Introduction
You
sit down at your computer and open your word processor. A large, blank page glares
at you-- daring you to blacken it with your keystrokes. Assessing the challenge,
you enthusiastically begin typing. A single word, "Birth", appears on the screen.
"So far, so good," you think to yourself. With a little less certainty, your fingers
manage to type in a date, a place, and a few names. "Now what?" you ask
yourself.
Suddenly the enormity of the task hits you like that foul ball in the 3rd grade.
You fumble through a few more paragraphs before deciding that you would do
better retreating, regrouping, and charging the enemy at a later time. Promising
yourself that you will return someday, your hand defeatedly clicks on the "Save"
button and the once-blank page, although scarred with a few sentences, triumphantly
disappears.
Sound familiar? If so, you're not alone. Many people want to write a
personal history about themselves or a family member but they just become lost or
overwhelmed by the size and complexity of the project. That's where Personal
Historian comes in.
Personal Historian takes the seemingly monumental task of writing a
personal history about yourself or another individual and breaks it into small,
manageable pieces and then reconstructs it into a complete, publishable document.
Personal Historian comes with an extensive library of LifeCapsules-
timelines, historical events, cultural fads, and memory triggers covering a wide-variety
of subjects. LifeCapsules add color and context to your history, giving you
insights into what was happening in the world at any point in your history.
Personal Historian builds upon the work that you've already done. You can
easily import word processor documents, photographs,
and other data.
Personal Historian can even bring in events, dates, and notes from your genealogy
software so that all the important events in your life and the life
of your family are automatically there, ready for you to write.
From start to finish, Personal Historian is the quickest, easiest, and most enjoyable
way to write your own personal history or that of another individual. You'll
be amazed at how easy and entertaining it can be with Personal Historian!
"You've done a magnificent job— so very well organized."
— C.M., California
"I think this is a great program. It has been a great help to me, and maybe
I will finally get a decent start on my personal history."
— W.S., Montana
"I am excited. I've already been typing a few things about my life history
and this will be fantastic."
— L.S., Utah
"I am using Personal Historian nearly every day and I love it! It is a beautifully
designed program, far superior to any others I have seen. I have a terminal
illness and want to write a personal history for my grandchildren who are too small
to remember me after I am gone. I felt rather overwhelmed with the task until
I started working in this program. I am thrilled with the progress I am making."
— M.H., Ohio
"I have started to write my personal history several times, but each time has been
a failure. I often have only a few minutes at a time to work on it, and it used
to take almost the entire available time just to get things together and start to
write. I usually felt it was not worth the effort, but with Personal Historian I
am able to utilize even very small blocks of time. When I combine that with the
ability to look at my life's events in relation to world and cultural affairs, I
am making real progress for the first time."
— G.B., Utah
"I was just entering some information about a great grandfather that I found in
the 1860 census into my Personal Historian. It is great! Because it organized all
his information from my Family History files, the Personal Historian helped me see
some facts that I hadn't noticed before. With the census record and the ease of
writing in the Personal Historian, I was able to put into writing some of the things
I remembered hearing about him and his family. I find it is a great program that
can be used for quick moments of inspiration when something triggers your memory,
so writing my own personal history or that of one of my ancestors is not longer
a chore."
— J.B., Utah
"I truly believe in Personal Historian. It makes an overwhelming task much easier."
— L.H.
"I have found the prompts in Personal Historian 1 to be very helpful in recalling
my life experience, and that (as I remember it) of my family. Working with your
prompts, and history timeline, is a big help in recalling events and typing them
into the computer is much easier, and far more legible, than writing them out by
hand, or typing them on a typewriter."
— S.G.
"Love the variety of ways to use Personal Historian. Today I primarily use it to
document events and stories, like a timelne. This allows memories to be captured
and then items pulled later for a more formal history."
— T.D.
Features
Personal Historian is software that assists you in writing a personal history
about yourself, another individual, or a family. Its many features will help you write a complete,
interesting, and entertaining life story.
The Main Screen
Personal Historian breaks the history down into small, manageable "topics"—
each with its own title, date, written text, and even pictures. Topics make it easy
to work on your history whenever you have the time—whether you have 10 minutes or
10 hours. Personal Historian automatically saves your work and makes it easy to
start where you left off.
The main screen displays all of the topics in the project. If a topic has a date,
Personal Historian also displays the individual's age on that date. On the main
screen, it is easy to sort and filter your topics.
The timeline gives an overall view of the person's life showing how many topics
there are for each year. This makes it easy to see gaps in this history that you
may wish to fill-in. The timeline also makes it easy to pinpoint topics from specific
dates. By simply dragging the ends of the timeline, you can "zoom in" and display
only the topics that pertain to that range of dates.
Gathering Information
There is no need to start from scratch when you use Personal Historian as the software
can bring in events, stories, pictures, and documents from a variety of sources.
Personal Historian imports names, dates, and even notes from your favorite genealogical
software and places them into your timeline.
NEW! The software can also import posts, people, and pictures from your Facebook feed. Personal Historian will allow you to download all those precious memories and even publish them to a book!
The software also includes an extensive library of "LifeCapsules" on a variety of
subjects. LifeCapsules contain timelines, historical facts, cultural trivia, and
memory triggers that give color, context, and interest to the history.
