how to write around the parts you're not sure of

How to Write Around the Parts You're Not Sure Of (Module: The Way We Tell It)

okay so. last lesson was accuracy isn't the same as worth, which is me telling you a wrong-but-loved story still counts. this one's the practical follow-up. because knowing you're allowed to write the fuzzy version doesn't mean you know how to actually do it on the page. so let's do it.

here's the thing. every family history has holes in it. you'll have a name you can't confirm, a date that shifts depending on which record you're looking at, a story that two relatives tell two different ways. the instinct is to either stop and go research it until it's nailed down, or leave it out completely. i want to give you a third option.

just say the uncertainty out loud

you don't have to pretend you know something you don't. you also don't have to leave a blank. you write around it by naming it.

something like:

• "the way we tell it is—"
• "nobody's sure exactly when this happened, but"
• "family story says, and i can't confirm it, that"
• "i've seen this spelled three ways, so take the name loosely"

that's it. that's the whole technique. you're not hiding the gap and you're not apologizing for it either. you're just telling the reader, plainly, this part is soft, and then you keep going and tell the story anyway.

i learned this because i had to. i've got a photocopy of a letter from an ancestor, and it opens with him apologizing for not writing sooner. then he writes four sentences, tells almost nothing, and signs off. that's it. that's the whole letter. i don't know what he'd been doing, i don't know why it took him so long to write, i don't know half the context around it. but i love that letter. four sentences is a family history. i say that constantly in this class because people think they need pages and a clean timeline before they've earned the right to write anything down. you don't. you can write "he apologized for not writing sooner, then didn't say much, and that was apparently just how he was" and that sentence is doing real work. it's honest about the gap and it still tells you something true about the guy.

practical steps for this week

1. pick one story you've been avoiding because it's got a hole in it. maybe you don't know the year. maybe you don't know if it was your great-grandmother or her sister. pick it anyway.

1. write the uncertain part as a phrase, not a footnote. don't write the story and then add a disclaimer paragraph at the bottom like a legal document. weave the uncertainty into the sentence itself. "the way we tell it, she walked from the train station because nobody came to get her" reads better than "she walked from the train station (note: unconfirmed)."

1. keep going past the uncertain part. this is the part people skip. they write the hedge, feel awkward about it, and stop. don't stop. the hedge is one sentence. the story is the rest of the paragraph.

1. read it back out loud. if the uncertainty phrase sounds like a lawyer wrote it, soften it. you want it to sound like you talking, not like a citation. "supposedly" and "as far as anyone remembers" do a lot more work than "unverified."

1. don't let the not-knowing send you down a research hole tonight. you can go chase the record later. tonight, just write the sentence that admits you don't have it and move on.

that last one's a real caution, not a soft one. i mean it. i have lost entire evenings to this. you go to write "not sure what year," and next thing you know it's 11pm and you're seven tabs deep in a database that spells your family's last name a different way in every single record. the writing session's gone and you've got nothing on the page. write the hedge, keep moving, go down the research rabbit hole on your own time if you want to, separately.

the opinion part

here's my actual stance on this, and it's a little contrarian, i know: the not-knowing is often more interesting than the knowing would've been. "we don't know why she left" is a better sentence than most of the tidy explanations people invent to fill that gap. the uncertainty has texture. it tells the reader something true about how memory actually works in families, which is that it's patchy and passed-down and half-guessed, and that's not a flaw in your project. that's just what family history is made of. a record that says everything with total confidence usually means somebody smoothed it over.

so don't smooth it over. name the gap, then tell the story anyway.

before next time: find one sentence in something you've already written where you either left out a fact you weren't sure of, or stated it more confidently than you actually feel. rewrite that one sentence with an honest hedge in it, and bring it.