Writing Prompts Aren’t Just for Beginners

No matter how long we’ve been writing, free writing, writing practice, and writing prompts remain a powerful source of inspiration. Some prompts come from books, some from websites, some from writing groups or friends, but some of the most important come from our thoughts. I was reminded of this when I found the following email snippet from my writing buddy, JS:

I was thinking last night about shaving and decided I’d write a little bit about it. I thought maybe I’d write about ten sentences. As soon as I started writing, I remembered all sorts of things I hadn’t thought about for years. I remembered how my father used to use his shaving brush to stir up some lather in his mug of shaving soap. He’d lather me and let me pretend to shave with a bladeless razor. I remembered starting to shave for real, lots of different kinds of razors, blades and electric, and barbers I’ve gone to, and how they nearly shaved my head in the Army, and all that stuff. I wrote for nearly and hour and really had fun with it. There’ some great story starts in that mess. 

This email snippet also reminded me that listening to those tiny whispers when we start thinking about “the olden days” can yield fascinating stories. It’s also great sport, like having a family reunion with memories and you get to tell al the stories. It can also lead to fame, if not fortune. JS lives in a retirement community that publishes an occasional anthology of poems, pictures and pieces of work written by residents. He submitted an essay based on the ramblings in that memory dump. He’s become a local celebrity there and heard lots of shaving jokes and stories for some time after his essay appeared.

Snippets like his are rewarding for several reasons:

• Without his essay, his great-grandchildren may never know about shaving mugs and brushes and blades that were sharpened for reuse.
• Writing about memories like these helps focus on them and renews a sense of connection with the past.
• Collecting a number of related memories can help you see patterns and connections you never noticed, sometimes solving several minor mysteries of life.
• Sharing memory stories builds community.
• It’s fun!

We all have little daily things that bring back memories. My kitchen is haunted with memories. Two of my three cast iron skillets were wedding gifts from my grandmother. I’ve used them nearly every day for over fifty years now and thought of her nearly every time I pull one out. I have pie plates, tea strainers and other gizmos of my mothers. Peeling potatoes or carrots, making meatloaf or enchiladas, even filling the sink with soapy water brings back memories. Some of them go back to childhood, some are more recent.

I’ve written about some. After reading that email from JS, I’m motivated to write more about daily life, probably contrasting then and now.

In fact, I just stopped and filled a long Evernote with prompts that sprang to mind that I can use some morning soon when I sit down to journal and inspiration has run dry. That happens.

Write now: Call up a recent memory of times past and things you used to do. Jot down a few key concepts, then spend ten minutes (more if you get into the swing of things and don’t want to stop) and write about one of them. Start paying attention to those mental riffs and capture some writing prompts. Go back over your free-writing material and find some juicy material to develop into an essay or story.  

Photo adapted from work published by Phyllis Buchanan under a Creative Commons license.

Odds and Ends

Everybody has a junk drawer in the kitchen or somewhere, a drawer where you put the stuff you don’t know where else to put. Stuff you intend to sort and put away properly “someday.”

I have a folder like that stored inside the general Documents folder – odds and ends of lifestory starts and sandpaper drafts. Bits and pieces of memory and story that beg for completion, but I haven’t had time, or lost the thread or … you know. Stories that made it past the Story Idea List stage, but not by much. Stories with beginnings, but no endings. If you don't have a folder like that, I suggest you set one up.

Today, when the post I’d planned didn’t work out because the video I wanted to include doesn’t display right, I decided to peruse my junk files. In the interests of full disclosure, I have more than one such folder. I found an older one with files dating back about four computers. I haven’t looked in it for ages, and I found some real treasures.

Among them is a file I’d intended to use as the first chapter of a memoir about my mother. The folder holding that file dates back to 1999, and I have not worked on it since. Usually when I find a file that old, I instantly find at least a dozen ways to improve it based on the countless writing lessons I’ve learned in the interim. Not this time. It’s all there: description in all seven senses, emotion, reflection, dialogue, tension stretching several ways, bait on the opening hook….

That story is the exception. I also found meaningless scribbles that I’ll probably delete. Someday. But maybe not. Maybe I’ll leave them there, and someday one of my kids will look through my hard drive and find these files and either spend several days reading through it all or simply delete the entire file structure.

Maybe I’ll keep them all for a while yet because just as I look at the kitchen drawer you see in the photo above and remember where we got the chopsticks we’ll never use, or the countless trips to the bread store represented by the balls of string, and the sweater or dishrags I’ll never crochet from it, and the fragrant bottles of wine that held all those corks and the friend we drank it with, or the good intentions of the friend who gave us the beeswax candle I’m “saving for someday”, and the market in Victoria Falls where I bought the giraffe salad servers from a destitute woman too proud to beg, I realize that drawer is full of my life. Parts of my brain and heart live in that drawer, and much larger parts live on my hard drive.

Yes, I’ll keep the story crumbs, the odds and ends, and I’ll move that chapter about Mother up onto the active list. I’ll make yet another folder and move all the odds and ends of Mother stories into it where I can easily find them. I may yet get that memoir done. But even if I don’t, I have a solid start.

Write now: look through your scrap folder and find an unfinished story that merits polish or finishing, then take it to the next step. If you don’t have such a collection yet, open your kitchen junk drawer and find a memory. Write about it.

Your Journal: a Treasure Chest of Memories

Amber Starfire is a valued colleague who shares my passion for life writing and photography. Her recently published book, Week by Week is a treasure trove of tips and prompts to supercharge your journaling. (Read my review here.) In this guest post Amber gives tips on how to get even more value from past entries as you work on lifestories and memoir.

Journal writing is good for so many things: sorting out problems, recording life events, healing, self-reflection, and personal growth. Often, we process events and emotions in writing and then stack them on a shelf or in a box and forget about them. We rarely make use of our previous entries.

So, what would you say if I were to tell you that your journals are full of precious memoir-writing gems just waiting to be discovered? Journals are wonderful places where images, metaphor, sensory details, as well as stories about events, people, and places are mixed in with the emotional ups and downs of daily life.

Try this: Browse journal entries from a previous year or month with an eye to noticing images you've included. Do any specific, seemingly inconsequential details strike you now? Something that stays in memory? Perhaps you wrote about seeing the cat cross the hallway during the time of the event, or the way the sunlight slanted across the living room floor, or the teapot on the table. Perhaps a particular detail carries emotional resonance: the lift of your mother's eyebrow, the pain in your son's eyes, the sparkle in a little girl's eyes. All of these images have significance—or you wouldn't have recorded them. The trick may be to understand why they were important enough to write down.

