If you’ve ever stared at a blank page thinking I can’t write this the way it should be written, I want to stop you right there.

That kind of thinking is rooted in fear. The fear that unless your writing looks like what’s published in a genealogy journal, it isn’t “good enough.” That anything less will be judged or laughed at.

I had that fear, too—and it almost made me quit writing family history altogether.

I believed there was only one way to write about my ancestors: like a professional genealogist. You know the style—two-layer citations, structured proof arguments, six to ten footnotes per page, and a narrator voice so distant it might as well be a textbook.

And for a while, I did write like that.

I wrote 15 client reports and 3 family reports that followed every rule. They were neat, organized, Chicago-style compliant, and thoroughly documented. People praised the professionalism and thanked me for the conclusions.

But no one—not a single person—actually read the reports.

I know this because of the questions they asked afterward. Every answer was right there in writing. But the text was so dry and formal, they never made it past page one.

They didn’t read it because it wasn’t written for them.

I was writing to prove myself—to imaginary experts.

I wasn’t writing for my family. I was writing for some imaginary, credentialed stranger who might be lurking and judging me.

But my real readers? My cousins, my kids, my curious relatives? They weren’t looking for a dissertation. They wanted a story. Something they could feel. Something they could share and talk about.

And here’s what finally hit me: the most cherished things passed down through generations aren’t academic reports. They’re the handwritten letters with doodles in the margins. The messy journals. The diary entries with coffee stains and honest emotions.

Those things last because they’re personal.

They sound like someone real. Someone who lived and loved.

That’s the kind of writing I was afraid to do.

Not because I didn’t know how to write, but because I didn’t have practice writing as myself.

In school, I wrote what the teacher wanted and learned to hate writing. In college, I mimicked professors just to pass the class. In corporate jobs, I followed the tone and style everyone else used, because that’s what you did.

Sure, I journaled. But those were private ramblings—not stories. Just scattered thoughts scribbled onto a page.

So when it came time to write family history, I fell back on the only voices I knew: polished, distant, and emotionally empty.

And then I wondered why it felt lifeless.

ChatGPT’s Voice Mode helped me find my voice

Everything changed when I started talking instead of writing.