[Research] How does one write?

When you're writing someone's else's life?

Mar 22, 2025

These are my lovely parents and this blog is for them.

“The year was…”

Have you ever watched “A Christmas Story Christmas”(2002)?

If you haven’t, then I recommend you go and watch that right now. It’s a sweet follow-up to the silly first movie and somehow captures nostalgia in a way that some authors can only strive for.

While my family never had a quaint corner house in Indiana anywhere, we lived through a few houses that would have fit right in there. My mom asked me a while ago to think about writing their story and it occurred to me that it’s not as easy as one would think. “Write what you know” doesn’t work so well when it’s not your own lived-in experience, does it?

My mother didn’t cook and other fun facts.

For those of you who truly know my mother, you KNOW she’s a chef but did you know she wasn’t originally the one to do that in my parent’s restaurant?

My father baked for years at their restaurant but I’ve never baked a day in my life. How am I supposed to describe those early morning prep sessions where he’d have to click the lights on, set the kitchen, or get my mother’s help with any one of a million tasks before the day started? Or better yet, how can I feel the clanging of the trays and dishes and the shouting as my mom organized the staff and crew?

The short answer is I can’t. Not at least with a little storytelling first. And not from me. Here’s my digital notebook and we’re going to write a little bit together.

This article explores 10 questions I would ask my parents to learn about their past.

brown pencil on white book page — Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash

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Ask the important questions. Like the color of their first car.

Admittedly, choosing a “top ten questions” is impossibly hard because you can pick any number of topics, categories, etc., and ask just ten questions on that alone. This is likely one of my many attempts to get an idea of how those lives might have looked before I came along and wrecked everything.

We never stop to think about that part. The “pre-you” part. So let’s get to asking!

1. What is your very FIRST childhood memory?

2. Describe your hometown in any way you can: colors, smells, notable buildings, stores, people you knew

3. Describe your siblings in terms of growing up: what did y’all have in common? What did you fight about?

4. What was one of the biggest challenges as a child? What do you remember most about that time?

5. What were some dreams and ambitions of your childhood? Have they changed?

6. Describe a particular event in your childhood that you feel has contributed to who you are today.

7. Describe some family traditions or habits that you observed as a family regularly.

8. How did you meet each other? And when? How did that go?

9. What are some ways your career or work focus has changed since you were younger?

10. What advice would you give your younger self if you could?

And now to the asking & recording.

Writing feels like it’s 90% reading.

I’m a terrible listener. I also have a terrible memory.

I struggle with anxiety and ADD, although thankfully not as severely as some must live through. I think half of the reason I became a writer was to help myself remember anything. Object permanence is a real issue y’all, and I think the digital age has made it even worse by making it easier to forget those around us.

This is my start in trying to share my parents' story. I know I’ll do it justice if I can just keep the bees from rambling around in my head.

#Let’sDoThis