#27: Creating Your Writerly Intentions for 2024: Cultivating Your Storytelling in the New Year

Join me on a heartfelt exploration to shape a year brimming with stories that celebrate your history and envision your future. Imagine a 2024 where we'll navigate a course of monthly themes, inspired by the moments that define us and the memories we yearn to preserve. From honoring the legacies of loved ones to weaving the wisdom of past lessons into compelling narratives, this episode is an invitation to intentionally craft a year where no memory is left unrecorded.

I share 7 areas that can guide your writerly goals for the year and assure that you are moving forward with preserving your memories with powerful stories!  In this episode I pose questions that will guide  you through choosing an intnention within the areas of topics, habits, purpose/audience, writing skills, writing experiences, or gathering information/research.  Choose one or more and move your writing from a wish to an intentional action!

Are you a visual learner and want the goal areas written out,  check out the related blog post here!

Are you ready to take a first step towrds writing stories about your family, sign up for my free Family Tree Story Starters here, and recieve structure and promtps  to take the first steps towards your writing practice.

And if you are ready to be consistent with preserving your memories with stories, and are looking for a supportive writing community, support, and tools, join me over in the Memory Minder Membership here!

This group is for people who are in the process of writing their own personal stories to preserve their past for their future. It’s a place to come for story writing inspiration, weekly writing-related events and memes, and continued support from me and the other members.

Join like-minded people and get your stories down on paper for your future generations!

Transcript

Melissa: 0:02

Welcome to the Preserve your Past podcast, where we'll explore all things related to the creative process of writing your stories for future generations. I'm your host, melissa Ann Kitchin, author, teacher, speaker and coach. I believe that your personal history is a priceless gift for family, friends and generations to come, whether you consider yourself a writer or not. We are discussing the topics that help with every step of the process, like how to mine for the juiciest story ideas or how to refine them into polished final drafts you'll be proud to share. Let's face it sure, your stories can be overwhelming, but I've got you covered. We all have a lifetime of memories to share, so why not save yours to pass along? Let me help you leave your lasting legacy. Hi everybody, and welcome back to the Preserve your Past podcast. I'm Melissa and I am your host, and today we have a really fun episode. So happy new year. If you're listening to this in real time, it is just turning into January 2024. And this is our first podcast for the year and I'm really excited to first of all say thank you to everyone for how far we've come in 2023 with the podcast and your stats, and I have big goals for 2024. So I invite you to continue listening, to share with friends. And in this celebratory theme today, I want to talk about creating your writerly intentions for 2024. So the new year is a time when many of us are contemplating setting intentions or resolutions for the new year, and I like to take this time to look at my writing throughout the year and through a fresh lens. And for me, there's nothing quite like a clean calendar ready to fill with plotting and planning, unless it's maybe a blank journal for writing and musing. And I do have a little my calendar that I got for Christmas from my auntie. Every year we get calendars and I've already opened up to January and started thinking about what does January and the rest of the year look like for the Preserve your Past podcast and all of the Preserve your Past content. And I'm really excited because I am really excited to look ahead and see the potential of what I have to offer and the journey I'd like to go on with you all. So that is bringing me to this topic to share with you, to think about what your writerly goals could be, or writerly intentions could be, for 2024.

Melissa: 3:13

I love to look ahead. I love to think about each month when I'm thinking of my writing. When I'm thinking of my planning, I love to think about what would be happening in my life in each month and how my writing can reflect that and be inspired by that. So I invite you to do that Take out your calendar, look through the months and write down a few ideas that you have for how your topics could be reflected in what's happening through the year. So, for example, june is my mother's birthday June 8th and so for me it's very natural that when I come up to that time of year and that month I begin to start having more vivid memories and wanting to commemorate those memories that I have during the month of June. So June is a time where maybe that's one of the topics I'll put in as something to write about in my calendar.

Melissa: 4:13

I think the former teacher in me likes to look at life through these monthly themes and topics. I remember starting as a second grade teacher in Las Vegas in 1993. Yes, I'm dating myself again and thematic teaching and bringing our lessons into the real world was really popular and for me it just totally made sense. It made teaching exciting for me, planning exciting for me, but also helped me to connect learning to real life for the students, and I think that that's always stuck with me. So I love looking at the calendar and thinking about what the themes and topics are, and it's something I'm definitely bringing to you all through the podcast, through the Facebook group and now through my new memory minders membership.

