Tag: writing

Crafting Resilience: How to Record Your Family’s Stories, Recipes and Traditions Before They’re Lost

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When a house floods or burns, the thing people grieve longest is rarely the furniture. It is the photo albums, the recipe card in a grandmother’s handwriting, the stories nobody wrote down because everyone assumed they would always be around to tell them. You don’t need an apocalypse to lose those things, only one bad night. So this post is about saving them now: what to record, how to ask for it, and how to store it so it outlasts you.

1. Interview your people

The stories in your family’s heads are the most fragile archive you have. Sit down with parents, grandparents, aunts and old family friends, record the conversation on your phone, and ask open questions. A few that tend to unlock good stories:

  • What is the earliest thing you remember?
  • What did your family eat on holidays when you were small, and who cooked it?
  • How did you meet the person you married, and what did you think of them at first?
  • What was your first job, and what did it pay?
  • What was the hardest year of your life, and how did you get through it?
  • Who in our family should I know about that nobody talks about anymore?
  • What do you know how to do that hardly anyone knows anymore?
  • What do you want your great-grandchildren to know about you?

Let silences run. The best story usually comes right after the pause where you would normally ask the next question. Write down names, places and dates as they come up, because they are the details that fade first.

2. Write the family cookbook

Recipes are culture you can eat. Collect them from everyone, with the real quantities, not “a handful” or “until it looks right” (cook alongside the person if you have to). Note who made each dish, when it was served and any story attached to it. Then add a few adaptations for hard times, such as how to make the holiday bread with powdered milk or without eggs.

3. Print the photos

Phones and cloud accounts feel permanent, but they depend on companies, passwords and electricity. Print the photos that matter, write names and dates on the back in pencil or archival pen, and store them in acid-free albums or boxes. Unlabeled photos become mysteries within a generation.

4. Teach the skills, not just the memories

Some traditions are things you do with your hands: knitting, canning, fishing, woodworking, a particular way of braiding hair or tending a garden. Recording them on video helps, but the best way to keep a skill is to learn it while the person who knows it is still here to correct you.

5. Keep the calendar

Write down your family’s holidays and observances and how you actually keep them: what food, which songs, who sits where, what is said. Traditions survive disruption best when someone knows exactly how they go and can lead them even when everything else is different.

6. Store it like you mean it

  • Follow the 3-2-1 rule. Keep three copies of anything important, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy somewhere else entirely, such as a relative’s house in another town.
  • Use paper for the core. Print the most important stories and recipes on acid-free paper. Paper read with your eyes needs no software that might not exist in thirty years.
  • Keep digital files simple. Save recordings and scans in common formats like MP3, JPEG and PDF, and copy them to new drives every few years, because drives and discs degrade.
  • Protect against water and fire. A waterproof, fire-resistant document box holds a surprising amount, and a sealed plastic bin on a high shelf beats a cardboard box in a basement.

Start with one interview this month. You will be glad you did, whether or not the world ends.

What story from your family would you most hate to lose? Tell it in the comments, and you will have saved one more copy.

Ink and Apocalypse: Why Writing Survives the End Times (and What to Write With)

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Every catastrophe in history has left behind writing. Samuel Pepys recorded the Great Fire of London in his diary in 1666, including the detail that he dug a pit in his garden to bury his wine and his parmesan cheese. During the siege of Leningrad, people kept diaries through starvation and shelling, and some of those notebooks are now among the most important records of the war. Writing is one of the first things people return to when the world breaks, and one of the most useful. So here is how writing survives the apocalypse, and the small practical details that decide whether yours does.

Why people write

  • To keep their minds steady. Journaling is one of the most widely recommended ways to process stress, and the people who kept diaries through wars and disasters often said it was what kept them sane.
  • To remember what happened. Memory under stress is unreliable. Writing it down the same day is how you know later what actually happened, and when.
  • To pass on knowledge. How to fix the pump, which plants made someone sick, how many days the food lasted. A written record means the group learns, not just the individual.
  • To reach people who aren’t there. Letters to missing family, even ones that can’t be sent yet, are a way of staying connected, and sometimes they get delivered after all.

What to keep a record of

A survival log is more useful than poetry, though there is room for both. Every day, note:

  • The date (you will lose track faster than you think)
  • Weather and temperature
  • Food and water used and remaining
  • Anyone who arrived, left, got sick or got hurt, and what treatment they received
  • Anything learned: what worked, what failed, what you saw on a supply run

After a month, that notebook is the most valuable planning document your group owns.

The trivial details that matter

Pencils beat pens. A pencil writes when wet, cold or upside down, and graphite does not fade or run. Ballpoints skip in the cold, gel and fountain pen inks smear in water, and every pen eventually dries out. Keep a few pencils and a small sharpener, or a knife.

Choose paper that lasts. Cheap paper yellows and turns brittle over decades because of the acids in it; acid-free paper lasts far longer. For field notes, waterproof notebooks made for surveyors and hikers will survive rain that turns ordinary paper to pulp.

Protect it. A zip-top bag doubles a notebook’s life. A notebook kept in an inside pocket survives far more than one kept in a pack.

Write clearly. Your handwriting is a code that only you can read when you are tired and in a hurry. If a record matters, print it in block letters and date every entry.