Personal Historian also imports your word processor documents and photographs so
that your existing work can be effortlessly incorporated into your histories.
Organizing Information
With Personal Historian, you don't need a "start from the beginning" approach to
writing a life history. You can choose any topic from the main screen (or add a
new, blank topic), work as much as you like on it, and save it for later. Personal
Historian keeps track of the status of each topic so you can see which topics are
complete, which topics still need work, and which topics you haven't even started.
You can even assign topics to "categories"—each with its own icon, color and font
style.
When writing about a topic, one of the most overlooked steps is to organize facts
and ideas before you begin writing. While this can normally be difficult and frustrating,
Personal Historian makes it a breeze to brainstorm and organize your facts, thoughts,
memories, and feelings.
The "Organizer" tool allows you to write down ideas as they come to you. Using the
mouse or keyboard, you can easily move the ideas into coherent groups and logical
orders until you have a working outline for your topic.
Writing Your History
When
you're ready to actually write about a topic, Personal Historian contains a built-in
word processor that not only makes it easy to write, but makes it easy to write
well. The built-in spell check and thesaurus are just the beginning.
The readability check lets you know how readable and interesting your writing will
be to others. It lets you know if your sentences are too long, too short—
if your words are too simple or too complex, and even if you're writing in the passive
voice instead of the active voice.
Publishing Your History
When you're ready to publish your masterpiece, Personal Historian is still there
to help. It takes all of the topics that you choose and puts them together into
a finished, publishable document. You can publish your history directly to your
personal printer, to a PDF file that you can share with others, or to an RTF file
that you can read into your favorite word processor for additional tweaking.
Share With Others
And when you are ready to make your map available for others, Personal Historian lets
you print your maps, or save them to PDF or other popular graphics formats. It's
never been easier to create completely custom maps.
Personal Historian: The Companion Guide
“User Manual” is such an unfriendly word. This book much more than a cold, technical description of just another computer application. Because a personal history should be much more than a lifeless description of events, we wanted this book to be a little more colorful and have a little more personality.
Yes, you will find the expected technical descriptions and walk-throughs. But, hopefully, you’ll also find practical tips, new ideas, and needed inspiration to finally bring life to your life stories.
This 192-page book is written by Michael T. Booth, the author of Personal Historian. In addition
to writing Personal Historian, he is also an accomplished trainer, teaching thousands of
individuals how to write their life stories.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Why you need Personal Historian
- What is Personal Historian?
- Personal Historian’s History
- About this Book
- Why you can’t write your personal history
- Why are you doing this?
- The obstacles
- “I don’t know where to start”
- “I don’t have the time”
- “I can’t remember enough details”
- “I’m not a good writer”
- Getting started
- The Welcome Screen
- Creating a new file
- Importing Data
- Importing Genealogy
- Importing LifeCapsules & Timelines
- Importing Other Text Data
- The Main Screen
- Main Menu Toolbar
- Status Bar
- Story Details
- Time Slider
- Story List
- Search Box
- Filtering Stories
- Working with Files
- Open an Existing File
- Searching for a File
- Moving or Renaming a File
- Deleting a File
- Copying a File
- Checking and Repairing a File
- File Options
- Managing Your Stories
- Story Status
- Adding a New Story
- Editing an Existing Story
- Picking a Random Story
- Adding a Journal Entry
- Deleting a Story
- Using Categories
- Adding a New Category
- Editing a Category
- Deleting a Category
- Changing the Order of Categories
- Changing a Story’s Category
- Recording People
- Relationships
- Dates of Involvement
- Adding a New Person
- Editing a Person
- Deleting a Person
- Adding a Person to a Story
- Tracking Places
- Geocoding Your List of Places
- Adding a New Place
- Editing a Place
- Deleting a Place
- Changing a Story’s Place
- The Editor Screen
- Editor Menu
- Editor Toolbar
- Editor Status Bar
- Story Information
- The Organizer
- Organizer Toolbar
- Organizer Items
- Moving Organizer Items
- Selecting Multiple Items at Once
- Copy Items to the Composer
- The Memory Solution
- Brainstorming
- Step 1: Visualize
- Step 2: Summarize
- Step 3: Organize
- Step 4: Repeat
- The “O” Word
- The Composer
- Composer Toolbar
- Applying Styles
- Fonts & Formatting
- Adding Pictures
- Importing a Document
- Spell Check & Thesaurus
- Readability Check
- Dictating and Reading Back Your Story
- Fullscreen Editing
- How to Write Good
- Let Your Voice Shine Through
- Make it Readable
- Write to Your Audience
- Write with Strength
- Finding the Right Word
- Shaking Things Up
- The Difference
- Do I Have Your Attention?
- Show, Don’t Tell
- Add Context
- What’s a newspaper?
- Let Your Characters
- Speak Putting It All Together
- Creating a New Book
- Managing Books
- Using the Publisher
- Printing and Exporting Your Work
- Publishing a Single Story
- Protecting Your Work
- Rule #1: Backup your data often
- Rule #2: Keep past backups, not just the latest
- Rule #3: Keep backups in multiple places
- Restoring from a Backup
- Good Luck
- Reference Guides
- Program Options
- Dates and Ages
- Menu Commands
- Keyboard Shortcut Keys
- Index