Once you find one of these gems, here are a few journaling prompts and ideas to help you dig more deeply into its meaning.

• What sensory details (smell, sound, sight) are included in what you wrote? What emotions and/or associations with other memories arise as you read that passage?
• If the image or scene involves action, write more now about that action, adding as much detail as you can remember. What part of the action carries the greatest emotional charge—is most fulfilling, dangerous, scary or exciting?
• What does the image/memory represent? For example, you might associate the image of a red skirt with defiance. The metaphor then is, defiance is a red skirt. You can then play in your journal with ways to extend that metaphor. For example, When worn short and daring, it may reveal more than you intend, or it shouts to be noticed.
• Is there a person in your memory to whom you assign that image—someone who wore a red skirt? Make a list of that person's physical and psychological characteristics. How many of these characteristics relate to that image, and why?
• Do a word association exercise with a word that stands for the image. For example, if you wrote about the force of the wind on a particular day, you might use either the word "force" or the word "wind." Write the word at the top of your journal page. Then quickly write down the first word that pops into your head. Write the next word, and the next. Keep writing words, without censoring (it's okay to repeat), until no more words come into your mind and you feel quiet. Then look over the list of words. What do you notice about the list as a whole? Does it have a mood? A color? A shape? Does it make you think about something else that happened in your life?

Ways to mine your journal entries for memoir writing, and ways to use your journaling to reflect upon significance of those entries are infinite—limited only by your willingness to engage your mind and imagination. Try a few of the ideas listed above, or create your own. And please leave a comment about what you discovered.

Visit Amber’s website to subscribe to weekly blog updates and sign up for her free 4-week email Journaling 101 class. She will be the featured guest on the May 18 NAMW Member Roundtable: Journaling for Memoir Writers—A Short Course in Writing Deeply. Read more on the NAMW website.

Does Practice Make Perfect?

This question came to mind when I read Jody Hedlund’s blog post, Do Writers Get Better the Longer They Write?” I like her conclusion, and want to add to it.

Her question reminded me of the old adage,

Practice makes perfect.

Added to this adage is a truism some noted author of the stature of Steven King (maybe it was him … I’ve forgotten) stated: “You can’t call yourself a master of the art of writing until you’ve put in 10,000 hours.” Or was it 10,000,000 words? The point was, it takes a lot of practice to become a masterful writer.

What’s the truth of the matter? Practice does not make perfect. The practice of perfection makes perfect. This evolution of the concept came about when sports gurus discovered that basketball players who visualize sinking 100 perfect shots each day improve significantly more and faster than those who physically shoot 100 baskets a day for the same length of time. Shooters make plenty of bad shots. Visualizers never miss.

Obviously if you want to improve your writing, you’ll need to do more than keep your fingers moving. Jody Hedlund has an important suggestion regarding finger movement. Here are three for the “more than” angle:

Read the work of great writers of memoir and fiction

Rather than repeating tips in a previous post, I’ll add to them:

• Pay attention to how the writer uses description and dialog.
• Notice the structure of the story. How is it unique?
• How does the writer manage the pace of the story and the flow of tension?

Look for ways to incorporate what you learn into your stories.

Practice awareness

Make it a practice to monitor your internal state and notice how you feel in different situations. What body cues do you experience? How do you physically respond? How might your behavior or speech change? Incorporate this awareness into your story for a sense of authenticity and develop connection with readers.

Pay attention to the world around you and use idle moments to explore fresh ways of describing what you notice. Look for unexpected links and connections. You many not have thought of it this way, but this is a form writing practice.

Play with words

Go back over your drafts sentence by sentence and think of the words as building blocks. Question each one. Does it add value to the sentence? Is it as precise as it can be? Would rearranging the words make the sentence flow more smoothly?

Bottom line

The key element in each of these tips is attention, which is another way of thinking about visualization. Basketball players visualize that ball sliding directly through the center of the rim and their muscles record the sensation of putting it there. When you read, you are developing a sense of what good writing looks and sounds like. That’s the writers equivalent of knowing what the ball looks and feels like going into the basket.

Paying attention to your surroundings and visualizing great descriptions is the same as shooting mental baskets. Mental writing can be as valuable as moving your fingers.

Playing with words draws upon the insights you derive from reading. Slowing down and paying attention to what you have written allows you to exercise your new insights.

Jody Hedlund urges you to challenge yourself. So do I. Add to her challenge the challenge of becoming ever more aware and attentive.

Write now:  Read a great book, write a review of it, think of descriptions of your surroundings as you move through your day, and/or play with the words in a favorite story.

Photo credit: Max Barñers

Metaphor for a New Year

Pictures make powerful story prompts, and this picture of a  crumbling sidewalk is no exception. It strikes me as a metaphor for our path thorough life and fits with the general theme of the new year and story.

Each New Year’s Day I’m reminded that life is a cyclical process. Each year exists within the “container” of twelve oscillating months that fit on a series of rectangular sheets roughly the shape of a sidewalk slab progressing through the year.

Though some may be similar, no two years are quite the same. Even on a newly poured sidewalk, you’ll find variations from one slab to the next, and by the time a sidewalk reaches the age and condition of this one, the differences among the sections are huge.

Each year in our lives has a story to tell. Although it’s anyone’s guess what it might be, it appears likely that each section of this sidewalk experienced some individually unique stresses, leading to its individual array of cracks, chunks and deformities.

This sidewalk is a visible record of the effects of a year – probably in reality a series of years. Our life writing, whether public or private is a visible record of the effects of years on our lives.

A freshly poured sidewalk traversing a lovely landscape is relatively uninteresting in its apparent uniformity and smoothness. It’s good for roller skating, pushing strollers, and playing hopscotch, but otherwise little more than a convenience for walking from place to place. A life with no challenges would be a dull life indeed.

This sidewalk is full of stories. It has repairs and subsidence and other areas that appear to be intact. Some spots are damp. How did this all happen? Is this the result of natural aging or damage? Has it experienced floods? Did a careless crane drop a wrecking ball? What might that have felt like, and how does the sidewalk see itself now? Various years evoke similar questions.

Looking toward the future, this sidewalk will need further repair to remain safe and useful. Lives sometimes need repair, and writing can be a powerful way to effect it.

Taken as a whole, this sidewalk is traveled by people on their way to a destination. Whatever the condition of the rest of the path, this section presents challenges to keep your balance and avoid stumbling. Some years are like that.

