Legacy : A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Personal History

Spence has provided a tool for eliciting and recording family history with relative ease. Her book can become a catalyst for coaxing memories even from people who protest about recording their experiences or who lack confidence about their ability to remember. However many of the numerous helpful prompts you use, you will create a worthwhile legacy.

What were you like as a child? What did you think? What did you do?
Not many of us escape these questions from our children and grandchildren.
This wonderful book enables us to leave a legacy of memories and history for our descendants. It gives step by step instructions on how to write
a personal history. The process also brings back many memories and gives the writer a clearer picture of his/her life experiences. At 78 I hope I have enough time to finish my gift to my family. Wish I'd had this book 20 years ago.

This book is a step-by-step guide to writing your life's stories as a legacy for other family members. The author has worked with seniors for many years, gathering their stories and helping them document their life histories. In this book, she presents a simple methodology that anyone can follow to help them get over the hardest step in the process-getting started. In the introduction, she urges the reader to set aside some time and space for writing, in a notebook, on an audio cassette, on a typewriter, or on a computer, whichever is most comfortable and convenient. Then she provides lists of reflective questions to get the juices flowing. The questions are organized by topic, including earliest memories, school life, young adulthood, marriage, children, grandchildren, and later adult years. Interspersed with these questions are quotations from unknown as well as famous published memoirists whose writing illustrates the topic at hand.

Everybody has had life experiences which are fascinating, amazing, or potentially edifying for others. The trouble is, so few of these stories ever get passed on because it's so hard to actually sit down and write them. With this book, Spence makes the task seem easy. Writers can sit down with the book, open to a page at random, and begin writing responses to her prompts. Or they can begin with the first question and work methodically through the book. Each question can easily require an entire essay to answer in full. Once the individual essays start collecting, the raw material is ready to edit into a book. Or, the answers can simply be left as drafts in the writer's notebook to be passed on to others as a legacy. It should be noted that Spence's goal is to help readers to document their life histories in a positive way so as to create a product that can be passed on to other family members, rather than to explore negative memories as a means of self-growth. The book is not about style, grammar, or esthetic qualities of writing. Spence finds it more important for writers to use their own voices naturally rather than to adopt formal stylistic attributes. The book would make an excellent gift for older family members who have stories to tell but just haven't gotten around to writing them down yet.

I am teaching a life history class for the first time and am using Linda Spence's book as part of my curriculum. She literally has hundreds and hundreds of questions to ask which can be a little daunting, but just remember to take only a few at a time and know that not all questions will pertain to you. In the end, the answers will give a lot of good information to your children or grandchildren that you can leave as is or refine in "book" form. This book is also good for audio or video testimonials as you can just answer the questions for a more informal feeling.

I taped 16 hours of memories using Spence's book to interview my 87 year old father. It was a wonderful way of connecting as he lived more in the past as he aged. He was delighted to have my full attention and I enjoyed hearing his life story. The book helped me to organize material for the interviews. Last year I transcribed, edited and published the memoir as a gift for his children and grandchildren. He had seen a draft of it before his death and was thrilled that his life was recorded for posterity.