Writing together

Storytelling around a fire is the oldest form of entertainment, and in a world without screens it comes back fast. Groups that read aloud, swap stories or keep a shared journal build a common history, and a group that remembers together tends to stay together. Our post on recording your family’s stories is a good place to start practicing now.

Do you keep a journal? Tell us in the comments what you’d want someone to find in it a hundred years from now.

Apocalyptic Literature: What I want to see.

Posted on by anninyn

Because of ICoS I now read more apocalypse-related books than ever before. I buy them with my own money AND get them sent free for review, and then I tell you about them, whether they’re good or bad. Hell, some of the books I write are apocalypse-related. So, after more than a year of reading about the apocalypse, I have a list of things I want to see  more of in future apocalyptic literature.

Better Writing:

It’s not that the writing in these books is bad. It’s usually perfectly competent. But it could be more powerful, more evocative – just more – with harsher editing. If you’re writing apocalyptic literature (especially if you’re going the self-publishing route) I’d recommend two books which will help you get it as good as possible. The Elements of Style and Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. You should pick up Chuck Wendig’s books as well, but they’re less about editing and more about kicking your arse to get writing your crap, already, so that one is up to you. But the other two? Please, just do it. I’ve read loads of books with really interesting stories let down by poor editing.

Better female characters:

Most of the apocalyptic literature I’ve read was by men. The problem was, a great many of their female characters were cliches – irritating, insulting cliches at that. Remember that women are human beings rather than a collection of stereotypes. I don’t mind if one woman in your story is useless, but I start getting suspicious if she’s the only character that is, and then I’m outright judging you if ALL your women are useless. When I say ‘Better’ I mean I believe in her as a human being. Having her display some personality traits other than ‘screaming chick who needs to be rescued’ would be great. I sincerely doubt that post-apocalypse we would have time or room for ‘traditional gender roles’ anyway. While we’re at it, can we stop writing it so that even the good guys are enacting forced breeding? It’s rape, it’s skeevy and the good guys shouldn’t be forcing HUMAN BEINGS into a position where they are being abused and brutalised.

Better characters IN GENERAL.

While I find believable, relatable female characters are few and far between in apocalyptic literature, I also find that in nearly every book I’ve read the same character archetypes pop up. The grizzled, damaged war veteran. The girl who’s only a bitch cause she was raped.

The creeper who betrays the group. Look, character archetypes exist for a reason, but if I can predict what your characters will do within the first 10 pages, it’s BAD. Do something new with them, something unexpected. Make the war veteran a perky, cheerful man with no dark past.

Make the creeper loyal and caring, just socially awkward. Make the woman a bitch because she’s figured out that being bitchy gets stuff done. Stop relying on old, well-worn paths. Make your own.

More imagination and ingenuity:

By which I mean – write something different! There are no new stories under the sun, but there is a trick to this – write it in such a way that seems new. Add something, take something away, I don’t care what it is, but just write something different. The books are starting to blend in together now, because they’re all so similar.  The main reason I’m getting bored of zombies is that not only are they everywhere, but they’re the same bloody thing in each book. CHANGE SOMETHING. Write as though you’re setting a new standard and starting a new trend. Please? For example, check this out:  Dinocalypse Now. It’s apocalyptic literature, but it avoids the tired old tropes and boring setting, and it looks loads more fun.

Actual Research:

How would the area you’re writing in respond to an apocalyptic event? Desert, jungle, overgrown woods? Research it. How many bullets can that gun fire without jamming? If it’s been uncared for for 18 months? Research it. What does a nuclear bomb do? RE-FUCKING-SEARCH IT. If you get it wrong, people who KNOW that you got it wrong will be pulled out of your story immediately. Sure, it’s fiction. But fiction needs to seem as if it’s real to the readers, and if you get it wrong… For my current novel (which is terrible and will never get published because MY GOD) I am researching radios. My girl is a ham radio enthusiast, so I need to know at least the basics of the different types, how they work, how you’d fix one. If you’re writing a novel – even one based in a world where everything has changed – and there’s a siege, you need to research seige warfare. RESEARCH.

Bottom line: This is writing. It’s not a thing you should do because you think it’s easy money or fame (it’s really not). It’s not something you can just churn out and have it be OK. It’s something you do because the love of it means it’s the only thing you CAN do. Which means you need to do the best you can, write the best, most amazing thing you’re capable of. Don’t be scared, or small, or dull with it.

Get down right into the filthy guts of it all, and be incredible.

Please, I’m begging you.

What do our readers want to see from post apocalyptic literature in future? Talk about it in the comments.

If you have something tasty and apocalyptic that you’d like reviewed, we’re always happy to do it. If your book fits these guidelines, you’ll get a much more positive review than if it doesn’t. Just email anninyn at incaseofsurvival dot com and I’ll get back to you.

Self Promotion- Dusk: Origins

Posted on by anninyn

If you don’t like Self-Promotion you may want to look away now.

I know, it’s terribly shocking and disgusting that I’d use a blog I write for to promote something else I write for. How dare I assume that people who enjoy my writing in one venue may enjoy it in another?

Ahem.

Dusk: Origins is a super-special, previously super-secret project I have been having a lot of fun and good times with, and I want you to go check it out. But- I am aware you can’t do that without knowing what in the hell is going on, so I will help you.

Continue reading “Self Promotion- Dusk: Origins”