At this point my mind wanders to another task for today or tomorrow: updating my personal timeline – the rough equivalent of adding a new block to the sidewalk of my life. I see the similarity between my timeline and this sidewalk. Each year on my timeline is different. Some years were smooth, some were rough and challenging.

Like this sidewalk, the challenging years are the most intriguing, the most likely to provide insight, and the most likely to intrigue readers if I write about them.

I find a certain sort of dignified beauty in this sidewalk, and also in years of challenge.

Write now: Update your personal timeline. Start one if you don’t have one. Pick a year that was especially challenging and write about it. Describe each of the fragments, and how it came to be. What did it mean to you then, and what lessons have you learned? Use this sidewalk graphic as a prompt if it fits.

Photo credit: Bart Everson

Stories, Stories, Everywhere

One passage near the end of Stephanie Pearl-McFee’s memoir, Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter, struck me as a poignant reminder that stories are in the very air we breathe. In this scene Stephanie and a friend are dividing up the yarn stash of a friend whose rheumatoid arthritis has made it impossible to continue knitting. Story itself  becomes an essential element:

… Lene tells us the story of each yarn as we take it, and slowly, we start to feel better. For the moment we are soothed, lost in the tale each yarn has to tell us.

We pay attention to Lene’s wishes. That blue mohair, the one the color of baby eyes, it was supposed to be a shawl for Lene’s friend Michelle. I take that one. I lay it in the bin and make a mental note: Shawl for Michelle. Ken gets the discounted Aran-weight tweed. Lene had planned an intricately cabled pullover for herself with that yarn. I watch Ken; he’s making the same note-to-self, recording carefully what Lene’s intentions were. The chocolate milk alpaca (a scarf for Lene’s mother, Bea) goes into my bin … .

Stephanie doesn’t mention writing these stories at the time, but telling them soothed Lene, and hearing them soothed the friends. Writing about it in the memoir surely soothed Stephanie again and surely most readers are moved by the touching account. She returns to the subject several pages later when she reports that she did, in fact, knit many items Lene had been unable to complete, and that each time she knit a gift from yarn she received from Lene, the gift tag said, “From Lene.”

This section was a tender counterpoint to most of the book, which was rollickingly funny and laced with evocative sensory imagery. I have dubbed Stephanie Pearl-McFee the “Erma Bombeck of the Knitting World,” and even though I am only a very occasional knitter, I look forward to reading her newly released book, All Wound Up: The Yarn Harlot Writes for a Spin

In a previous post I told about a friend’s tea pot collection and the advice I gave her on how to write the stories they held. Not long ago I saw her again and asked if she’d done any writing.

“Yes. I work on it every now and then, and it’s great fun. I make an extra copy of each and stick it in the pot to keep them together. That way whoever gets the pot next – not soon, I hope! – will know its story, adding value to the pots. I’ve taken pictures of each to put in the computer files. It makes quite an album. Stop by sometime and I’ll show it to you.”

Whether you need a writing prompt for practicing description skills or want to record the stories of your treasured possessions, you too can be soothed with memories as you write the stories of your stuff, and your family will appreciate having them later. You may find it useful to have those details at hand if you later write a more comprehensive memoir.

Write now: Look around the room where you sit. Find some object that’s meaningful to you and jot down a paragraph or few of memories about it. When and how did you get it? What has it meant to you? How have you used it? What memories does it hold? You might want to take a picture to put with the story and make it part of your legacy of family history.

Image credit: Katherine 

The Power of Song

Today I rode along with my husband to a distant dental office so we could continue on to do some shopping in that part of town after his appointment. Although I had not paid the least bit of attention to the background music, “The One that You Love” by Air Supply suddenly punched its way into my awareness as I sat reading in the waiting room.

For a few bars I sat stock still, listening with every fiber of my being, memory fragments flashing to the fore. I recalled a certain red suit I haven’t thought of for years and the open-toe slides I wore with it. I was transported back to our newly finished family room in Richland, a room I have not entered for twenty-six years. Rather strangely, no specific events or activities came to mind, but a flood of feelings hit me.

Following a hunch, I pawed through my purse and found a small sheet of paper and pen. I pegged the song as a 1982 hit (when I got home, I discovered it was actually 1981). I allowed the music to transport me back to that room on a bright May day, wearing that favorite suit and shoes. After soaking in the sound for a minute, I began jotting down the feelings and attitudes that came to mind.

Rather surprisingly, the first word that popped out of my pen was “foxy.” I don’t recall ever feeling foxy back then, but maybe it was just convenient to ignore that feeling. Mostly I felt wide open to ideas and opportunity, eager to learn and grow, and generally satisfied with the way life was unfolding and the progress my children were making.

But it wasn’t all sunshine and light. I also recalled feeling more than a little like I was acting from a script more than from self. I wasn’t exactly sure who self was yet, but hoped I was learning. I wasn’t sure I knew enough. And so on.

Of course as I brought these feelings to awareness and savored their nuances, certain events and experiences did speed across my mind.  I could have jotted those down, but should I decide to write in more depth later, I’ll remember them easily enough. The greater challenge would be to capture my mindset of that era, to get back into the character of me in that moment.

Fortunately my young teenage sons were seriously into Abba, Air Supply and Blondie, and I enjoyed them equally as much, so that music works like a charm, opening wide a portal to the past to revitalize the truth of those times and allow me to write of it with passion and depth.

Write now: pull out a favorite tune from forty or fifty years ago, or your teenage years (YouTube is full of music videos from bygone eras). Listen to it with pen and paper in hand. Play the song through one time while you relax with your eyes shut and allow the music to wash over you and send you back to that period in your life. Then play it again and note the feelings and memories that bubble to the surface. Use these notes to enrich a story about some event that comes to mind.

Virtually Moving

Over the last several days I’ve been totally immersed in moving. My mailing address has not changed, nor has my physical space, but I’m in a whole new place. I’ve entered the world of Windows 7. But never fear, this post is about the mental process I’ve been going through as I make this transition — which is not yet finished — not about computer stuff.

As I sorted through files to make sure  my C: drive was backed up before I began the installation, I was strongly reminded of the packing we did before we moved from Washington to Pennsylvania twenty-five ago. I began feeling similarly nostalgic about the XP home I’ve lived and worked in for eight years now.

When I finally got brave and made that last click that finalized my commitment to installing, I was torn. I was leaving behind a huge chunk of my past and forging ahead into a brave new world. I did not know what lay ahead, what hurdles I’d have to overcome.

