One question a week · Fifty-two stories · One book
How a year runs
One of you sets it up. One of you tells it. Everybody else reads it.
Nobody has to learn anything. The whole thing runs on email, at whatever pace you choose, and it keeps running whether or not anyone remembers it is happening.
Who does what
Three parts, and only one of them is any work.
Most families have one person who sets this up and one person whose stories it is. They are rarely the same person.
Usually a son or daughter
The one who sets it up
Chooses the storyteller and the people who read along. Pays for the year. Then, mostly, leaves it alone.
- Adds the family to the reading list
- Queues a question of their own
- Never has to write a word
- Watches the book fill up, week by week
About fifteen minutes, once
Usually a parent or grandparent
The one who tells it
Gets one email. Answers in their own words. Types it, or says it out loud and we keep the recording.
- Sets how often, and which day
- Turns down any question
- Puts a subject off-limits for good
- Hears what the family says back
As long as the story takes
Everybody else
The ones who read
The story arrives in their inbox. One tap sends a reaction back; a reply reaches the storyteller directly.
- Never signs up, never pays
- Asks a question of their own
- Texts a photograph in for the book
- Sees their reply printed in the margins
Free, and no account
A week, in the order it actually happens.
One question a week, on the day the storyteller picked. Or four a week, or one a month. They set the pace, and they can change it whenever they like.
The chosen day
The question arrives
Sunday, Monday, Friday or Saturday, whichever the storyteller chose. They know their own week. One question, written for them, in an email with a button that opens straight to it.
Three days later
One reminder
If they haven't answered, we send one reminder. That's the only one.
They can switch reminders off entirely.
When they sit down
They tell it
Typed, or spoken aloud. They can name who was there and keep a photograph with it. They can stop halfway, and what they've written waits for them.
Minutes later
The family reads it
Everyone on the list gets the whole story in an email. The story itself, not a link to go and find it. One tap sends a reaction back.
At most one story email a day, however many they answer.
That evening
They hear back
Reactions and replies land in the storyteller's inbox. A reply goes to them, person to person. The ones they keep print in the margins of the book.
What if it's the wrong question?
Some weeks it will be. A question can land on a bad year, or ask about something nobody talks about. Passing on one is a button, and every reason does something different.
“I'd rather answer this later”
It goes back in the queue and comes round again in a few weeks. Nothing is lost.
“I'm not sure what it's asking”
We retire the question and try rewording it. A clumsy question is our fault, not theirs.
“I don't have an answer for this”
We retire that question for good. It won't come back around.
“This question is inappropriate”
We retire the whole subject, permanently, not just that question. We never ask anything like it again.
Either of them can also name a subject we should never raise: the war, a first marriage, an illness. We keep it out of the questions we write, check again before anything goes out, and pull it from the standing question bank too.
Everything they told you, printed and bound.
Every story on a page of its own, the family's replies in the margins, the photographs they sent, and an index of everyone the stories name.
Start their first week.
Choose your person, and the first question goes out on the day they pick.
Start a year