Philosophy of Writing

I have a friend on Facebook, Robert Perry, who has many things in common with me. Although we have never met face-to-face, we grew up in the same small town of Wolcott, Connecticut, we both moved away when we pursued our further education, and we both enjoy writing. He is several years younger than I and so we have no friends or significant experiences in common. However, through genealogical investigations we are distant cousins of each other, having several ancestors from New England/Connecticut history in common. But we have very different writing styles and philosophies – even when writing about the same or similar topics.

Many of my writings take the form of what I call “Genealogy Stories.” Focusing on a particular character, or set of related characters, in the history of Wolcott or of Connecticut, or other ancestors of mine or my wife’s, I tell the story in a way that incorporates both the genealogy of that individual, but that also includes the greater context in which that genealogy exists. This can include historical events (what else was going on at the time), geological information (where it was taking place), societal context (what life was like at the time), etc., and usually more than one of these types of context. So, while the main theme is that individual’s life story and the significant dates in their life (birth, marriage, children, death), it’s never just a series of facts, but trying to put that individual in the context where all those things happened.

I also tend to list a number of references about where I found that information, thus encouraging others to continue to read these other references for themselves. And if the individual is related to me, I will also mention that relationship to show how we are often personally connected to others beyond our immediate sphere.

Because there are so many facts given in these stories, I am conscious of breaking my writing up into easily managed chunks by using small-to-moderate sized paragraphs and the white space between the paragraphs to allow others to read the story without getting too confused by the amount of information. I generally keep the story somewhat short – about 3-5 pages in document format – because my purpose is to encourage others to appreciate the context (history/geography/etc.) and make the story more “real” and not just a series of dates and events.

I have chosen to present these stories in a blog for a couple of reasons. First, it keeps them all together and in a place where people can find them. And second, because that medium allows me to preserve most of the formatting in paragraphs, etc.

I don’t have thousands, or even hundreds, of followers, so I post links to these blog entries in social media. And I have learned that because our society is so visually focused, that putting one or more relevant pictures in the blog will cause the picture to show up in the news feed and help encourage people to then click on the link to my blog (although I did not do this the first few years, so my older postings remain just textual).

In contrast to my style of writing, Bob relies on a much different one. His is deeply personal and written from that perspective. As an example, when he wrote about the 100+ year old statue of the horse on the Waterbury green, it was in the context of his seeing the statue as a small boy, wondering why it was there, and eventually making his way to the local library where a kind librarian helped him find the information he craved about the horse, its owner, and why the statue had been built.

 

He writes in long, descriptive sentences filled with colorful adjectives and nouns, and lots of commas to separate the many phrases of his rich explanations. While my writing has an educational slant to it, his is very emotive and seeks to draw the reader into the environment of the story and to feel personally connected to it.

He then posts the relevant picture to an album on his Facebook page and copies what he has written into the accompanying post. In doing so, most of the formatting is lost and the post is one long string of words below that initial picture. But while that would be harmful to my writing style, for his it is not. Rather, his readers find themselves getting lost in the jungle of descriptive words and long, run-on sentences and thus even more drawn into the world that he is presenting. Overwhelmed by the beauty of his descriptions, they relate to this world in an intimate fashion and see everything through his eyes.

Both of these styles of writing are useful, but they come from different philosophies of writing. I want to draw people in by showing how all these stories are part of the larger context in which we all live. Bob wants to draw people in by getting them to relate personally to the story. In a sense, one is outside-in, and the other is inside-out. But we both want to help others learn about and appreciate our history.

Bob put it this way:

“How to tell the stories of our ancestors, the many other Americans who gave us our great country and the progress of America so as to generate not merely interest but appropriate and strictly truthful regard for the legacy enjoyed by all of us, whether their lineal or much more broadly cultural descendants, has become a chief concern of mine. These stories, surprisingly only some of which have been written about at all even after centuries, almost in every case need to be made interesting for those now alive, who too often have been taught an unnecessary hostility to them if they consider history relevant in the least.”

I am a big fan of his writing, and he is a fan of mine. The world needs both of our philosophies.