Five Weird Research Tips
In The "You Never Know" Category
Of course, last week, after I wrote about getting back to work on my memoir, I totally froze up.
Ican’twrite/I’mnotwriting/whyamInot writing?
How can I get back to writing? Not every day, but often enough so I don’t freak out because I’ve been running from my own story for days, weeks, months on end?
In her marvelous Writing in the Dark workshops, Jeannine Ouellette often talks about getting to the Aboutness of your story. I’ve used her exercises to help cut to the chase, but when it comes to trying to respond to my own inadequacies, I rely on The Imminent Plane Crash Method of Getting at the Truth.
If you ever feel yourself hiding from the truth — any truth, not just as it pertains to writing or not writing your story — try this exercise, or preferably, have someone read the questions aloud to you. Give yourself a few minutes to respond to each answer.
Here are the questions:
What am I afraid of?
Okay, but no. What are you really afraid of?
[Lots of side-eye and/or hysterical laughter.] Okay, I get it, but really, what are you running from?
Yet another lame response. Time to pull out all the stops:
You’re in a plane that’s going down and there’s absolutely nothing to stop you from telling the real truth right before the plane crashes, so WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SO AFRAID OF?
You may have to keep going a few times, but I bet it works. A variation on the theme is Demi Moore’s I Got Here Because exercise.
In my case, after freezing up again last week, I asked myself this question: Why are you afraid of writing the memoir? After about ten minutes or so of flailing, bullshitting, and avoidance, my plane-crash answer arrived:
Because I have to feel the hurt. For the first time.
With that answer in hand — if you’re serious about uncovering the truth, the beauty of this exercise is that you can only bullshit yourself for so long — I returned to the memoir.
Reunited, and it feels so good.
And Now, The Five Weird Research Tips
If you’ve spent any amount of time turning over a bunch of slimy rocks to examine the lives of your family members for genealogical purposes or for a memoir, you’ve probably trod some well-grooved paths at Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com.
At some point, you’ll hit a wall.
Sometimes it helps to veer off the beaten path because really, you never know what you’ll find. Here are a few suggestions:
The National Archives. Your research can start here. However, there are oodles of other places to rabbit-hole, all for free if you can get yourself to one of their satellite locations.
eBay. Sellers of ephemera — letters, brochures, legal documents, recipe cards etc etc — often include the name of the owner of said item because they know long-lost relatives would love to get their mitts on them. I’ve found old letters, photographs, and a complete set of a newsletter I published for a couple of years in the 1980s, all of which I thought were long lost.
A teeny tiny historical society. Call or email the director of an historical society in a town where a relative lived. Their brains are better than AI when it comes to not only answering questions about said family member — and/or knowing where to look for more details — but she can probably put that person’s life in context of what else was going on in town at any one time.
A phone book. Yes, I know. Antiquated. Out of touch date. Besides, where the hell do you find one these days? The Library of Congress is a good start. Also, small-town libraries and historical societies, eBay, the BT Archives for Great Britain, just search for what you’re looking for.
Gigantic bibliographies: Just as I was trying to figure out a fifth tip, a Note from David Shaw’s Serengenity Substack crossed my feed, and he makes an EXCELLENT point: To turn to diaries and documents that cover a similar time period and region to the people you’re researching. Gigantic Bibliographies [excellent name for a band with nerd-heavy members] can point you to extremely esoteric and obscure resources which can go a long way towards filling in gaps and providing lots of context and understanding. Thanks, David!
For This Week’s Takeaway, I’m just going to repeat myself: If you ever feel yourself hiding from the truth — any truth, not just as it pertains to writing or not writing your story — try The Imminent Plane Crash Method of Getting at the Truth exercise. If you can, have someone read the questions aloud to you. Give yourself a few minutes to respond to each answer. You may have to keep going a few times, but I bet it works.
Here are the questions:
What am I afraid of?
Okay, but no. What are you really afraid of?
[Long side-eye and/or hysterical laughter.] Okay, I get it, but really, what are you running from?
Another lame response. Time to pull out all the stops:
You’re in a plane that’s going down and there’s nothing to stop you from telling the real truth right before the plane crashes, so WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SO AFRAID OF?
After you try the exercise, leave a comment to let me know how it went.
Old phonebooks and city directories have been incredibly helpful for me to figure out the story of my family. I was able to piece together that my third great grandfather had evicted his daughter, my g-great grandmother. (Here it helps to understand what addresses signified, and whether a move was up or down in the world, or a move out of financial distress.
The diary tip is really brilliant and will send me down a new path of exploration.
Finally, the photo of the aircrash site in this post is actually a quite famous pilgrimage for backpackers in Iceland. It is a very long hike to get there, and, when you get there... it's just the wreckage of a plane. Kind of like a lot of the family research we uncover!
I’ve had great success in calling up local historical societies and public libraries and just asking for help. I’ve found most of the archivists and librarians to be eager to help, excited by a new challenge and willing to go deep into the back rooms to uncover gold. They’re such unsung hero’s!