Customer Reviews

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

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This book is a valuable resource for families to use when preserving the legacy of a loved one who is dying. My mother has brain cancer, yet has full use of her faculties and has LOVED going through the book of questions and leaving behind a history of her life. We have used the book as a guide for a *very long* audio interview. I ask the questions from the book - she reaches back and tells the stories. It has been a wonderful experience for me and my mother in these days we know will be cut short due to her illness. Preserve the legacy of your loved ones now - before it's too late! Thank you Linda Spence for helping my mother leave us a wonderful gift.

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 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.

This review was written by Alice Joyce. As memoirs become increasingly popular reading material, so do individuals of the baby-boomer generation increasingly hunger for details about their own multigenerational family histories and the long-buried stories that, in accumulating, make up an essential heritage. Spence creates a compelling context for recording the stages of one's life. In each section, from childhood through grandparenting, Spence compiles a wealth of penetrating questions to help guide the novice and more skilled writer alike. An inward journey, it is meant to uncover intimate memories and experiences that shape the very foundation, walls and interior spaces of a personality. Quotes from authors associated with a style of mesmerizing and revelatory writing illustrate just how moving are the episodes and scenes that create the fabric of our everyday lives.

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.

This is a great book for writers whether or not you really intend to write a personal Legacy. I bought it on a whim (because I liked the concept) at Restoration (yes, the furniture store). I read through it and started writing. While working in through the book, an idea for a story I was already woriking on came to me. I became side-tracked with that idea and finshed the story which then became a series of short stories. In the meantime, I passed the book on to a friend who had retired and was thinking about writing something. I went back to some of the notes I had made while browsing through Legacy and decided to use the exercises and questions to build a set of characters, that intertwined. I used that as the base of a novel I am working on now. (I did a similar thing with the short storeis). Eventually, I do plan to go back and write a "personal" history about my family (sans me), but in the meantime, I bought another copy of Legacy for myself to use when building characters and another to spare in case I decide to pass the book on to someone else, I'll still have a copy of my own. It will get anyone writing and better yet, talking to your family. It will get you to learn about your family in a way we never really do. It's a very touching way to connect yourself to your family, yourself and to the world through great periods of time. You'll be surprised by what you learn and more so by how easy the writing comes to you. Thank you Linda for writing the book.

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.

The first copy of this book came as a gift from a daughter to my husband. She wanted her dad to tell his life's story. It took a while, but now my husband and I are "Writing," as the author said, "for our great grandchildren who will never know us." I've bought several copies to give to friends. It's full of fun ways to start your life story. Mine began, "Horses I have known." That chapter may not make the book, but it was a beginning.

I have a diary written by my great grandfather during his first year in the War Between the States, and I know how precious his account has become to our family. Buy this book and share your story. Dig up those good--and yes, bad memories from the past and get them in print. You will be glad you did. OK, you can leave it to be published or read after you die, but it's a way to live on.

I read readers evaluations and comments to decide which would be the best guides to create a "Legacy" Video or oral/visual interview documenting the life-story of my father. There are so many books to aide in this pursuit, and I ended up purchasing those which seemed the top twelve. I felt as if I was going to scour each of these books to splice together THE list which would contain the most thorough & thought provoking of all questions in one composite. After going through each, it became clear that the best was Linda Spence's "LEGACY", which was/is the most intelligently written & articulate guide. The author seemes to have intended its questions to be answered with a blank notebook that one provides themself, but then says this can also be used in other ways. I have been posing these questions to my father while I am videoing him on a camcorder. His European childhood was torn by the Holocaust, so obviously there are some questions that I needed to modify. It is not difficult to personalize/modify the base questions were needed, & many of the questions naturally brought up other questions which were equally valuable to use in the interview. When we are through, I have no doubts that this footage of my dad telling his life story & philosophy will be a living & breathing document for future generations of our family and a precious legacy.

As a Certified Lifewriting Instructor and a Personal Historian who works with clients to capture their life stories, I constantly search for additional materials that will be helpful in teaching my workshops and working with individuals. The questions posed in this publication definitely aid in contemplation and reflection to help one write about thoughts and feelings, adding a deeper layer rather than simply listing facts and dates. It is an excellent resource!