After looking through a plethora of photos, I had to decide on which ones to use to represent that person's life. And then I needed to fill in the gaps with historical and geographical information because our ancestors did not live in a vacuum but were affected by their immediate surroundings, politics, and international events as we are today.
I thought I'd finished but then a new piece of information pops up and I decide to add that. And so the biographies don't get finished. It comes to a point where I have to stop and say, "That's it; it's the best I can do." When I decided this I had déjà vu of the time my thesis committee told me that my thesis was good and sufficient and I wanted to tweak and add more things. "No," they kept saying. "You're done. It's fine." I need to remember that experience more frequently to help me finish stuff.
(It's not just the biographies but also the novels I'm writing. They've been read multiple times and revised multiple times. I could go on ad infinitum. Though I've got a few more things to fix in Effie's story, I'm at the point of contacting a copy-editor to read the first in the series then I can move on to the sequel. I think knowing when to call it quits and know that you've done your best, makes the difference between people who write and never publish or don't even share their writings, and those who get published or self-publish.)
I need to get some people to read the biographies; only part of them have been read by others. And then, I'll put the finishing touches and add all the photos, etc. I suppose if I did want to add things later, I could do a "2nd edition" in print, but if I also publish an e-copy, which Blurb gives me the option to do, I can add or change things afterwards. But I want to start on new biographies of my father and father-in-law so unless something major comes to light for the four grandmothers, I'm done.
