Customer Reviews

One Memory at a Time

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Journalist D.G.[Debby Greene] Fulford with her brother--syndicated columnist Bob Greene--wrote "To Our Children's Children: Preserving Family Histories for Generations to Come." In this book, they presented lists of seemingly simple questions to prod memory and discussion to capture family stories.

With the success of that book many readers asked for another helpful tool in writing family histories. "ONE MEMORY AT A TIME: Inspiration and Advice for Writing Your Family Story" is written by D. G. Fulford on her own as an answer to that plea.

Debbie Fulford gives you stories from her family storehouse, encouragement, perspective, and tips. I like the boxed summaries at the end of the chapters.

"One Memory At a Time" delivers two important gifts:
--the sense that writing family stories is important, and
--permission to let it all be whatever it is.

"Your stories will go this way and that way, too, twisting and turning. This is fine. Permit yourself to ramble. A family history is a magnet. One thought attracts anohter." . . In this way, your story gets told."

Her writing is lyrical and declarative by turn, according to her purpose. She sprinkles questions from "To Our Children's Childrn" throughout the book to good effect. These are both items that would seem to be BETTER TOGETHER.

--Janet Grace Riehl, author Sightlines: A Poet's Diary

I missed reading Fulford's earlier book (To Our Children's Children), but I'll certainly look for it now. That book has many questions to trigger your memories for writing.
This book (One Memory at a Time) builds on the earlier book but the emphasis is on showing us how easy it is to write a small descriptive memory. The author inspires and reassures us that we can get those onto paper and that our families will thank us for the effort.
I liked her tone in the book and the advice was very encouraging. She says the writing doesn't have to follow a timeline. Just record bits and pieces as they come to you, then later arrange those for your family history.
The book's fairly slim and would be most useful to have both books at the same time.