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Larry Lynam of the AMWA Florida Chapter graciously 

invited me to speak last year at one of the monthly First 

Thursday virtual networking meetings the chapter reg-

ularly organizes. Our initial focus was on how I researched 

and wrote my memoir, Resilience: One Family’s Story, which 

was published in October 2019.1 Following my presentation, 

we had a lively discussion on the tools I used to organize the 

large amount of information generated from my research to 

write the memoir. As the processes and tools I used in writing 

the memoir are equally valuable in my medical writing, I was 

prompted to write this article to share them with the wider 

AMWA membership.

 The memoir is the story of my family, beginning with vil-

lage life circa 1910 to 1920 in rural Hungary, their experiences 

throughout the Holocaust, and their journey toward rebuild-

ing their lives in a new country that was not entirely welcom-

ing. Unlike a typical biography, my book is a collection of 

biographies of different family members. Sources included 9 

surviving family members, 8 of their children, and oral history 

interviews that were acquired over many years. I learned what 

a challenge it was to weave those overlapping stories together 

into a coherent and compelling whole and had to develop a 

new skill set, which was narrative writing.

 The details I gleaned felt like an overwhelming amount 

of material to organize—from the interviews with many of 

the recounted paths and experiences during the war being 

quite different, to research on the Jewish culture and tradi-

tions of Eastern European villages, to historical details of the 

Holocaust. Additionally, I searched for source documents 

belonging to each member of the family in order to more fully 

understand their lives and put events into context, which was 

very time-consuming and challenging.

 My initial foray into writing the biography did not go well. 

I thought I would write a chapter for each family member, 

telling their stories chronologically. I began with my maternal 

aunt. When I reached the time in her story when she was lib-

erated from the concentration camps and became engaged to 

my father’s brother, I realized that there was no way that the 

chronological format would work, as I hadn’t introduced him 

earlier! It was back to the drawing board for me, with read-

ing more memoirs and biographies. Fragments of Isabella 

by Isabella Leitner2 resonated with me as the most powerful 

memoir I had read, and it provided me a fresh approach on 

how to write my family’s story.

 I also hired experienced writers to coach me. This was 

perhaps the smartest decision I made. I normally write medi-

cal explainers or perspectives and was inexperienced in writ-

ing this sort of vivid, descriptive narrative usually found in 

novels/books. Prompted by my first writing coach, I looked 

back at the prewar photos we were so fortunate to have and 

worked to describe every detail graphically. I repeatedly rein-

terviewed those characters in my book who were still alive to 

elicit memories and descriptions of their households, scents 

of cooking and baking, textures and colors, in order to paint 

a vivid picture of rural village life. My second writing coach 

also radically changed my perspective. I had been studiously 

trying to remain an objective observer narrating my fam-

ily’s experiences. My coach, however, was adamant that “I” 

was what was missing from the story and that I needed to 

write about my relationships: those with my aunts and uncles 

as well as my perspectives and reactions to family secrets I 

learned during the interviews and writing.

 Through this work, I was able to break through my writer’s 

block. I proceeded to write my recollections and my family’s 

experiences as a series of vignettes and not worry about con-

necting them all until later. In addition, I also used 2 impor-

tant tools. The first tool was a detailed timeline noting not 

only what happened (births, marriages, deaths, concentra-

tion camps, immigration, etc.) but also how old each indi-

vidual was at the time. A separate line for each person made 

identifying relationships easier. This proved invaluable in 

helping me understand some of the family dynamics, which 

were essential in fleshing out the characters and story devel-

opment. I had looked at superimposing our events on his-

toric timelines from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum but 

decided that was needlessly cumbersome and added little.

Judy Stone, MD / Cumberland, MD

MEMBERS MATTERS

Resilience: One Family's History
The Skills and Tools for Organizing Large Amounts  
of Discordant Information Into a Cohesive Story



AMWA Journal / V36 N4 / 2021 / amwa.org    183

 The second tool was using software programs to help me 

organize my family’s story (Table). I initially just transcribed 

audio tapes; however, I quickly changed to using the soft-

ware Transana when transcribing my oral history interviews. 

Transana is a program to help users manage and analyze large 

collections of media data. I preferred using Transana to using a 

simple tape recording because it allowed me to make a search-

able database of video clips based on the individuals and key 

words. I particularly liked that I could annotate emotions and 

nonverbal clues seen in the videos in the transcriptions and 

better visualize clips I might want to highlight in my book. I 

also inserted time stamps for both reference points because 

my initial aspiration was to make a short video for Holocaust 

education. I did not find iMovie to be as readily searchable for 

clips of specific topics as Transana was. If writing about heated 

exchanges at medical conferences or debates for instance, 

Transana might be a useful software platform because one can 

better analyze gestures and nonverbals.