Melissa: 5:01

So today's topic we're going to look at some of the things I want you to consider as you set your writerly goals for 2024. And I can honestly tell you that as I was creating this list, it was getting me very excited to set some pretty big goals for myself and our Preserve your Past community. So let's go through. I'm going to go through some like heading topics of what I think you could set your intentions around, and then some examples on what that could look like and some questions that you could ask. I think for this episode I will definitely recommend that you go to the related blog post. That will have the list written down. I'm also recording for YouTube, so if you want to look at the visual of this, it will be me speaking, but you'll get a little bit more information. Maybe you're a visual learner like myself, but we are going to be posting to YouTube as often as we can with the podcast content, so you can come see me over on YouTube, go check out the blog at Melissa and kitchencom and then here on the podcast. So let's get started.

Melissa: 6:24

The first thing I want you to take into account when you are thinking about your 2024 writerly goals is topics that you'd like to write about. So that's pretty basic place to start. I want you to think about again and I even mentioned looking at the calendar who would you like to write about? Are you wanting to write about parents, grandparents, children, friends, childhood memories? So, even when we're thinking of friends, is there someone that you want to write about because they've done something really important in your life and you want to acknowledge that? Is there a family member or a friend who's past that you know? You want to gather those memories while you still have them. So, thinking about topics in that way, first of, who would you like to write about? I always talk when you start out right. I always guide you all through starting out, thinking about what you want to write about, getting connected to what that topic is.

Melissa: 7:31

Also a great place as we start 2024 is to think about our lessons that we learned in 2023. So, if there was important things that happened in 2023 that you learned from, maybe things you had to overcome, challenges or celebrations. Whatever it is that happened in 2023, I would write down some of those topics. I didn't even mention this, but as we go through this, having a notebook next to you even as you think about what these topics are would be really great. And if you do go to the podcast, writing out these questions in a notebook and then writing that down to plan and go back to as you start your writing, would be a great way to collect your brainstorming for the future when you sit down and you say I don't know what I'm writing. So our intentions of these topics, keeping the list somewhere that you can pull from is a great tool. The next piece of that again, that I would suggest is, if you're looking for support in this, don't forget that we have those family tree story starters over on the website that are free for you. It's a resource that walks you through pulling family members in and questions and templates to write your stories about your family. So I just would suggest that, if you are looking for some structure on that, to not forget that we have that and we'll link that link to that resource in the notes to this podcast.

Melissa: 9:07

So topics is the first thing I'd like you to think about as you're setting your writer league goals. The next thing I'd like you to think about is habits that you want to set for 2420, 24 writing how often do you want to write? So, thinking about your habits along writing do you have a thought about do you want to write more often? Do you want to set a goal of writing daily? Do you want to set a goal of writing weekly stories or monthly? Or is there a number of minutes each day or each week you want to hit? I saw a challenge and I was thinking boy, this would be great for our group for the year of 24 to write 24 minutes a day, or two to four minutes a day for the year of 2024. But thinking about that some way that you could start the chain of routines, and thinking about setting up a more consistent writing practice, how could you do that and what would it look like? And then maybe it's not about how much time, maybe it is about your actual quantity of stories. So is it going to be one story a week or one story a month that you want to write. So maybe it's not about the time and how often you want to write, but maybe it's how much you want to write.

Melissa: 10:35

So, thinking about your writing habits and with habits, I would also say thinking about creating a location. Is there somewhere that you want to create a writing center where you keep your writing materials? Is there a place that you want to have as a cozy nook where you can go and do your brainstorming? Are there tools that you want to purchase or collect for this writing habit? I have actually been playing with some tools that will help me take my love of writing in my hand and transferring that to electronics so I might share that in the future of what I'm using. But so, thinking about tools, do you need new pens? Do you need new pens? Do you need to set up folders for collecting your stories, whether those are physical folders or folders on your desktop that you want to create by topic, or is it going to be by months that you just put your docs into that folder so that you know how you can locate them in the future?

Melissa: 11:57

So, thinking about writing habits and setting up a good writing practice, and even thinking about what your writing routine would look like as you sit down to do an actual writing session. So setting up an actual almost again it brings back my teacher part to me almost like a lesson plan, but like a routine of steps you go through when you sit down to write. And if you're looking for help with that, we do have a freebie that I will link also here, called a few of my favorite things that helps pull in how to set up a writing practice and some of my favorite tools that I like to do. So we'll link to that in the notes also. But think about what would make it feel good to something you would look forward to doing, whether it's the location that you're going to be doing it, whether it's the tools that you'll be using to do it, whether it's a special time of day that you know is the best time for you to get that creativity out.

