job from a queenslander?" ... "nah," I said, "I figure I'm just improving the gene pool."

(he wasn't amused)

[Katti's Cat]

Originally Posted by nomesque

(he wasn't amused)

In order to be amused he would have to get the joke and that was not possible because a) he obviously is Queenslander and b) he is a he

[Dave d]

To be honest more than half of my good freinds are from Joe's country (dont tell anyone though)

[Katti's Cat]

Don't mention that name please - hubby still insisting on bringing Joe back and i'm not in the mood for another 'times where better under Joe' tirades

[kennyc]

Call it "We Came, We Saw, We Conquered!"

[daveconifer]

Originally Posted by lene1949

Thanks, everyone...

It will be written as I speak, and there will be some funny moments, when I tried to speak English, after arriving in Australia... I just spoke as I heard it, or as I found it in my dictionary... like: Good Onion for Good on ya. And asking the hardware store for a garden snake, instead of a garden hose... I just kept going using my English the way I thought/learned...

Yes... there'll be lots of pictures, and the language will be simple

I like it. You're wrong when you say you're not creative. I already feel engaged just from reading this thread. That's pretty funny about the Onion and the snake and it illustrates what was happening at that time. That's the perfect voice for this. And I'm a dummy, I don't have the slightest grounding for a story about Swedes who went to Australia to live. That in itself is interesting.

I say go for it. You already have one reader right here!

edit: I didn't notice until now that this is a month old. Book's probably written by now!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by daveconifer

...

I say go for it. You already have one reader right here!

edit: I didn't notice until now that this is a month old. Book's probably written by now!

Yeah! Where's the book????

[lene1949]

Still just taking notes... It'll probably be one of these 10-year long projects...

[TC Beacham]

Nice idea!

Here's a short article I wrote for women who want to write about their lives but aren't sure where to start. Maybe it'll help.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Womens-Mem...ere&id=3290433

GOOD LUCK!!

[lene1949]

Great article... thank you!

[neilmarr]

From a practical point of view, Lene, you must realise that a book like the one you propose will have pretty well family circle sales only, so you're talking self-publishing.

Before you even put pen to paper, pick up a few similar self-published non-fiction family sagas and study them to see how their authors have gone about the job.

A book like this will not be written overnight, so take some time to study what's available to you in the self publishing field. Some deals are straight rip-offs, but you'll soon be able to spot those a country mile away. Others involve a little technical know-how. Some will offer a free deal but per-item cost of the resulting PoD book will be high.

You must also realise that most PoD presses can't handle inside colour and that many ebook formats will have problems with pictures and any family-tree tables you intend to carry.

In othere words, Lene, be sure you know what you're doing rather than blindly plod along with a manuscript you may well have to completely re-present for effective publication. Write with practical publication firmly in mind.

Good luck and best wishes. Neil

[Marseille]

Originally Posted by lene1949

Still just taking notes... It'll probably be one of these 10-year long projects...

How has year 1 gone? I'd love an update. There are plenty of things I wish my father and uncle and grandparents had written down before passing on. As limited as your audience might be, everyone wonders what their family was like eventually -- usually after it is too late to ask. Someday I'd like to contribute to something like this in my own family.

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by David Marseilles

How has year 1 gone? I'd love an update.

David's message came as a shock. I seldom look at the date of messages, and assumed that the whole of this thread was from the last few days.

How about "Coffee and Danish" as a working title, Lene? Not least as it sounds as though what you are planning is a book of anecdotes about your early life in Denmark, the sort of thing you might tell to friends over a cup of coffee.

If I were doing something like this, it would definitely be written in the first person - "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong hills".

I would expect chapters to be mainly short, perhaps only a part of a page for some, perhaps a couple or three for others, depending, of course, upon the nature of the topic each time.

Another good idea, which I developed for a series of short articles, and which I gave the working title of "Home Thoughts from Abroad" (!) is to write an article about, say, Easter customs, or a specific Easter event, in time to be published around Easter, and so on, throughout the year. Write about the start of a new school year in, say, July. Do this for a couple of years and your book has written itself. Imagine that you are writing for publication in a newspaper, for example, and need to have your copy ready ahead of time.

In fact you might even consider seeing if your local newspaper is interested in a series of articles of this type, which would give you a bit of drive to actually get writing, give you a deadline, if you have to turn out a thousand words every week or every month. When I say "local newspaper" I mean the "Ipswich Gazette" rather than the "Queensland Herald Tribune". I don't know, but maybe Ipswich has a community of ex-Danes.

I think Neil might have been a bit more negative than he usually is. I have the feeling that there is a lot more interest in "the way things were" than he indicated, and this trend seems to be growing. Take a look at the books by "Miss Read", the pen-name of an ex-teacher at a village school in England. Some of them were ordinary novels, but others were just such anecdotes as I think you are thinking of. Even her novels include such kåserier (hope you have that Swedish word in Danish, too) of village life.

When you're ready to look for a way to publish, think about Amazon's Createspace, which gives you a method of producing both black and white and colour books as POD books. But parallel with that, start sending samples to various literary agents in Aussie, and see if someone bites. If someone in the family can draw, set them to work putting together a portfolio of drawings to go with the book for a share of the royalties.

And remember, if you haven't already discovered it, that writing is like any other athletic activity. It takes a bit of time and effort to get the muscles working, but once you're over the threshhold, things begin to move very quickly.

Enjoy!