 Zotero was also a useful adjunct to my research. For 

Resilience, I used it to organize genealogic details and track 

source documents for each person. I had tried Evernote but 

found it harder to organize, as it felt like a large junk pile. I also 

found Zotero easier to use than Endnote and liked that it was 

free and open-source. I also use Zotero extensively in my medi-

cal writing (Figure 1). I find it helpful for annotating references, 

searching by keywords, and collecting small facts that I can 

MEMBERS MATTERS

Table. Useful Organizational Software Tools for Medical Writers

Software Tool Zotero Scrivener Transana

Best Use • Can import articles and bibliography 
information while browsing.

• Searchable for facts and random bites 
of information that an author may 
want to use repeatedly in articles.

• Can sort bibliographies into 
collections and tag with keywords.

• For writing and rewriting.

• For writing that requires many 
citations or referring to source 
documents.

• Can import articles without 
bibliography data.

• For analysis: can add codes and 
make a database of video clips 
for analysis.

• Can insert timestamps into 
transcript. 

Cost Free 30-day free trial; $49 $150

Ease of Use Easy Moderate Difficult

Available Aids Tutorial Tutorial and videos Tutorial and demonstrations

Website https://www.zotero.org/ https://www.literatureandlatte.
com/scrivener/overview

https://www.transana.com/
products/transana-basic/

Figure 1. Screenshot of a Zotero file. On the left is the master folder, with nested folders and subfolders within it. Here, parts of 
my coronavirus and genealogy folders are shown, with keywords below. In the center are the individual articles and notes in a 
folder, downloaded via a Chrome extension. On the right is bibliographic data for the selected article. This can be exported into 
one’s writing project.

https://www.zotero.org/
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
https://www.transana.com/products/transana-basic/


184 AMWA Journal / V36 N4 / 2021 / amwa.org 

readily use in a variety of medical articles (eg, details about 
specific infections that won’t change a great deal over time).
 Scrivener was a third software program that proved invalu-
able in organizing my information and drafts. First, I made a 
folder for each of the major family members (“characters”). 
Within each, I had subfolders for the following categories: 
childhood, prelude to war, the war years, liberation, coming to 
America, and later years. As I transcribed each interview tape 
(including timestamps), I dropped passages into the appro-
priate subfolder (Figure 2). Scrivener also made it so easy to 
annotate each bit of information as to its source. This was 
sometimes handy when people’s memories diverged, but I felt 
it critical to have my sources verifiable in case I was ever chal-
lenged by any Holocaust deniers. My book was received with 
excellent editorial reviews and was adopted as a “First Year 
Read” by one college for its incoming students. I’m satisfied 
that I met my initial goal—my promise to my family that their 
stories would not be forgotten. I would still like to continue 
educating individuals about “othering,” teaching tolerance, 
and about the Holocaust—messages that remain necessary 
now. The task of writing such a complex biography was more 
difficult than I had anticipated. It was a larger-than-expected 
undertaking because of the vast amount of details and  

information that had to be organized and annotated, gleaned 
from many hours of interviews.
 In my medical writing, I have to gather and review scien-
tific publications and news reports, dissect out and analyze the 
details, and then reframe the story for a specific type of audi-
ence. Two of the tools that I used in writing this biography—
Zotero and Scrivener—have also served me well for years in 
my medical writing. They are very adaptable for an individual 
writer’s needs as to the level of detail one wishes to organize, 
and Scrivener includes several formats to accommodate differ-
ent writing styles. They have both helped me organize my writ-
ing and ensure the accuracy of its content. Scrivener has also 
helped me be more efficient in my writing. I hope you will find 

the same to be true for you.

Author declaration and disclosures: The author notes no commercial 
associations that may pose a conflict of interest in relation to this article.

Author contact: drjudystone@gmail.com

References 
1. Stone, J. Resilience: One Family’s Story of Hope and Triumph over Evil . 

Mountainside MD Press; 2020.

2. Leitner, Isabella. Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz. 

Ty Crowell, Co; 1978.

MEMBERS MATTERS

Figure 2. Screenshot of a Scrivener note. On the left, the Binder is the equivalent of a table of contents with nested folders. 
This shows some of the files for the historical background portion of the book. There were similar folders for each person 
and other major topics. In the center is a sample transcript relating to my aunt learning that her brother, Miklos, was still 
alive. The numbers in brackets refer to the Transana timestamps. The pop-out box in the center shows the subfolders I 
created within each family member’s main folder, demonstrating the depth of organization that Scrivener provides. On the 
right the possibility of adding keywords is illustrated, among other options.

mailto:drjudystone@gmail.com



