How to Write Your Personal or Family History

There's no lack of encouragement and advice on writing your family history. Google writing family history and a zillion results are returned. Most major conferences have one or more presentations on the topic. The OGS Conference in June has a half-day workshop Plot a Family History Story to be given by Lynn Palermo.

Check a bookseller inventory and find offerings like How to Write Your Family History: A Guide to Creating, Planning, Editing and Publishing Family Stories, by Noeline Kyle. Like most publications by Unlock the Past it's a slim volume, 32 pages, 5 x 8", staple bound and selling for $14.50 Cdn.

If you're looking for something more substantive consider How to Write Your Personal or Family History: (If You Don't Do It, Who Will?). The author, Katie Funk Wiebe, grew up in northern Saskatchewan, the daughter of Russian-German (Ukrainian) immigrants. She is professor emeritus of Tabor College, a Mennonite liberal arts college in Hillsboro, Kansas, who retired in 1990 after teaching English and journalism for 24 years.

I've not read the book. The publicity blurb describes it as "a practical—and encouraging—how-to book  . .  . a serious but accessible resource for undertaking your personal or family history writing."
If interested take a look inside at the table of contents and first chapter from here.

The new edition of the book, originally published in 2009, becomes available on Tuesday on Kindle, text to speech enabled, at $10.94 Cdn or as a paperback, 241 pages, 6 x 10" at $16.99 Cdn plus shipping.