Storyical

Brian Moore is the owner of Moore About You, based out of Syracuse, New York. He speaks about how putting together a video biodocumentary for his wife for her 50th birthday spurred him to his own business as a life story professional.  Although the video tribute took some time to complete, Brian explained why directing a video with so many contributors can affect the overall time taken. Once shooting all of the elements of the video is finished, there is a next step. Editing. Its an important step, but one that has to be done carefully to get the best result. After Brian started his business, he decided to put together a podcast that brought to life the stories of everyday people. Not only do all people have a story about their life, but they benefited from having their life story recorded. His podcast “52 Conversations” can be heard on Soundcloud. Brian points out a great example of why we should record our life stories sooner rather than later. Brian can be contacted via his Facebook page “Moore About You”

Gloria Nussbaum is the owner of Real-to-Reel recording personal stories. Armed with a tape recorder and being experienced in radio, Gloria became a personal historian, working in audio. Audio gives two of the most important things for recording stories 1. the stories themselves, and 2. the storyteller’s unique voice. Gloria extensively steps through the process of how she works with a client to record their story on a digital recorder, and gives great advice on how you can start recording your stories. Gloria works across the USA, and can be found at www.real-to-reel.org.

This episode is a double interview of an aunt and her niece. I interview Nancy Shohet West, a Memoir Consultant, and Journalist from Connecticut. Nancy tells us all about how she interacts with people to record their stories. Typically her clients are elderly, and will speak to them over Skype or by phone weekly to record their stories. Often times it is the adult children of the storyteller who hires Nancy to write down their parent’s stories. Nancy explains how she got interested in memoir writing, and gives great advice on how to start your memoir. You can find the books she has written with her clients on Amazon.  Catch up with Nancy on twitter @nancyswest, and at her website www.nancyshohetwest.com Mary Dominick-Comer tells us what it was like for her speaking her memoir. Now at 81 years old, she started just 3 years ago although she initially hired Nancy Shohet West as a personal historian to record her husband’s life story. Mary did not think her life was that interesting, but was surprised that her li

Peta Roberts, host, welcomes you to Storyical. She explains the aims of the show, as well as details about herself, and how she started as a Life Story Professional. Storyical will introduce you to personal historians, writers, editors, book designer, and many others involved in recording life story. You will also hear form people who have started writing memoir, and autobiography is a topic to be discussed during future shows.

Today we learn about memoir from Gillian Ednie, a Biographer, and a Life Story Professional. She became interested in life story when evaluating a palliative care project. Gillian saw an improvement in patients, and decide to make it a full time career, and has since recorded many client stories as well as family stories. Gillian talks about the process she goes through from beginning of a client project to the end when people publish their book. Gillian draws on examples from her client list to illustrate the various reasons why people write memoir and the benefits of memoir. This includes the therapeutic benefits, allowing people to process events they could not at the time, and to look back on their lives, reflect and even impress themselves. Will you gain a ‘footing’ in this world by your retrospective? Can you imagine an entire book about you? Print on demand makes it easy to make as many copies of your book as you like so that you give them to friends and family members. Tools like Guided Autobiography