FHWC: Day one, ready or not

I woke up this morning feeling non too confident that I could start writing for the Family History Writing Challenge today. Heck, I haven't even been able to conclusively determine whether Joseph Benton Nowell was born in 1842 or 1843, in Alabama or Mississippi.

But then I received the FHWC newsletter from the Armchair Genealogist. Lynn's advice for the unprepared really helped. Instead of putting off the writing to chase down more documentation, I'm going to do both.

First I will start with writing summaries about events in his life, even if I do have to include the "I don't know if it's this or that," statements. And I'm only setting a 300 word count quota to start with so that I will also have time to research for the next day's topic. I may bump it up later when I have more information.

I'm not going to worry too much about the order of events. In fact, I'm probably going to save each event summary separately so that I can go back and put them in order for a single outline. Then I can start the actual first draft.

As far as style of writing goes, I'm not sure what you'd define it as, but I'm mainly writing it for interested members of my family. So I will give all of the documented facts, including the contradictory ones, but also try to throw in some of that good old Nowell family humor that Grandma Zula passed down to us.

And, of course, it's just a rough draft that will grow and flesh out over time with more research. Which is why I won't be publishing it on my blog. =D I will post updates on my progress, achievements, and frustrations though.

If anyone reading this is blogging about their own experiences with the Family History Writing Challenge, or is actually posting their family history writings, please feel free to share your blog link in the comments so I can check it out.

Time for me to put on a fresh pot of coffee and start Day One.

Online research can be a pain in the neck... literally

After months of only using my computer sporadically for email and catching up with friends on facebook, yesterday's endeavor to organize one ancestor's documentation and draft a timeline caused my neck to begin stiffening up toward the evening.

That is how it always starts. And if I ignore it and continue on like this for a few more days, one morning I will wake up, turn my head, and hear that familiar crack as pain radiates from my neck to my extremities. It's happened before. Several times.

Sitting in front of the computer for hours on end, every day for days on end, whether working or researching, it always happens to me if I don't force myself to take breaks. The eye strain headaches are bad enough, but a compressed nerve realigns your priorities with early morning shock therapy treatments.

I have strategies for bringing the pain of a compressed nerve down to a bearable level. A hot shower on fire hose setting directed at the source of the pain does wonders for up to 30 minutes. Ibuprofen. Alternating heat for circulation, and cold packs for numbing.

But that first initial lightning strike through my nervous system when I take my first step in the morning... that special kind of hell is still fresh in my mind despite the fact that it's been about two years since the last time it happened.

So the logical thing to do here, of course, is pace myself and take regular breaks. I know it's going to slow down my progress, and I may not even have my outline done before the Family History Writing Challenge is over. But I'm setting a timer on my phone for 30 minutes every time I sit down at the computer.

And there it goes now. Time to do some laundry.

FHWC: I'm in, but way behind

The Family History Writing Challenge, in case you haven't already heard, is a 28 day project to motivate genealogy researchers to put their family's story down in writing. Though I'm a little late in getting my research organized, I am going to at least do the best I can to get started writing before the end of February.

So, I've chosen an ancestor to focus on. I decided to go with Joseph Ben Nowell because I actually tried to sit down and write up a little history on him a few years back for some cousins who were interested. He is my ggg grandfather, and could easily be the oldest relative we have actual photographs of.

After gathering all of my documentation into one place this morning, I wrote up a timeline of his life in Notepad. I included the source citations for each fact in my timeline for convenience later. That took the better part of the day because I had to go back and look up the proper citations for census records I had downloaded from FamilySearch and HeritageQuest Online.

I'm missing some documentation too, but one of my cousins will be mailing it to me soon. My next step will be to add historical events to his timeline. I'm not sure how long that is going to take, but it will give me a better feel for what his life was really like.

I haven't even set a word count (probably 500, but we'll see) because I know I'm not going to be ready to start writing on Friday. I still need to determine how I want to write it, and get an outline drafted. So, I'll be getting a late start when it comes to the actual writing, but maybe I'll be able to stick with it through March.

Anyone else out there taking the Family History Writing Challenge? Am I the only one too far behind to get started writing on February 1st?