As the CD reader spun, I did what any self-respecting life writer would do (that is, any self-respecting life writer who has an old repurposed laptop camped at her elbow, although a pad of paper and pencil would work equally well). I swiveled my chair to the left, opened a new document, and began writing. I wrote about my feelings as the installation progressed. Sadness, hope, dread ... all of it. Then I began seeing similarities to physical moves, to times in my life when I’ve had to let go of the past in order to move forward.

The document isn’t finished, but it has grown rather long and is taking a distinct shape. As I wrote, I found that each stage of the process invoked memories. I’ve come to see that moving into a new virtual home is a perfect metaphor for moving in general, physical, mental or spiritual. The operating system is the frame or skeleton of the house. Once the OS (in this case Windows) is in place, you have to divide the space into “rooms” by installing programs like Word, PowerPoint, Firefox, you name it. You can even decorate your new home with features like a new desktop picture, a color scheme, “skins” for some programs, or desktop gadgets.

Ultimately, once the structure is finished, it’s time to move in. All those folders and files need to be “unpacked” and put away.

Anyone who has ever changed residences knows how memory works overtime as you pack and unpack, and wear yourself out with the challenges of getting everything set up and squared away. Moving to a new computer is the same. The stages of the process serve as both memory triggers and a series of hooks for hanging and organizing those memories.

I intend to keep working on that document.

Write now: about a moving experience you’ve had. Capture the feelings you recall having before, during and after. Focus on those feelings and see what additional memories they bring forth. You may hit a rich new lode of material.

Input Requested

I could sit here and bang away on my keyboard til the cows come home, and someone is likely to want to read some of it. But I just experienced a blinding flash of the obvious: without readers, this blog has no purpose, so keeping you happy and interested by answering your questions and providing helpful information is at the core of my purpose. If I really want this blog to be helpful, I should get some input from you about questions you have. Here's your big chance to help shape the future of this blog, and to have all your questions answered (or at least acknowledged).

Please dear readers, whether you are reading this post while it's still fresh, or come across it months or years later, take a moment to post a comment with feedback on

• A question about any aspect of life writing, or an observation you have.
• Have you written something and would like to be interviewed for a blog post? Let me know, in a comment, or a private e-mail.
• Suggested links (your own or others).
• Suggestions for improving the layout.
• Anything else?

I thank you in advance for your input and look forward to a rich source of inspiration from your comments!

Write now: a comment based on the above guidelines.

Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper

SARK, poster child for Coloring Outside the Lines and Succulence, has scored another hit, and this time she is squirting her juiciness directly into the souls of life story writers. The lengthy subtitle of her fifteenth volume, Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper, is Gifting the World with Your Words and Stories and Creating the Time and Energy to Actually Do It. In her inimical style, words flow in every color of the rainbow, enhanced with her trademark doodles and fillips, fulfilling the promise of the title.

Her Writer’s Manifesto appears on the very first page, showcasing her spirit and serving as an example for writing our own:

May words and letters assemble themselves and collect without effort on pages and screens.

May I live my life joy-fully and in between and during these times, learning to dance with distractions, being conscious of the ways my writing practice fills my soul.

May my writing teach me to leap forth and lead my words to be read when this serves me and others.

May my writer’s heart be free of competition, comparison or questing for money or recognition, and remember that we all write for everyone.

May I write my truth and write authentically even after times that I might write falsely, timidly or with ulterior motives. May I embrace the challenges as well as the joys of writing.

Throughout the book, words tumble forth like frolicking children, That’s how SARK is. Bubbly, Exuberant. Colorful and juicy. She makes readers believe anything is possible, because she has done the seemingly impossible herself. Like her other books, this one sounds like it’s written by the nicest, most lovable cheerleader you could ever hope to meet. I felt like a kindergarten kid standing at a painting easel as I read, and although I’ve already written stacks and piles of stories and a growing list of books, she inspires me to write more, to keep “moving my tools” and trying new ways of writing.

Despite her sometimes simplistic approach, the book contains solid, useful advice, helping the timid get those tools moving through first drafts. She gives instructions for teaching friends and family how to be helpful. She explains how to fit writing into over-crowded schedules. She convinces us we do dare write about that! and how to manage our inner censor and writer's block. She explores ways of making our writing real and going deeper. She includes project management tips and oodles of writing prompts.

Although this is not specifically a workbook, she includes space to do some of the exercises she recommends, and peppers the pages with inspirational quotes. At the end of the book she includes interviews with five other writers, explains how she produces her own books (writing/drawing each page by hand at least four times) and fills eight pages with resources for writers that include self-publishing sites, writing tips, inspiration, and supplies. She includes lists of writers’ organizations, retreats, music for writers, and thirty-three recommended books.

It is worth noting that while SARK’s wildly colorful, handwritten pages excite and inspire most people, some find their busy-ness overstimulating, even hard to read. If you want to take a look at SARK’s style before ordering, check out her monthly eletter or take a look inside the book on the Amazon site (this Amazon feature is not yet active on August 5, but should be soon).

Write now: with a juicy pen or several, on thirsty paper, about something dashing and daring that you have done. Let your inner child out to play. Scribble, doodle, make a mess. You can edit and clean it up later. It’s play time! Or, get out your crayons and draw a picture of a childhood memory. Check out my example of such a picture.

One Memory (Link) Leads to Another

Not long ago I discovered Write Your Life, written by Seniorwriter, aka Marlys Marshall Styne. (I just added her site to my Links list.) The post I landed on, Teddy Turns Fifty, was about a teddy bear she bought as a gift for her newborn niece, Cynthia. Cynthia and Teddy just passed the half-century mark.

The post is delightful, and so are the comments. One comment mentioned what appeared to be a pile of diapers behind a shoulder. Seniorwriter replied, “Yes, Karen, I imagine that is, indeed, a stack of cloth diapers. I don't suppose that any other kind existed back then.”

My monkey mind hopped from that comment to a personal memory about disposable diapers. I had extensive experience with cloth diapers at an early age. I was eleven years old when my baby brother was born, so I was thoroughly familiar with every aspect of changing, rinsing the messes in the toilet, washing, hanging the wet rags on the clothesline to dry, then folding them. Changing diapers can’t be avoided, but the rest of that routine was a nasty drag to be avoided whenever possible! Not long before our first child was born, I heard of disposable diapers, and found the idea tantalizingly attractive.

Our first son was born in Boston in 1966, and the day he turned four weeks old, he and I boarded a plane to fly to Philadelphia as the first leg of an adventurous trip we would undertake as we relocated from Boston to Richland, Washington. Using cloth diapers his first four weeks were easy, thanks to a generous gift of diaper service from a compassionate grandmother. The fifth week was also easy, with Grandmother’s washing machine and dryer at hand.

