[.ca] Legacy: A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Personal History (ISBN 080401003X)

From Amazon.com:
Linda Spence's Legacy proves to be just that: the creation of a family heirloom that money couldn't buy. Through a series of thought-provoking questions about each phase in human life, Spence helps readers record their personal history, think back to feelings that any number of snapshots could never capture, and reflect upon their lives. What events occurred during your childhood? What did you like most about school? What do you wish your parents had done for you? The text includes sample essays by the author and quotations by other writers to encourage your muse.

While There Is Still Time!:
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.

Strong General Outline:
As a writer who often gets stuck, I enjoyed the prompts in this book as great starting points. The shared stories are also fun to read - not too long but enough to get me started. I would have liked to see in this book, in the parenting section, prompts for the adult who is facing infertility. While it's impossible for one author to cover every aspect of life, infertility consumes so many people today that I would really enjoy a series of prompts focused on this life issue - it changes lives, dampens dreams, disconnects one from society, and alters the way we approach the American dream.

Quoted from "Booklist" 10/15/97, Vol.94, No.4, pp.380:
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.

Literally Step by Step:
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.