Melissa: 13:04

Think about setting up healthy writing habits for your writerly 2024. Next, I want you to think about the purpose, the goals and the audience. So we talked about looking at your 12 month plan from topics. But remember, in my writing steps we talked about always thinking about who you're writing for, what's your audience, what's your goals and your purpose for your story. So now, as you look at 2024, do you have any special occasions that maybe a personalized story gift would make you know a personalized story would make the perfect gift for? Is there a graduation coming up where you could gift stories on transitions or your first time launching from graduation into college or graduation from, you know, middle school to high school? Those transitions are their stories that you could share with a loved one who's going to be going through that. Is there a baby coming and you want to collect stories that could be gifted to either the mom and dad to be or to the child to see when they're grown, or a wedding stories that could help a couple transition into their new life and be on their own together, and lessons that you could pass along to them. So I want you, as you're thinking of purpose, goals and audience, to think about who are the people that you might want to be gifting stories to and what would those stories be and have fun doing that. Is there someone maybe also this past year who has passed that you want to commemorate? So, if some things come up, recently we've had a couple people in our family and if you know that that's something you want to gather other people to work with you or that you know you just want to get that accomplished this year. Put that on your goals for 2024.

Melissa: 15:10

And maybe this could be something, a purpose, a goal or a story. Intention could be giving everyone in the family a personalized story for their birthday. So if that's a goal you want to set for yourself, you want to think about that ahead of time. Make sure you plan in your projects whose birthdays coming up when those birthdays are, and also then thinking about what stories you would love to gift for them. As far as stories as gifts, I love the idea of sharing stories that we can share with the person somehow that they've touched us in our life, a way that we learn from them or something that we appreciate about them. There's so many ways you could create a story and give that to a person for their birthday. That would be really special. So if that's a goal you have, that's something you want to think about ahead of time. It's a really neat way to go through the year and really think about personalization of a gift. That would mean a lot to the receiver. So that's a way to think about your purpose, your goals, your audience, right? What are the reasons you're writing? Do you want to make a collection of stories about family in a book? Are you planning on publishing it for your family members? Is there a collection of some incident that happened that you want to collect and gift to your family members? What is the purpose and what are your goals for the year? And then, if it is going to be something like that where you're doing it for a special event or for someone's birthday, then you want to make sure you're planning ahead of time so you can get the writing done, the revision done and everything ready for that gift.

Melissa: 17:10

Next, I would say, another topic. So we had, first of all, topics as one place to organize our goals around habits as another place to set intentions. We also then set our intentions for our purpose, goals and audience. But maybe you want to set new intentions in 2024 for your writing skills. So if you're looking for a way to set intentions and improve your writing skills, I would say, start looking for online classes or writer's workshops where you can learn to, work through and strengthen your writing. Practicing your writing also is a good way to. The more writing you do, the more you're going to improve. There are books on writing that you could use to work on specific skills as you go through.

Melissa: 18:05

I say that and now I think about the fact that the book that I wrote, bridging your Past and Future, is actually about 10 ways, 10 things to implement when you're writing your personal stories to make them even stronger. So we talk about using our senses and our writing. We talk about how to strengthen our writing through different practices. So there are books that will help you maybe go on a topic this is something else that's included in the MemoryMinder membership group is that once a month, we're going to be having mini writing lessons. So if that's something that is one of your goals to strengthen your writing and do it bit by bit and focus on a topic I definitely will have the link to the membership at the bottom of the show notes so that you can look at that and see what else is included. But one of the things that I'm excited to include is a mini writers lesson so that we can work on not only our stories but also how we craft those stories and become even more stronger, become stronger writers, and so that I'll definitely include. But that might be part of a big part of one of your goals on strengthening your writing skills. So those are some ways that you could do that and I invite you to share, after the podcast, after you've listened, head over to our Facebook page or Instagram and please share ways that you have thought of to also set these intentions or to support these intentions.

Melissa: 19:49

So next, after writing skills, another intention that you could set for 2024 is to create special writing experiences, and I am all about the experience. It's funny. We were talking about this to my. We were gathered with family and aunt had a special dinner last night and we were reminiscing about how she used to take my boys to baseball games and my oldest was not able to join us for the special dinner last night and he had messaged her to say you know, I'm sorry I won't be able to make it, but you know, if you're up in Boston, I'd love to be able to take in a Red Sox game with you.