Realizing that cloth diapers would be a problem during the drive across the country, Hubby and I searched stores around South Jersey for disposable diapers. Both selection and stock were meager, but we found enough to serve the purpose. The day he was five weeks old, we hit the road, with Baby happily ensconced in a folding canvas car bed/bassinet in the back seat. He was no problem at all on the long drive. When he was hungry, he joined Mommy in the front seat for a soothing swig of milk while Daddy drove. How simple! (How do parents manage to get anywhere today when children must be anchored firmly in the back seat at all times when the car is moving?)

Diapers weren’t a problem on the road. I could easily change them while kneeling backward on my seat. They became a problem the evening we spent in Omaha. Fortunately, we had nearly finished eating our dinner in a family restaurant near our motel when our wee tyke answered an exceedingly urgent call from Nature. I’ll spare you the details, other than to mention that the disposable diaper he was wearing might as well not have been there. Suffice it to say that I grabbed him, Infantseat and all, and ran to the car while Daddy paid the bill. We went straight back to the motel where Baby had a bath. When he was asleep in his car bed, I hand-washed all his clothing and blanket, and scrubbed the plastic Infantseat shell and liner. (That infant seat, baby carrier of choice in the 1960s and 70s for cars and everywhere else, appears in the photo.)

Even if cost hadn’t been a factor, this single experience was sufficient to allay any temptation to bypass the washing machine. My rinsing, soaking, washing and folding expertise came into play. Thank goodness, my dryer was a welcome change, and I didn't have to deal with a clothesline.

Isn’t it funny how reading one little thing like that comment, or seeing one seemingly insignificant detail in a photo can bring back a gush of memories? I could go on for pages with other diaper stories. I share this snip of one in hopes it will trigger similar memories for you — that one memory link will lead to another.

Write now: memories of diaper-related experiences, whether they be with your own children, children of friends or relatives, children you babysat for, or anyone else. Let the memories go where they will — potty training, washing clothes, hanging them on the clothes line, types of diapers, diaper-changing avoidance, etc.
Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

My Story Has Been Caught

Story catching seems to be catching on these days, especially across generations. Just before I wrote the last blog post, I received an e-mail from my granddaughter out in Oregon. Her sixth grade class is doing a legacy project to record family histories and she asked to interview me. Of course I was more than happy to oblige.

What an interesting challenge this is turning out to be. She included the following list of interview questions in her e-mail so I could think about answers before we talked.

1. What were your goals and dreams when growing up?
   
2. Why did you choose those goals?
3. What kept you motivated to follow your dreams?
4. Who was your mentor or inspiration?
5. What obstacles occurred when you were trying to reach your goals?
6. How did you overcome these obstacles?
7. Did your goals and dreams change along the way?
8. Did you help change anyone else's life?
9. What were some life lessons that helped you along the way?
10. What events in your history stand above others?
11. What has been precious to you your whole life?
12. Do you have any regrets from your past?
13. If you were young again and could live your life over, would you keep the same goals or change them?
14. What are your dreams now?
15. In one, phrase, or quote, how would you describe your life?

Optional questions:
How did your childhood home affect your life?
What kind of education did you have as a child?
How did war affect your life?

As you can see, these are challenging questions, and well thought-out. I found some especially challenging. As much as I do remember about my childhood, I do not recall having dreams for the future beyond marrying someone tall, handsome, brilliant and rich. My dreams were centered around him and what he could provide: status, security, comfort, and (oh yes!) love! We would have a beautiful home, amazing children, drive new cars, entertain all the time, and travel to exotic places. I would be an important fixture in the community, respected and admired by all.

My answer to that question sounds very strange indeed to young girls two generations later. The idea of building a future based on a man’s ability to provide for them is almost beyond their comprehension. But in my day, that was the norm. I had nothing to base dreams of personal achievement on. The only women of achievement I knew were . . . old maids! With one exception: Elizabeth Graves, a noted physicist who had been on the team that developed the A-bomb,, was the mother of a good friend. She was such an exception that the idea anyone else would follow her example was beyond my imagination.

Yes, my answer sounds strange, but that’s all the more reason I need to articulate it (which has not been easy) and publicize it. How else are young girls going to know things weren’t always as they are today? Just as darkness means nothing to a blind person, freedom and opportunity mean much less to those who have never been constrained. Our stories matter!

Working my way down through the rest of the questions, I realized that fully answering those questions would require a sizeable volume. For her class project, Stephanie got the "Cliff Notes" version. Over time, my challenge is to fill in those blanks. We had a great time gabbing for awhile, and she learned many things I may never have thought to tell her without this project. I'm delighted they are doing it, and I hope the idea spreads. I also hope we can encourage the kids to keep it going beyond the interview they are assigned to do. Collecting the stories themselves creates a great opportunity for learning about the past and about people in a uniquely effective way.

This list makes a great starting point for creating your own legacy, even without the involvement of a grandchild. I invite all of you to take them and run with them. Or rather to write with them.

Write now: a story or essay based on one of the above questions. Or write about your hopes and dreams and how they've changed through the years.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Memory Triggers

In a post on June 11, 2006, I discussed the pros and cons of using autobiography kits. My personal distaste for the idea of filling in someone else’s blanks and facing the likelihood of leaving many pages empty because the questions are meaningless for your specific life has not abated.

However, I’ve always acknowledged the value of “memory triggers” and include over two hundred of them in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing. As time goes by, I’m becoming more keenly aware of the value an organized set of questions can have for helping people organize their memories.

Just a few days ago I discovered GreatLifestories.com, an amazing website that offers a couple of valuable services. It provides a set of thoughtfully organized questions divided into twelve topical chapters to help you work sift through your memories and get the stories written. The questions are general enough to apply to anyone, so you won’t be boxed in with questions (for example, about military service) that may be irrelevant to you. You can write as much or as little as you like about each question without concern about making things fit in a prescribed space. You can skip questions or whole chapters, and add material that isn’t covered. You can also upload one picture per chapter.

You write your stories on the site, editing them and saving them there. When you are happy with your results, you can download the finished story, neatly laid out, in pdf format for printing in your choice of four page sizes. Two of these sizes are suitable for uploading to Lulu for printing as a book.

