Story telling

sjcamp

Has anyone tried to collect memories and stories from their loved ones to preserve their legacy? Looking for something digital. Any ideas from something you tried or are thinking of trying?

Kari

That is a great idea. I don't have any suggestions, but I know that the few videos we have of my mom from years ago are a treasure to watch.

dvellio

In June of 2020 my oldest daughter got me a subscription to a site call Storyworth. You can find it at this link.
https://welcome.storyworth.com/
It's actually a rather interesting idea and I decided to take advantage of it. The basic concept is my daughter picked 50 questions from a list they have available or she could make up her own and once a week or some other time slot that I got to pick they would send me a question to answer about my life.
Since I had already started to write the story of my life back in 2009 it was a natural for me to just pick up where I left off with that and intersperse some of her questions with what I had already planned to write. The bottom line was that within a year I had completed a book and actually published it on Amazon about my own personal life. It turned out that I could print books on Amazon cheaper than I could print them on Storyworth but Storyworth was a great place to develop the book.
My daughter was able to purchase copies to hand on to her children so they would have a better understanding of where they came from.
It was too late by that time to get my wife to share her life in the same way but I wish that I had been able to do that. If your loved one is still in a place where you could get stories from them you could write the book for them.

sjcamp

dvellio Did you do storyworth over a year or did you finish in less time? Also, where did you print on Amazon? I didn't know you could do that? Did you print the storyworth book on Amazon or did you print a different book on Amazon?

Bob

I bought a small voice recorder and periodically ask my Dad questions about his life. "How did you meet Mom?" "How did you propose to Mom." "Why did you name your children the way you did." "Tell us about your time on Saipan during WWII." Etc., etc. I'm downloading the recordings onto my compute and eventually will transfer them to DVDs for my siblings. We started this when my Dad was 98, he is now 100. Unfortunately, we did not think of this idea until after my Mom passed away.

For both Mom & Dad (for their 90th birthdays) i created a video timeline of their lives. I gathered as many photos of them, their historical surroundings through time, etc.) as I could from whatever source (my own photo library, from my siblings, internet) and I compiled them chronologically into a video to which I added voiceover. I then downloaded it to DVDs and gave copies to my siblings. I was able to do all of this using my Apple laptop and apps that came with it.

Twyla

This is a good idea. We have videos of my husband in different parts of his life. Sometimes it is sad to look at them because I be feeling like I want that part of his life back.

dvellio

It took me most of the year to write the book. I actually wrote it in Microsoft Word and then copied the text over to the Storyworth site. The Storyworth site is actually pretty easy to navigate. but a granddaughter of my wife's who has done some books for other people helped me edit mine and suggested that Amazon might be a better place to publish it. It did take some serious Microsoft Word skills to get things formatted in a way that the Amazon publishing site would accept it, but I finally did. I'm not sure I would have ever finished the book if my daughter hadn't bought me that subscription and got me started on it.
I'm not pushing my book but here is a link to a copy of it on Amazon. If you have a Kindle subscription
I think it's actually free and there is a hard copy out there also but it's priced high enough that most people aren't going to want to buy it. I had to price it at $30 just to cover the cost of printing.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=B0948N65HQ&crid=1R9Q8M3JDE1UH&sprefix=b0948n65hq%2Caps%2C57&ref=nb_sb_noss

This next link is the link to the Amazon publishing site.

https://amazonpublishingcompany.com/?matchtype=e&adposition=&keyword=amazon%20book%20publishing&gclid=Cj0KCQiA14WdBhD8ARIsANao07gZBgS1T0KNH0vghtJYk0JVW9ljqK5wt43AP0ntAS_ckuUlT8VaXHYaAoJFEALw_wcB