Writing Interest Group 2025

January: 

Presentation: Peter Robinson Settlers (Glenn O’Meara)
The journey of an Irish family 200 years in the making Research and Resources

February:

Telling Family Stories (Chelley Brekke McLear)
Looking at techniques that storytellers use in fairytales, personal memoir, and even ghost stories!  There are many useful ways that writers and spoken word tellers get the audience hooked.  Let's think about our opening lines, intrigue, and mysteries.  Who are our most interesting ancestors and relatives?  What details do we know? What are our cold case mysteries? 

March:

Genealogy—Something to Prove vs. Family History—Stories to Share (Jay Fonkert)
Narrowly defined, genealogy is about relationships. Family history is about biography and heritage. Genealogy is about proof, while family history is more about stories to share. Arguably, sound genealogy is a perquisite for reliable family history, but the life events that comprise family history are keys to establishing genealogical relationships. Join us for a casual discussion of the differences between genealogical and family history writing.

April:

"From Facts to Non-Fiction: Turning bullet points into narrative first drafts"Hints and tips for how to get started and move from your list of facts - to opening lines of narrative - and considering what different openings can do for advancing the story - and the decisions we can make. (Chelley Brekke McLear). Using AI as a tool to help us (Ed Swierczewski)

May:

Moving to a next draft and honing the final version (facilitated by Chelley). Karen Huey and Nance Cavallin shared works in progress for feedback and questions

June:

Product and Process: Using tools to create your writing product
Demo in inserting images in MS Word (Sue Fowler)

July:

Writing Goals and Summer Social
Group members discussed their writing goals for the remainder of the year, gave updates on their progress and shared their current projects

September:

Planning! Discussion facilitated by Chelley
Presentation: Introduction to planning your project (Rebecca Shamblin). Rebecca has written two ancestral books and books about ‘how to’.  In this session Rebecca took us through her planning process using Family Book Creator

October:

Genealogy Tools for research and writing facilitated by Chelley
List created for building upon is here

November:

Lulu.com and Goals for 2026
Goals for 2026 - Group shared writing goals and Chelley is collating these into a sheet. Demonstration: Using Lulu.com for printing and publishing (Anne Bertram). Anne took us through the process of using lulu.com to print or publish a book.