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?
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