Melissa: 20:38

And she and I were talking about you know. She said to him you know, they're not doing as well this year, we might not see a winning game. And he was talking about you know, that's okay, it's all about the fun way, experience. And then he added, you know, and also about the cotton candy. But when they used to go, when they were little, it wouldn't even be necessarily Red Sox, it would be some of the smaller fields that she would take them to some of the you know, the farm teams and go watch the games. But part of that, for him that was so important, was the experience of going to watch them play and having a day or a night out with her, and especially like the cotton candy and snacks was important to him.

Melissa: 21:26

But I am a sucker for experiences. So what are ways that you could set the goal of creating special writing experiences in 2024? And this is where I started getting excited, because this is something that I am definitely wanting to do and I want to grow and offer opportunities for you to do the same. So part of Preserve your Past that I think is going to be growing is some of these writing experiences that we offer. One that I already offer and that I invite you to do on your own or, if you would like help putting this together, is to gather with friends or family to work on your shared stories.

Melissa: 22:07

So, december podcast, a couple of right before Christmas I'll think it was episode 26, 25 or 26, we'll link. It was a shared story episode with my sister and brother about a family tradition that we had, and so we talked about the biggest aha we had from that, and the biggest lesson that we shared with the listeners was just get together and ask the questions and remember the stories, because there were pieces of things that we weren't sure were true and we could validate with each other. There were pieces missing that we had never thought about or heard of, and so that was a magical end emotional experience for all three of us to go through, and so I invite you to create a writing experience where you gather with your friends or family to work on shared stories. Now, this is something I do offer and I'm going to link to it, but I do love working with families or friend groups. I'd say it could be a group of like six to ten people gathering together to work on either a shared theme maybe you're going to be writing about a shared experience Maybe you're gathering to write about a family member that you lost, or time you shared that you want to remember all the things with that. Even in friend groups, I've wanted to offer To friends who have lost a friend, to gather and write the shared memories you have so that you all can remember that person, either together or different experiences you had. Those could be shared I kept in the group or they could be written and shared with family members.

Melissa: 25:55

So the episode that I did for the podcast on grief, I talked about this a little bit. But I do have a program where I can work with you, either or in person, if you're local, and it's about two and a half three hours and I go through my seven step process for writing and guide you through whatever those topics are that you want to set. I should say, whatever your goal is right, whatever your intention is for the stories, for that night we could walk through and it is beautiful experience where we get grounded together and we really Include whoever we're writing about Into that whole concept of of Really becoming involved with the memories and grounded in the memories and connected that's the word I was looking for connected to the person or the topic we're writing about. It's something that I love to do, it's a gift that I would love to give you. If that's something you're interested in, I will make sure that's linked again in this notes, but you can always go to my website and see where I have listed Workshops that I do and I can do them for groups. I can do them virtually, but I love to do them with groups of families and friends and kind of do it almost like a home party where we gather, maybe there's snacks, thinking about, instead of a book club, it's your writers club and we get together and we work through a writing a story or stories and getting started with projects and even then working through in the future, getting those finalized, revised and everything. But I love the idea of coming to you or doing it virtually and supporting you and your family and friends through that. So please reach out if that's something you're interested in. Go, take a look at the website and you'll be able to see Some of what I offer there at Melissa and kitchen dot com.

Melissa: 27:56

The next thing I would say is, in when it comes to writing experiences is a writer's retreat. Is that something that you would like to put on for twenty twenty four? Because that is something that I am putting on for myself and twenty twenty four is that I want to create, even for just myself, my own writers retreat quarterly. I want to do this quarterly. I'm setting it up now. I'm I've been following my twelve week year and so for each twelve weeks I want to schedule in my own Little nourishing, comforting writers retreat, with the emphasis on that retreat, part of everything that retreat means. And I also am going to be looking at working on creating for you all an official writers retreat for the preserve your past community. So keep an eye out for that. And if you're also looking before that's offered, there are several places that you could look online, locally or even at retreat centers for specific, specific offerings for writers for retreat. And if you don't consider yourself a writer but you just want to set yourself up with Accountability and with a nourishing environment, I would encourage you to look for retreats where you have your alone time to be able to work on your stories. But this is something that I really am excited to plan out for twenty twenty four for our preserve your past community. So that is something that's going on in my intentions list.