Working online has several advantages. You don’t have to worry about losing your work if your hard drive crashes and you hadn’t backed things up. You can work on your story on any computer that’s connected to the Internet. You choose on a section-by-section basis whether to keep your work entirely private or share stories with family and friends (people you tell where to find them). You can also share them with the public. It’s your choice.

You may be wondering, like I did, what the catch is. What are they trying to sell? I wondered. The amazing thing is, there is nothing for sale! Right now, this is a free service. Will it always remain so? Who knows? Right now it’s a great deal. Right now it’s still in its infancy, and you may find a few glitches. The pdf may not export perfectly — it may repeat your story several times, and not have proper paragraph breaks. But these things will surely be fixed. In any event, you can always copy the contents of your story pages and paste them into a word processing program to format as you wish. You can also write by hand, or off-line, and paste stories into the web editor page.

It’s worth looking around this site, if only to see the questions. You’ll find a few on the story writing pages, and many more are located on the Inspirational Quotes, Helpful Questions and Practical Tips link on the Get Started tab on the top of each page. You’ll also find hundreds of stories that others have chosen to share. They’ll give you lots more ideas for stories of your own and ways to write them.

Write now: a story based on a question from GreatLifestories.com.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Ghosts of Halloween Past

It seems like only yesterday I was trekking around the neighborhood with a paper bag. All the kids on our street in Albuquerque went around together. I can barely recognize myself in the photo above. I think I see my little sister there, but I have to guess at the others. I think three of these kids moved away soon after this.

How simple things were back then. A mask and maybe some odd pieces of clothing was costume enough, which is good, because that’s all my family could afford at the time while my father was going to the University of New Mexico on the GI Bill. But it wasn’t just a matter of economy. Costumes fifty some years ago were generally simpler and more imaginative.

So were the goodies. I remember orange and white candy corn, and orange “circus peanuts.” Maybe a few jaw breakers or sticks of chewing gum. In later years there were a few mini-Hershey bars, and some people gave out iced sugar cookies or cupcakes. Some spoil sport always handed out the “untreat” — an apple.

Until the year I was in sixth grade, I generally went out trick-or-treating with the other kids from the neighborhood. That year I decided I was too old to go. But ... as the doorbell rang nonstop, nostalgia grew strong. It was not enough to simply hand out goodies to others. I wanted to be out in that crisp night air, bag in hand, one more time! So, I created the perfect excuse. I quickly cut out and crayoned a mask for myself from a brown paper bag, and stuffed my 18-month-old brother into his red snow suit, turning him into Santa Claus with the addition of a taped-on wad of cotton for a beard. He was clueless, but hung onto the paper bag I gave him. I took him around to ten or fifteen houses, and introduced him to the fine art of snagging candy.

At Halloween I always remember a story my mother used to tell, with a large smile on her face, about how she and her friends went around tipping over outhouses. Today I realize how suspect that story was. I’ll bet she was in a group that did one outhouse, one time. It is true that she lived in tents near the road construction sites her father oversaw for months a time, but that was when she was very young, and during the summer. There were precious few outhouses to be found in town by the 1930s when she was the right age for such shenanigans. Still, the story is lots of fun to envision. I never did anything more horrible than smearing Ivory soap on a few windows.

Halloween has changed so much from then to now. Power Rangers and princesses have displaced simple masks and hobo getups. Infants are stuffed into strawberry suits. Yard and home decorations are nearly as elaborate as Christmas. Or so it is other places. Not at my house! I've become the Halloween Grinch, but that's okay, because for years no children have bothered to invest the time and effort to hike half a block up the street and climb our steep, hundred-foot- long driveway for a small candy bar.

Write now: about some of your favorite Halloween memories. Did you have elaborate costumes, or make-shift ones? Did you have parties at school? At home? What were your favorite treats? Do you have more recent stories about trick-or-treating with your children, or any unusual door-answering tales?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Photographic Memory Jolts

There’s nothing quite like a trip through a pile or album of old photos for bringing back memories. I recently ran across this shot of my own family, taken when I was about twelve. Oh, my, do the stories flood back! Here’s a list, in totally random order, of some (excluding the obvious stories describing individuals:

• The record player — a gift to my sister and me from Santa Claus when I was in first grade. That memory leads to Victor Borge’s recording, It’s In the Book, and the day my little sister repeated some words she had misunderstood from that story. Rather than “Of all the stupid audacity ...” she said, “Of all the stupid odd assy ...” Needless to say, that didn’t sit well with Mother. Which leads to stories of other things that didn’t sit well with Mother. And then there were the children’s records with stories and songs that we nearly wore clear through with repeated playing. Some of those records were plastic coated cardboard, others were Little Golden Records. The record player Christmas was in Cushing, OK, which is quite a story in and of itself ...
  

• The gray sectional couch with the black limed oak corner table — which sparks stories of furniture and room décor through the years.
  

• Tray on the mantle — Mother painted that tray, which reminds me of stories about her extensive skill in various craft mediums, and those stories could fill volumes.

• Hardwood floor — typical of all government housing in Los Alamos, which included all the housing in Los Alamos, which is another story.

• Mother’s jump suit — quite the fashion right then, and one of the very few clothing items she had in those years that she didn’t sew herself. Those who have read my books and follow this blog are aware that Mother and sewing are a hot topic in my writing.

• Saddle oxfords — worn by my sister, and nearly every girl in America at that time. Which leads to stories of polishing shoes in general, and the special challenges of polishing saddle oxfords and the pair of Ivy League saddle oxfords I had that sported tiny buckles in the back. And that reminds me of the orange shoes I had in sixth grade that looked like pumpkins and didn't quite match each other and ...
  

• My hair — I had just read an article in American Girl Magazine on how Natalie Wood used a hairnet to set her hair around cotton wads and Scotch Taped her bangs in shape as they dried. Which brings stories to mind about wanting to look like a movie star, and my adventures reading that magazine, and the modeling classes Mother arranged for my sister and me to take, and winning the scrapbook contest, and ...

• Glasses — I hated wearing glasses! And there are so many stories about them ...

• My bare feet — my preferred footwear in the house and outside in the summer. I often went barefoot in the snow to keep my good shoes dry, like the time ...

• Family dynamics — The way this picture (taken by my paternal grandfather who was a professional photographer) is posed, facial expressions, eye direction — all these cues and more tell volumes about the way our family related to each other.

• Fireplace — reminds me of trips to the mountains to cut wood and picnics, how pitchy pine burned, the fragrance of piñon pine smoke, learning to build a fire, Girl Scouts, and more ...

