But many of our stories can provide insightful lessons for those who follow. Other stories may just provide entertainrnent or enlightenment. In any case, if we record our memories, we'll provide a continuity between our past and our future, our ancestors and our descendants.

I once sent my Grandmother a list of questions about her life, for her to answer whenever she felt the urge. I wasn't sure if she would ever actually do anything with it. To my delight, when I visited her on her 90th birthday, I found the questions there on her kitchen table, almost half of them answered.

They provided me not only with entertaining reading, but a better understanding of her life as a child, and, to some extent, why she had become the person she was. As I asked her for more details about some of the topics, she provided even more background. I was overjoyed to learn so much of her past, and in a sense, my past.

I've purposely not included any more narrative than the basic how-to's that are necessary to get you started. I once spent a week reading a detailed book about writing a family history, then put it aside. I was so overwhelmed that it was months before I finally got around to actually writing a story. That's why this is a workbook, and is intended to help you capture memories of your experiences and stories, and begin right now to write about each of them as separate entities - in other words - taking it "one bite at a time". As soon as you finish the first chapter, I encourage you to immediately go right to the Topics Chapters, and begin making notes on some of the topics listed.

Use this LifeNotes workbook to make notes as you think of them, then expand on each topic when you have the time to develop each one fully. Eventually, you will have a book full of stories. The last chapter will tell you how to produce a finished book, or several books for distribution to your family and friends.