Bet You're Wondering How My Legacy Book is Going

Do you sometimes get sick to death of something and just want to be done with it? That's me right now. 

"The average person takes about 6 to 8 months to finish a Memorygram book when following the default pace of one question per week."  

I accept the fact that I'm not the world's fastest writer, but it's been eight months now and I've only answered 35 questions. I'm surprised I did that many. Seems more like six. I didn't answer one question a week; often, weeks would go by with zero contribution on my part. One reason was that the questions were boring. I mean, really boring and irrelevant. When I write fiction, I write a story that interests me, or else why do it at all? 

Also, I was of the mindset at the time that my progeny would be reading the finished work and I wanted something that would resonate with them. I've now come to the realization that only I will read the finished product, so who do I need to interest? Me. And alas, I'm just not that interesting, even or especially to myself.

It's time to wrap this up. I've got a couple of answers I've yet to paste into the book, and I need to find images to accompany them; then I'm done. One isn't required to add an image to each story, but I find the stories more interesting and personal that way.

If you're considering giving a memorygram gift to an older family member, I can advise you of the potential pitfalls that person may encounter. 

1. The recipient isn't required to write out his or her responses. There is an option to record them, the prospect of which makes me shudder. I write well, but I certainly don't express myself well when trying to verbalize a story. The pages would be filled with lots of "uh's" and "wait, that's not right; let me start over". But if your relative is a good talker, they might choose that path. 

2. The site is glitchy. For my book, there is a double listing of the same question, and no matter what I try I can't delete the duplicate. I wouldn't care, but both of them are listed in the book, one with a response and one followed by a blank page. (The site claims if you don't answer a question, it won't be included in the book, but obviously that's untrue.)

3. The help chat is run by AI, which is fine, and believe me, I've used it a lot, but it often doesn't understand what I'm asking. And even when it does, its instructions sometimes turn out to be faulty.

4. Many of the questions are just plain bad (i.e., lazy). For instance, while I have my own spiritual beliefs, I don't feel it's necessary to answer six questions about them. Thus, those were six questions I automatically deleted. The trouble is, once a person deletes all the redundancies, they're left with a sparse list of questions. 

5. Questions can be personalized, but it requires filling in some fields about oneself, and the results all follow the same route: "How did your love of _____ affect you growing up?" Hey, it didn't! Damn, everything doesn't relate to the me of forty years ago! 

6. On that topic, I searched and searched the net for more appropriate questions, and I did find a few, which I added to my list. Yes, you can add your own questions. But even when I found, say, a list of 150 questions, there might have been two that weren't repeats of those already being asked and/or actually sparked my interest.

7. Like most people, I wrote my responses in Word, then copied them to the site. At first the site added extra blank space between each paragraph, so I was tasked with deleting the extra spaces. So, I thought, I'll be clever and add no blank space between my paragraphs in Word. Lo and behold, the site fixed its glitch, which resulted in one long block of text with no dividing line between paragraphs. It's a giant pain either way.

8. The recipient can choose how often to get a new question via email. At first I chose twice a week, but I never followed the schedule, so then I changed my frequency to once a week. Still didn't quite work out for me. Finally, I ignored the emails completely, instead pulling up the site and scanning the questions to decide which one(s) I felt like answering.  

9. Before giving a legacy book as a gift, consider the recipient. Not everyone is keen on sharing. Sharing is fine when a question is mundane, such as, "What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?" (That's a real question, by the way.) But when certain topics get "touchy", it's a turnoff. I don't know how many times I've read a question and said to myself, "I'm not answering that." That accounts for the many times I've skipped a week. I would get my weekly email with the question and mentally reject it.

10. Finally, if you gift a family member with a legacy book, order a copy for yourself. You don't even have to read it. But bear in mind that the person did a shit-ton of work on it, so the least you can do is feign interest.

 

Through all this, I learned that this is not the type of writing I enjoy. When I write fiction, I'm in control of the story. I get to decide what happens and whether the ending will be happy. (Spoiler alert if you're curious about my books: All my endings are happy, or at least semi-happy.)

This project has also helped me decide whether to revise my older novel. I'm 95% certain I will. 

I need a palate cleanser. 

 

Footnote: Will I now receive a disappointed email from the CEO of the company, like I did following my review of another site? Speaking of touchy. I don't argue with my book reviewers, so I'm hoping for some reciprocal grace here.