I could write for a whole week without running out of ideas, just from this one picture. As you can see, each item leads to other memory clusters, so I might keep going for a month or more. I strongly encourage anyone who suffers writer’s block to haul out some photos. You should experience relief within minutes!

Write now: about a picture from your past. Include the picture with your story, and explain details in it. Tell when it was taken, explain the occasion, and elaborate on details in the picture.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

More Than Just a Table

It already had a lot of history before it came into our family. I found the old table in the stairwell near the garbage chute in our first apartment in Boston. People put large things there for the janitor to dispose of, and anything you found was fair game. I thought carefully before adopting the table. I knew it would be a life-long relationship.

Forty-some years later, this appears to be the case. It still sits in my kitchen. It’s evolved considerably in the interim. For the first couple of years, a blotchy, peeling coat of colored varnish deepened the shade of the cherry wood. In the late sixties I painted it a lovely turquoise, accented with then fashionable antiquing, perfect for the spindled, early American legs. In the seventies, it acquired a coat of lime green paint to coordinate with the next house.

Eventually it was too small for our growing family and moved to the basement, where it served a variety of passive purposes. When we moved to Pittsburgh, it obligingly returned to active duty in the kitchen, while its successor occupied the dining room.

The lime green paint was jolting in the new location, so I stripped the table bare. It remained naked for more than a dozen years before I gave it a chic, sheer paprika-red glaze and a couple of coats of varathane, leaving the legs natural.

The story of the table’s surface doesn’t begin to tell what it’s meant to our family. It has been with us through infants, toddlers, teens and grandchildren. It has participated in celebrations, turmoil, tedium, and joy. It has hosted friends, held homework, collected piles of dirty dishes, served as a bread kneading surface ... .

As I consider this table, I think of all the stories it has witnessed, the stories it could tell. It's more than just a table — we have no secrets from it. An idea strikes me: I could write a collection of stories about our family with this table as the organizing thread. Will I write this series? I can’t tell you today, but it is a doable and exciting idea. The concept resembles memoirs people like Ruth Reichl write that use adventures with food as the organizing principle.

This idea is worth remembering. I just wrote it on a card and stuck it in my file box. I recently expanded my card filing system to include a section for theme ideas. Others include cars I have known and loved, special people in my life, vacation stories and many others.

Write now: about a treasured piece of furniture in your life. Be very specific in your description of the item, using all your senses. How did it smell? What was the texture as you ran your fingers over the surface? What sounds did you hear as you used it? Was this item comforting? Does it remind you of anything special? What memories are connected with it?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Real Writing Versus Virtual

Don’t panic. The writing world as you’ve known it is not ending. Pencils, paper and keyboards will be around for ages to come, but today I want to pull aside the curtain on a writing tool you’ve probably used forever, but never thought about: virtual writing.

I can’t remember the first time I heard of the study where a coach divided basketball players into three groups, but I think it was at least twenty-five years ago. He had one group practice shooting 100 baskets a day for a period of time. Another group didn't touch a ball, but visualized sinking 100 perfect baskets, and a third group did neither. It was no surprise that the performance of the last group suffered, but it was a surprise that the players who simply visualized did better than those who threw balls.

In Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, author Sharon Begley details numerous similar studies neuroscientists have conducted to further explore this phenomenon. The evidence is conclusive: merely visualizing actions strengthens motor skills. (Don’t get the idea you can train for a marathon while you lie on a couch visualizing. These results addressed dexterity, not strength or endurance.)

As I stood in the shower recently, I was cogitating evocative ways of describing a certain memory. I wanted to go beyond the standard, “It smelled delicious.” I wanted to convey the sense of intense delight and wonder the remembered fragrance induced. In one sense the shower was limiting, because I didn’t have thesaurus.com available to pave the way, but in another it was liberating. I was freed from the need for speed I generally feel as I sit at my keyboard. There was no need to “write it and be done.”

My monkey mind soon leapt into the fray, reminding me of a joke that includes the line “everything makes me think about women.” I realized that I could substitute writing for women. Everything makes me think about writing and how to best convey an experience or impression in words.

Then my monkey swung off to the next branch: honing wording in the shower is the writer’s equivalent of visualizing a perfect basket. Score one for the monkey!

Finally, my monkey handed me a banana that I share here with you: many aspiring (lifestory) writers, for one reason or another, feel guilty or stressed about not writing more often or every day. If you are one of these people, give yourself a break. Instead of beating yourself up about being too busy to write, or whatever the case may be, do a little virtual writing. Visualize a specific aspect of a memory and think about how to word it. Let your own monkey out to play and see what new story ideas come to mind. Explore an area where your writing is blocked and visualize the tip of a pen sliding the knot open.

When you come up with a specific phrase, story idea or other resolution, jot a reminder down at the earliest opportunity so you won’t forget it later. (I hope you have an index card handy!) Remember, you are not abandoning actual writing, you are adding virtual practice to enhance your physical performance.

I have a strong hunch that once you play around with some virtual writing practice, your fingers will soon be itching to pick up a pencil or touch the keyboard to produce some actual words.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Writing in the Mist

One morning last month, I awoke to find the world shrouded in translucent, luminous mist. The huge oak tree one hundred feet across the yard was visible only as a dark form.

I love misty mornings but seldom experience them. Lacking a compelling reason, I rarely leave the house before noon. The mist was compelling. I slid into shoes, grabbed my camera, and headed out the door. It’s challenging to describe the sensory delight that enfolded me. The moist, body-temperature air enfolded me in the most gentle, nurturing way. It was as if the air and I merged to become one. Ordinary thought gave way to a sense of awe that transcended words. Wafting wisps of fallen cloud kissed my flesh, like tender caresses from Mother Nature herself. I felt transported into a mystical world.

The street, which runs through the woods along the side of a steep hill, was nearly deserted, so I strolled down the middle, taking the occasional picture of dark tree shapes against misty grayness. If I believed in elves and fairies, this would have been a day to find them in the woods.

Before long, the sun’s power grew, and the mist began to lighten. I left the road and walked into the woods, surrounded by mature hardwood trees, with the top of the hill due east. Tentative shafts of light began piercing the canopy of leaves, rapidly gaining strength and confidence. In a short period of time, the gentle misty grayness was only a memory, supplanted by vibrant greens and browns set afire with life by the magical gold of full-strength sun rays.

As I sat down to write this blog, I was reminded of that morning. Ideas danced in my mind, but only as vague, misty shapes, not readily apparent. But I began writing, coaxing out elusive thoughts. Soon the fog began to part, and scattered ideas and memories coalesced into coherence.