Melissa: 29:49

And then another item that I would suggest for your writing experience intentions is joining a writer's group, whether, again, you're gathering with friends that are interested in writing their stories or family members that are writing the stories or you want to join the memory minders membership anyway, that you can do. If that's something you're interested, join others and become part of a writers group. There's always something Magical and joining and being surrounded by like minded people that you can get the ideas out of your head and bounce them off of. We talked about that in a prior episode also, that writing can be isolating. So working in groups of Other writers with similar intentions, even if our topics and our works are totally different, can be really powerful. So, under that topic of setting intentions for your writing experiences, I would invite you to look further at ways that you could join a writers group and again, I totally would welcome you into Our monthly memory minders membership, because that is going to be. A big part of it is that we will have a community Within online community and some live events where we are going to be able to support each other through the writing.

Melissa: 31:18

And finally, as you set your twenty, twenty four intentions, another area that I would have you consider is gathering information and research. What are your goals for that? So I offer this because when we talk about writing stories of our family, many of the people that I've come in contact within the past year have been through some of the Historical societies that I've spoken to or genealogy societies that I've spoken to, and so a lot of people that are interested in writing stories have family stories that they're trying to preserve, and so they are definitely thinking about researching their ancestry or researching their family history, and so is that part of your goal. So, thinking about that, for twenty twenty four, do you have an intention of any research that needs to get done or any information that you would like to gather? So that could be asking yourself are there family members that you want to interview while you still have them and can ask them their stories? Is that an intention you have for 2024 to finally go through and gather those histories from the people that are still with you? Or is there genealogy, genealogical research that you would like to do that then could lead to stories? So are there stories that you've been hinted at from family? But now you want to do dig deeper? Maybe you do want to work on collecting your family tree and doing more research into more of the items that you could collect along the way to while you're doing that Research, because there's always going to be newspaper clipping clippings and journals and items like that. So I think that is a another Really great place to set some intentions for 2024.

Melissa: 33:31

And in conclusion, as we kind of come to the thought, and if I've missed anything, I would love I always love To hear from you all, and I have gotten some people who have sent me messages through email that we've actually used as an ask Melissa episode. But I really welcome that. If you have any ideas. As you're listening to this, I know we have. Now I'm getting to know you all as listeners a little bit more. I know we have some creative people out there. I know we have some people doing amazing things with their stories. So if you do have anything that came to mind, please share it in the Facebook. You can join our free Facebook group or just at Melissa. Actually, I would say email me at Melissa at Melissa and kitchen dot com, or if you're following me at Melissa loves history on Facebook, and it would be at preserve your past on Instagram. But I would love to hear more about the intentions you're going to be setting.

Melissa: 34:37

But as we come to conclusion, the one thing that I would say, as you're thinking about setting your intentions, is to what I always tell people when they ask me where to begin with their stories, and I would say begin with. You. Start with your stories. So if that means that you are setting a schedule to get down, you know, like a line a day story, like they did in the nineteen, fifties, nineteen, forties, nineteen, hundreds, if you can even start by just putting down in a journal some simple things that are happening to each day, whatever it is as you think about your writerly twenty twenty four, I want you to think about starting with yourself and just starting somewhere, and don't try to do this on your own.

Melissa: 35:29

Remember that I am available in so many different ways. I love talking about this topic, I love sharing, I love supporting. I'm a teacher at heart, so if you ever feel stuck or you're excited and you just need someone to share it with, please don't forget there's so many places you can Contact me, connect with me, and I want to continue this conversation. I love for you to share some of your intentions for twenty twenty four. I will be posting this in our Facebook group and I will be posting this on my pages, on Facebook, at Melissa, and I'm sorry. On Facebook it's at Melissa loves history, and Instagram is now at preserve your past, so We'll start posting conversation, getting things started over there. You're also welcome to get the conversation started under the blog, where you can put comments to. So thank you so much for joining me today and I hope you have enjoyed and we're inspired by getting ready for twenty twenty four.

Melissa: 36:40

Don't forget, this is going to be a Not only the podcast episode, but we do have the related blog post with these items as a checklist, and we will be posting this also to YouTube, in both the podcast section as well as the video section, and I invite you to share what your intentions are on Facebook, instagram or an email to Melissa at Melissa and kitchen dot com. And until next time, here's to writing your powerful personal stories. Wasn't that a fun episode? I enjoyed our conversation so much and if you would like to continue our conversation, be sure to follow this podcast and share with friends. This helps share the mission of preserving the past with stories. Want more tips, tools and inspiration? Head over to Melissa and kitchen dot com. And, as always, let's get writing your powerful personal stories.