Have you dreamed about recording a parent’s story? Or about writing your family’s history, and the path it took over the decades – now, while your grandparents can still tell you what they know? How about documenting the history of a company you built up from nothing, or recording the life of a long-beloved family home?

This is where a personal historian comes in.

I could read about writing, sometimes instead of sitting down and actually writing, until the cows come home. (“What cows?” asked my then-four-year-old with a puzzled look, once, when I used that expression.)

Darien Gee is a Big Island writing dynamo, and acquaintance, whose new novel Friendship Bread (Ballantine Books/Random House) comes out April 5, 2011.

If you’re not in the freelance writing business, you might not know how much it’s changed. But oh, how it has changed.

“A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man’s history.”

My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel. – Edward Abbey

“I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.” – Ray Bradbury

Read this article and you’ll understand why I’m interested in gathering and writing personal histories.

They call it “a cautionary tale about husband-and-wife authors, or, ‘Love in the Time of Amazon.com.’”

As my livelihood is all about not writing convoluted anything, my ears perked up and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this.