Writing is like that. Sometimes a topic is in focus, full of energy and vigor, ready to burst into full bloom of its own accord. Other times, murky memories float in a mental mist, not quite clear, but luminous and present. In the misty moments, I find it best to be gentle with myself, writing slowly, aimlessly, letting the ideas take shape as they will. And indeed they will. I can’t guarantee that every time you “write in the mist,” you’ll burst through to a stellar story. I can guarantee that if you persist, writing softly and gently, feeling your way through those vague, dark shapes, sooner or later the mist will lift, the sun will shine, and you’ll find a story.

For now, perhaps you’d like to write about your experiences on foggy days. Do they make you sad, glad, fearful? Do you celebrate them or bemoan them? Has anything special (good or bad) happened on a foggy day? What do they make you think of?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

A Day of Infamy Recalled

Although I’m not tuned into the calendar just now, when I sat down to check e-mail, I realized that today is the anniversary of that Day of Infamy. Memories flooded back, and they deserve blog space.

Around 9:25 on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001, I was driving to a Computer Club meeting at our Senior Citizen Center when I heard something about a plane flying into one of the Towers. Is this a replay of some historic happening? I wondered, but I couldn't recall a time when a plane flew into the World Trade Center. Maybe it's like War of the Worlds, I thought, though it was a bit early in the day for such shenanigans, and I was listening to NPR. It sounded awfully real.

“And now we'll switch to (??) for live coverage from the World Trade Center ...” Feeling strangely unsettled, I switched the car off and went inside. When I saw the crowd glued to the television in the lounge, I knew. This was real! Gasping for breath, I dashed down the hall to our meeting room and found early arrivals abuzz. (I get goosebumps just remembering.) Throughout the meeting, tardy members arrived with updates. “Second tower...” then, “The Pentagon!” The fourth pretty much freaked us out as we realized it had flown right overhead toward its ultimate rural PA resting point, less than seventy miles away as a plane would fly. The meeting ended in record time, and nobody dawdled.

I spent the next two or three days with one eye on my laptop, the other on the television, and a phone glued to my ear. I could not stop watching!

Just this morning, I realized this constant link to the Internet must be my personal mode for dealing with disasters. The memory of constant net watching reminded me of the week in May 2000 when the Cerro Grande fire destroyed so much of the spectacular panorama of ponderosa and aspen covered slopes around Los Alamos. I grew up in Los Alamos, but that horrendous event got little more than a mention in Pittsburgh newscasts. We still had dial-up, and I tied up the phone line for two solid days tracking events in northern New Mexico.

For me, the gut-level impact of these two events was similar. The only element lacking in the Cerro Grande fire was deliberate intention on the parts of the individual who authorized the fire and those who carried out the orders, so it wasn't quite terrorism, and not as many people died, but the impact on me was similar. The results of the fire are even more permanent. The earth was scarred for centuries to come, and unlike an urban landscape, the mountains can't be rebuilt or resurfaced.

I went to Los Alamos four months later, shedding buckets of tears as I surveyed the devastation. I viewed Ground Zero four months later, feeling too stunned to weep at the sight of a church cemetery shrouded in protective coverings, and the "Wall of Remembrance" created on plywood construction barriers near the site.

Today I mourn for the earth, and the people who inhabit her. I can only pray that the wildfires of hatred will burn themselves out, taking with them all the discord and ugliness, so our collective descendants can grow up in a world of love, peace and plenty.

I have already written extensively about my thoughts and feelings about the events of September 11, 2001 as part of my written legacy. The writing helped me come to personal peace with these events. What about you? Perhaps the record of our collective words and thoughts can help future generations find their way through their own times of turmoil. Write about this, and about other disasters you've survived. Your record matters, to you and the future.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Do Not Go There

Once upon a time when I was very little, like four years old, we lived at Kirtland Field Air Force base for several months while my father was studying chemical engineering at the University of New Mexico on the GI Bill. Most of the barracks in our part of the base were deserted, but there were no locks on anything, being a military base. We kids were told, on pain of unimaginable consequences, “DO NOT GO THERE!” Did I go there? Of course! I went with Denny, the boy next door and the only other kid as old as me. The memory emerges:

It’s dark in here, dark, hot. Pat, pat, pat — my sandals won’t be quiet. Thump, thump — I hear my heart. Plop, plop, plop — I hear Denny’s shoes. I hear him breathing. Is anyone in here? I smell dust, see dust in sunbeams, it’s hard to breathe. What’s around that corner? More hall. Nobody. What if somebody comes here? What's in that room? Crreeeeek. Noisy door. More dust. Little room — little like me. Just two cot frames. Where are mattresses? Do I hear somebody? I want to go. I don’t like it here. Maybe we’ll get lost. Maybe somebody will find us here and I’ll get spanked. “Let’s go,” I whisper. We go back. We look out the window at the door. Nobody is there. Nobody is looking. Denny opens the door. We go out. The sun feels good. We walk down the boardwalk, down the ramp. “Denny. Where were you? Mommy wants you.” Donny is Denny’s little brother. Denny runs off with Donny. I go back to my house. “Where were you?" asks Mommy. “Playing with Denny.” I'm glad she doesn’t ask where we were, so I don’t have to tell her.

I never went back in those barracks, but those few minutes in that creepy place left a deep imprint in my life. I’d faced my fear — fear of the unknown, the creepy, and disobedience — to follow my heart and think for myself. I felt strong and brave. And I felt guilty. If it wasn't the first time it occurred to me to deliberately do something I’d been told not to do. it was certainly the first time I'd dared. Would my life have been changed if the grownups had found out? Who knows? They didn’t, and over the course of many years my life slowly filled with that heady mixture of power tinged with guilt.

I began this piece as writing practice, with a focus on capturing the sensory aspect of the experience, and only later recognized the guilt angle. This memory snip could serve as the launching pad for a whole series of guilt memories. I could tell the stories simply, or I could explore the consequences each had, as I began doing here. I could look at them separately, collectively, or both. I can go on to explore how the guilt began to recede and heal. The possibilities are endless.

I’m amazed at discovering the implications of this memory. It was never buried, but not until I wrote about it did I fully comprehend what that day meant in the overall context of my life.

Do you remember learning about guilt? Let your mind slide around the question, lazily, like honey oozing onto pancakes. Close your eyes and let your mind drift and see where it takes you. Then pick up your pen and paper and start writing, "I hoped nobody would ever find out that I ..." You may not know the rest of that sentence until your write it, and you may not know the rest of that sentence unless you do write it.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal